Clients at McDonald’s 1,400 restaurants in France will soon be able to ask for a knife and fork if they don’t fancy eating their burgers with their fingers, Le Figaro reported.

“Cutlery is an evolution, not a break with the past,” said McDonald’s France marketing chief Xavier Royaux.

McDonald’s France announced the revolution after the move was successfully trialed at 10 restaurants in the country.

However knives and forks won’t be given out for an ordinary cheese burger or Big Mac, just for the chain's “signature” gourmet burger – that costs around double the price of other burgers.

The burger giant says the move is to keep up with the competition from restaurants after burger-mania has swept France in recent years.

“For a long time now we have seen a change in the burger market, a multiplication of offers, among these the offers of gourmet burgers, so as a pioneer it is vital we position ourselves, said McDonald’s Royaux.

In recent years the burger has taken over French menus, with some 75 percent of the country’s 145,000 restaurants including it on their menus.

In 2015 some 1.19 billion burgers were sold in France – a rise of 11 percent on the previous year.

Some 80 percent of restaurants say the burger has overtaken steak frites (steak and chips) as the most popular dish among clients.

As well as having to cope with competition from traditional French restaurants, McDonald’s has also had to fend off competition from Burger King, which has returned to France in recent years and the arrival of another US burger giant Five Guys.

In 2015 The Local reported on a survey to show how the burger was rivalling the baguette for French taste buds.

The “jambon beurre” (ham and butter), a staple of the French diet for centuries, was apparently losing ground in the fast-food market to the burger, according to the report by food marketing group Gira Conseil.