It was a story made to order, and French newspapers couldn’t have been happier if they’d cooked it up themselves. “Couscousgate” — an appropriately appetising name for a very satisfying story — broke when politician Florian Philippot, the far-right Front National (FN) party’s vice-president, was photographed tucking into a plate of couscous in Strasbourg this September. An unremarkable thing to do in a country which regularly votes couscous among its three best-loved meals. But for supporters of the party, it was a betrayal of their anti-immigrant, anti-global, anti-cosmopolitan line on what is and isn’t French. While FN supporters exploded on Twitter and Facebook, others couldn’t hide their glee at the infighting — and Philippot ended up resigning. Who knew couscous had the power to make the far right implode?

Meanwhile, food historians and chefs like Yves Camdeborde, owner of Le Tagine, took to the newspapers to point out that, contrary to FN’s claims, French food — and, by extension, France — was multicultural and had always been so, citing Escoffier and Larousse’s inclusions of curry, clam chowder and couscous (the Larousse Gastronomique devotes two full pages to couscous).

Couscous is part of many North African cuisines — Berber and Libyan, Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian cultures — as well as Middle Eastern and West African traditions. It has long been a part of French food consciousness (it makes an appearance in François Rabelais’s 1542 classic Gargantua , as coscosson , part of a banquet menu), and is frequently mentioned in accounts from the 19th century onwards.

But couscous really took root in the early 1960s, fuelled by the arrival of pied-noir settlers and Algerians following the Algerian war for independence. Now the fluffy, steamed mounds of semolina topped with hunks of vegetables and meat, usually accompanied by a thin but flavourful broth and a bowl of harissa, are ubiquitous all over France. They come in many iterations: attiéké , the lemony manioc couscous of the Ivory Coast, the Algerian ras-el-hanout -suffused style, the Senegalese millet couscous, the drier Saharan version, and ptitim , or fat pearl couscous, sometimes called “Israeli” couscous, though it isn’t specific to Israel. Restaurateurs say that the couscous royale, however, is a Parisian invention; traditional couscous involves one or two types of meat, but the royale — king of the menu in most Parisian establishments — involves three or four: spicy merguez sausage, lamb, and beef.

Zerda, a 70-year-old institution, whose couscous came out on top of Le Figaro’s citywide rankings a few years ago, is habitually jam-packed: if you can tear yourself away from the lamb marinated in butter and honey, the delicious, heaped couscous sports more than the usual array of courgettes and carrots: peas, beans, chickpeas and confit onions.

Marais stalwart Chez Omar, one of the first places to introduce North African dishes to Parisians in the ’70s, recently opened a much hipper Brooklyn sibling, but back at the flagship, nothing much has changed. The no-reservations, no-credit-cards spot, bathed in the warmth of its old brasserie lighting and wood-panelled walls, still serves up eight kinds of couscous accompanied by little bowls of harissa. (They also offer French classics such as oeufs mayonnaise, steak frites and veal escalope, but you rarely see anyone order them.)

The couscous de maison at the convivial Les Trois Freres in the Goutte d’Or neighbourhood, comes topped with merguez and skewers of chicken or beef; it’s served with a chickpea broth, and washed down with Algerian wine. Wally le Saharien on the hip rue Rodier offers a more Tuareg style “Saharan” couscous: slow-cooked lamb, merguez and semolina, served dry, without the familiar gravy. Meanwhile, at Chez Mamane in the rue des Cinq Diamants, students fill the little dining room for a long happy hour soaked up with the “best broth in Paris”.

For more refined fare, food writer Fatéma Hal’s Mansouria is your best bet: Her Livre du Couscous details the history of Moroccan couscous the ninth century onwards, before seguing into ingredients, recipes and photos of over a hundred variations — couscous of moray eel or chicken and chickpeas, as well as sweet versions such as tomato, date and rose petal. At Mansouria, the stars of the menu are Hal’s painstakingly researched Moorish, Moroccan and Andalusian specialities such as the lamb mourouzia , the stuffed pigeon pastilla, and the tajines, but the chicken couscous topped with raisins, onions and almonds is no slouch either.

Couscous always seems to come in giant, generous portions that would have satisfied Gargantua himself. And cementing its place in the hearts of French people is the tradition — at least in Paris — of bars that serve free couscous once a week. La Providence, the Tribal Café, Le Grenier, La Cordonnerie and many others in most quartiers provide heaping mounds of semolina and skewers of meat and veggies to drinkers.

My own neighbourhood couscous spot is Le Petit Bleu, tucked away just behind the Sacre-Coeur Cathedral in Montmartre. The entrance is flanked by two baskets of veggies, which signal what’s on the menu that night. The tiny room is always full, and you’re always jostling elbows with the next table and sharing the gravy jug, as the affable owner produces red wine, enormous plates of semoule and unceremonious bowls of dark, chargrilled vegetables and meats. The soupy, spicy gravy is irresistible, the harissa is properly flavourful, and couscous, as September showed, can vanquish all demons.

Naintara Maya Oberoi is a food writer based in Paris; @naintaramaya

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