Pepin traced this movement away from meat to the nouvelle cuisine movement, a gastronomic reaction to traditional French haute cuisine, focused on light, delicate dishes.

“The emphasis is on portion,” Pepin said. “In modern French cuisine, haute cuisine is passé ... Smaller portions, fresher things, all arranged on a plate, less time cooking—all of that is nouvelle. Beef is not on the menu as much as a number of years ago." Alongside this evolution in French cuisine, France's immigrants have injected diversity, and more non-beef options, into the food scene. Paris, for example, has a substantial collection of Indian restaurants; Asian noodle shops, Pepin said, have become fashionable.

But these trends have inspired a pro-beef backlash, and there are new efforts to literally make beef sexy again. Take BEEF! magazine, which debuted in France in March, and which bills itself as “the magazine for men who have taste.” Olivier Picon, BEEF!'s publications director, told me it has gotten a “tremendous reaction.” Part men's magazine, part cooking periodical, the publication, in Picon's words, "speaks to these men that are not afraid to confront their virility with cooking stoves." He said it has encouraged discussion of beef culture in France. Then there is Boeuf-Lovers, a website launched earlier this year that purports to connect fellow carnivores for meetings and claims to be “the first dating site for lovers … of beef.”

Also bucking France's trend of declining beef consumption has been a surge of Paris steakhouses, which, ironically, aren’t exactly French. Caillebotte is a hot bistro featuring a Kansan Angus cut. The Beef Club is exactly what its name describes, with cuts selected by celebrated butcher Yves Le Bourdonnec from English and Scottish breeds. Café des Abattoirs mimics a New York steakhouse. Beef is popping up in other places too—according to one study, half the sandwiches sold in France last year were hamburgers.

But despite such attempts to return to the glory of beef, Pepin said he worries that French gourmet culture is becoming less French, particularly when it comes to steak. “When I was a kid, you could afford to have steak once a week,” he remembered. “But that was high-quality beef that we don’t have now. The portion is a big difference.” Pepin noted that steak sizes at restaurants in both America and France have grown from the 8-ounce dinner entrée portions of his youth, to 12-ounce pieces, to, in some cases, 45-ounce slabs. Beef in France has been McSized. And Pepin said he isn’t sure just serving up a larger portion of beef will remind diners of the French food culture defined by the traditional cuisine of his mother's generation.

“What I’ve seen in France is plus ou moins la même choses,” he said, invoking the French for “more of the same thing” in describing the attempt to create increasingly modern dishes that run away from the core of classical French food. “I would love to find a restaurant with old stews, frog legs, chicken liver custard. … These are now difficult to find.”

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