Among the many examples of the theme of food in the work of Balzac, the meals taken in César Birotteau (1837) deserve special attention because they play an important role on several levels in the novel. We will first examine how meals contribute to a structuring of Birotteau’s eventful itinerary, before proceeding to a more precise, three-fold analysis of the hero’s problematic relationships with eating. We will then investigate another aspect of the meals evoked in the story: the process of bringing Claparon’s character into the text, which emerges as an audacious compositional exercise, leading to representations of the populace in Balzac’s works of the 1840s.