Sarkozy Tries to Ride Efforts to Protect French Cuisine, but Polls Suggest Appetite for His Party Is Down in Sunday Vote

PARIS—Last fall, President Nicolas Sarkozy revved up for France's continuing regional elections by defending the idea of a specific national identity—a topic that in France is seen as anti-immigration and plays to far-right voters.

A group of epicurean French politicians have recently added a new twist to the debate: You are what you eat. By that definition, being properly French means dining on croissants, brie and duck confit.

"We must protect the products from our land," preached Alain Suguenot, deputy mayor of Beaune, a town in Burgundy, as he co-hosted a dinner featuring foie gras, crispy pig ears and white Burgundy. Mr. Suguenot is co-president of the Club de la Table Française, which counts 280 food-loving members of Parliament from across the political spectrum. "It's for our heritage. It's part of our French identity," he said.

Members of Mr. Sarkozy's center-right party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, have suggested banning the full-body burqa some Muslim women wear, flying the tricolor flag at every school, and requiring new citizens to sign a charter pledging to uphold French values and obligations. France has Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at six million, or 10% of the population, and large communities from its former colonies such as Algeria, Vietnam and Senegal have settled here.

But the national-identity debate hasn't translated into a boost for Mr. Sarkozy's party. Opinion polls suggest the UMP will fail to win any of the 24 regions led by left-wing coalitions in Sunday's second round of balloting, and could lose the two regions it controls—Corsica and Alsace. Behind the expected poor showing is a drop in support for Mr. Sarkozy, pollsters say. His approval rating fell to 36% in March from 40% in February, according to a survey done March 13 by polling company Ifop.

Many voters who work in the private sector say Mr. Sarkozy hasn't delivered on his pledge to energize the economy by shrinking its large public sector. Blue-collar workers, who were attracted in 2007 by Mr. Sarkozy's "work more to earn more" campaign slogan and promise to cut unemployment to 5%, are upset by factory closures and job cuts. Unemployment now exceeds 10%. Many far-right voters who supported Mr. Sarkozy's law and-order platform in 2007 are expected to return to the far-right movement, Front National, in Sunday's voting.

The discontent comes as France has a widening budget gap, and the president may have to resort to austerity measures. France has long resisted becoming a melting pot. Four years ago, rioting by youths—many of them minorities—in poor Paris suburbs highlighted the difficulties they face in integrating into society.

Last month, the socialist mayor of Roubaix, a northern French town, filed a discrimination lawsuit against fast-food chain Quick for making several of its restaurants halal, cutting pork from the menu and serving meat slaughtered according to Muslim customs, a move that the mayor said deprived non-Muslims of their bacon burger. Quick declined to comment.

Why not go somewhere else? Anyway, the Quick website shows an offer to Gagne un max de Burgers (Win a big burger? lots of burgers?)

National identity met food at this year's Salon International de l'Agriculture, an annual fair that takes place in a gigantic convention center on the outskirts of Paris. This year's Salon, where the parliamentary food-lovers' club dinner took place, ran for nine days in February and March. The Salon is an obligatory stop for politicians to connect with their agricultural constituents and mug for photos with prize-winning cows, and Mr. Sarkozy used the occasion to promise €800 million ($1.1 billion) in aid to farmers.

Upstairs from where the cows rested, politicians, farmers and food-industry officials gathered at the Club de la Table Française dinner to discuss how to protect French gastronomy. The pièce de résistance was a medium-rare roast beef, cooked under a crust of salt from Brittany and served with Princesse Amandine potatoes.

Club members say French cuisine is under threat. Grocery stores are increasingly importing cheaper cheese and meats, threatening local producers. The summertime tipple, rosé wine, was recently under attack from the European Union, which wanted to ease rules to allow vintners to make it by mixing red and white wine. Authentic rosé is instead made by macerating red grape skins to give pale wine a blush. The club threw its support behind an initiative Mr. Sarkozy launched two years ago to gain United Nations recognition for French cuisine as an intangible cultural treasure.

Mix red and white to make rosé? How decadent, uncivilized. But, an intangible cultural treasure?

Yet the French have had to lower their ambitions. The initial project was too broad: It envisaged an abstract classification comprising raw ingredients, recipes, cooking techniques, wines and table setting. The later proposal argues more narrowly in favor of the "French meal."

"Ninety-nine percent of the French think it's an essential part of our culture, even if people don't take as much time to cook," said Jean-Robert Pitte, who headed the project and expects a response from Unesco by September. He noted the need to emphasize everyday cooking: "carrots, soup, good bread."