toujours à mon goût.

 - Also, you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

 - They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

 - No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

 - What’d they call it?

 - ‘Royale with Cheese.’

 - ‘Royale with Cheese’… What’d they call a Big Mac?

 - Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it ‘Le Big Mac.’

 - What do they call a Whopper?

 - I dunno, I didn’t go into a Burger King.

                        - Vincent and Jules, Pulp Fiction

If Vincent were to go to Paris today, he wouldn’t be able to find the answer to Jules’s question. In 1997, the Burger King Corporation decided to close all its restaurants in France due to poor profits in the region. It is supposed that the emergence of McDonald’s and the Belgium-based Quick provided fierce competition for the regal hamburger chain, which ultimately brought it to its demise. But it is obvious that the real reason for Burger King’s death was that the children of the French Revolution are still violently opposed to the monarchy.

On July 14, 1789, angry Parisians stormed the Bastille, launching a furious campaign to destroy the Ancien Régime. In addition to the establishment of a republic, it was important to rid France entirely of the royal Bourbon bloodline. All of this turbulence ultimately brought the King to lose – quite literally – his head. So in July 1997, centuries after the legendary insurrection, the French still felt the patriotic vigor of their ancestors. Hostile towards the enduring presence of the monarchy in the form of a fast food chain, they decided put the King once again under the fatal blade of the guillotine. Vive le république!

But really, would closing down a hamburger joint, that sells majestic charbroiled burgers to exactly your liking, really foster republican sentiment? There is still a very notable monarchial presence lingering in French culture. For example, there is no need to visit a Burger King to find accessories like paper crowns to outfit your monarchical fantasies. Drawn from the religious observance of Epiphany, the month of January is a time where all French people obsess over the galette du roi, or “king’s cake.” The bakeries and grocery stores are stocked with these cakes with the infamous fève, usually a small plastic figurine, baked inside. The lucky soul who finds – or chokes on – this ridiculous object is pronounced king, getting to wear the paper crown that is included in the purchase of the cake. 

Along with those wearing paper crowns, there are a number of French royalists who long desire to see the return of the sovereign lord of hamburgers. Dethroned for nearly 13 years, there are petitions online for the return of the King, angry blogs from those who remember the ancien cuisine, as well as an absurd but must-see music video intending to foment a burger revolution among the French masses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twY8s-G18qg

I may be a Francophile; yet as an American, it is hard to express whether my sympathies are more towards the monarchy or the republic. But I can say that it is unjust for McDo to call its Quarter Pounder with Cheese a “Royale” when the real royal cheeseburger belongs to the Burger King. Allons enfants de la patrie, continue your tradition of revolution once again to have it your way! Vive le roi!

And to answer Jules’s question, a Whopper in France would be called “le Whopper.”