Halal Foods Expand Reach in France

The gleaming aisles of Hal’Shop, which opened last year, bear little resemblance to the blood-stained walls of the halal butcher shops of Paris’s working-class neighborhoods.

Hal’Shop has 1,600 products, including traditional French dishes like boeuf carottes and cervelas de volaille; cans of foie gras; and bottles of Night Orient, an alcohol-free champagne made from grape pressings.

“Until now, the halal market was reserved to workers over 55,” said the supermarket’s owner, Rachid Bakhalq. “The products were ‘ethnic,’ like couscous or spices, and badly packaged — the kind of low-quality products that Muslim customers would have bought in their own home country.”

Mr. Bakhalq, 30, studied at a top business school in France and later worked in a pharmaceutical company in England. He sees himself as part of a new generation of halal gourmets, as a member of a social layer often referred to here as the “beurgeois,” a play on “bourgeois” and the word “beur,” a slang word for Arab.

Sensing opportunity, brands like Roger Vidal, a quintessentially French manufacturer of foie gras and terrines, have invested in this new wave of gastronomic halal.

In 2008, Roger Vidal put out a range of six terrine products featuring halal-certified meat, including a lamb terrine with almonds and prunes, and an “oriental poultry mousse.”

Some stylish Parisian restaurants have begun, discreetly, making their menus halal as well. Les Enfants Terribles in the 12th Arrondissement offers updated bistro cuisine and a fixed menu costing around $37, all of it halal, a notable departure from the more traditional halal eateries, many of which feature the ubiquitous kebabs sliced off a rotating skewer.

While many see the growing popularity of halal as a sign of tolerance and modernity in the context of “laïcité” — France’s sacrosanct brand of official secularism — some have condemned the expansion of halal as threatening and often uncontrollable, a sign of increased religious dogmatism and even Muslim radicalism among young people.

Last year, the mayor of Roubaix, a city in northern France with a large Muslim population, filed a complaint against a fast-food chain called Quick after it decided to offer exclusively halal meat in eight of its restaurants in Muslim neighborhoods and no longer serve pork in them.

Quick said the operation was only an “experiment” aimed at testing a growing market in France. But the mayor, René Vandierendonck, denounced what he called the spread of discrimination against non-Muslims.

He was joined by legislators from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing party, including the minister of agriculture, Bruno Le Maire, who declared that Quick “had fallen into sectarianism” by removing pork from its restaurants.

Even Brigitte Bardot, the actress and outspoken animal-rights activist, told Europe 1 radio last month that halal meat “had invaded France.” Yet the debate does not seem to bother Mr. Bakhalq.

He is a contented entrepreneur, happy to offer his Muslim customers “something that they’ve always wanted to eat.” He compared the new pride in halal food to the Black is Beautiful movement in the United States.

“Those who come to my shop feel proud, proud to find products they care about,” he said. “It boosts their self-esteem, and they feel valued.”

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