February 22, 2016. A day that will live in infamy.
On this day, Tesco, the world’s second largest retailer, announced a ban on curved croissants, effective Friday.
Yup, you read that right, a ban. A BAN ON CURVED CROISSANTS. I mean seriously, u wot m8?
Please pardon the profanity, but you have to be fucking kidding me. Who do they think they are banning curved croissants? Who are they to stomp on hundreds of years of French culinary tradition by effectively destroying the very essence of what a croissant is?
To understand my vexation, let’s break it down a bit with a little French lesson. The French word croissant translates into English as crescent. Funnily enough, the French pastry by the same name is crescent shaped. Croissant = crescent. Easy right?
By taking the crescent out of the croissant, you are essentially left with nothing more than a glorified log of a pastry. It’s boring, plain and simple. Without that crescent shape we all have all come to love, the croissant is meaningless.
Illustration by Dillon Yeh
It’s akin to taking the noodles out of ramen, taking the patty out of a burger, or even taking the sauce off of pizza. The bottom line is, each of these culinary icons cannot exist without their most distinguishing feature. The croissant’s shape is no different.
I must admit, Tesco has a compelling, albeit perplexing argument for implementing the ban. According to them, after questioning customers when croissant sales began declining, a whopping 75% complained that the issue was Tesco croissants were not spreadable enough. Their solution: cut off the rounded edges.
Not spreadable enough? What’s next, Tesco banning loaves of bread because customers complain they’re not sliceable enough? Morrison’s only selling cubed pineapple due to complaints that the whole fruits are too sharp? Or how about Sainsbury’s selling unwrapped dairy milk bars as the packaging is too difficult to open?
The problem has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with pure stupidity and laziness. Perhaps Tesco should have just placed a disclaimer on the croissant packages warning customers to cut all the way through the pastry in order to have enough surface area to spread their Nutella, marmalade, or Marmite.
Nothing against those who eat Marmite by the way (in fact, we love it so much, we’ve written an article about all the ways you can eat it). But if you’re spreading Marmite on a croissant, then you’re just a bad person.
I’m worried though. Could this be the beginning of a greater British plot to undermine the global supremacy of French cuisine? After all, everyone knows British food is shit. But that doesn’t mean the UK’s largest retailer has to deface a culinary icon.
Sure, there are more important things happening in the world right now than Tesco taking proper croissants off its shelves. That being said, this is some serious bullshit.