YOU have to question the wisdom of Nicolas Sarkozy in seeking to add French cuisine to the treasures on Unesco's World Heritage list, writes Frank McNally. Yes, it would be a big honour for his country's food to be the first so recognised. In fact, no sooner had he made the call at the weekend than Italian farmers were launching a rival campaign.
But adding a national cuisine to a list dominated by ancient buildings and unusual rock formations would be a gift to sarcastic food critics. Henceforth, woe betide any chef whose soufflé was less than perfect. With a list of metaphors ranging from Ayer's Rock to the Great Wall of China, every faux pascommitted by a French restaurant would now have a world heritage site to match.
Worse still, once its signature dishes gained the status of cultural treasures, French cuisine could be crippled with respectability. Soon, the terrible respiratory virus that afflicts audiences at classical music concerts might also strike in Paris restaurants, meaning that every meal would be punctuated with fits of uncontrollable coughing.
The dangers were recognised by the food critic in Le Figaro, who fretted about the stultifying effect Unesco listing might have. In future, he feared, everything from opening the door of a restaurant to shelling an oyster could "become part of cultural activity, like going to sleep at the opera, yawning at the theatre, or slumping over James Joyce".
But good luck to President Sarkozy and the top chefs whose case he was supporting. Le Figaro'sgratuitous side-swipe at Irish literature brings me to my real point. Which is that if the French succeed in getting their cuisine listed by Unesco, we should seek similar status for our greatest contribution to the world's social and cultural life: the Irish pub.
I say this not just because an Irish pub in Quebec has been in trouble recently with Francophone imperialism. In case you missed that story, McKibbin's in Montreal was investigated after complaints that some of its signs were in English only, in contravention of the province's language laws. The business was briefly threatened with fines until the watchdog was called off.
But French imperialism is not the problem, really - at least not the main one. The main problem was brought home to me in an Irish pub in Paris last summer. Then, I was among a group attempting to watch an important GAA match from Croke Park, until we were suddenly forced to relocate to the basement to make way for English fans who had gathered to see a meaningless rugby friendly.
That this was not an isolated outrage became clear a week later. This time the pub's main TV screens were given over to the even more meaningless Community Shield soccer match. And again the GAA viewers were forced underground, literally and metaphorically.
As the Sligo barman explained apologetically on both occasions, there were more of them than there were of us. We fitted easily in the basement, whereas the English fans needed the spacious ground floor with its multiple screens. Even so, I could not have felt more indignant if Cromwell's army had just taken over the pub and reintroduced the Penal Laws. Watching events from Croke Park on cold seats in the dark basement, it felt as if we were celebrating mass in a cave.
When I wrote about this at the time, French exile Donal O'Dowd cited even worse atrocities - pubs where, as he put it, "You'd be afraid to ask the non-Irish barman to pour your pint of stout properly".
Which was why Donal suggested a classification system for Irish bars abroad, similar to one used for French wine. Henceforth, pubs proclaiming themselves Irish would have to display a label of Appellation d'Origine Controlée, including information about the owner's "terroir" (Tipperary, Clare, etc), the variety of pub he was cultivating (sporting, literary, etc), and so on. Only premises certified to have genuine and high-quality Irish content would qualify for the "Grand Pub" distinction.
This sounds like a good idea to me. But it would probably work only in France. And now that President Sarkozy has given us the idea, World Heritage Site status must surely be the ultimate goal.
Our first task would be to define what constitutes the ideal Irish pub. This would not be easy, but it cannot be beyond a committee of qualified people to draw up a list of essential qualities, ranging from optimum head-depth on a pint to which sports gets priority on the television screens (if there are any). Once the rules were enshrined in Unesco headquarters, they would become the model for everyone to follow.
TV rights would probably be the most vexed issue. Even in Dublin on an All-Ireland final Sunday, some bars will still have soccer on the main screen. But in fairness, pubs in Ireland are not necessarily "Irish" pubs, if you know what I mean.
Whereas, with a premises located in Paris or Tokyo and describing itself as an "Irish pub", customers entering it have a right to expect excellence in the genre, whether they want it or not. Thus having Premiership matches on the television, rather than hurling, might sometimes be more popular. But, rather like French chefs faced with demands from customers for steak to be cooked all the way through, we don't have to give in to this sort of thing.