This article analyzes barriers to the heritagization of food and eating practices in the French Pyrenean Vicdessos valley. This region has potential in terms of heritage significance but is characterized by an absence of efforts to make its eating practices an object of heritage. Based on an ethnographic study, this article compares the narratives of four restaurants, highlighting several pitfalls that must be considered from a socio-historical viewpoint in order to be understood. Indeed, the history of the valley has been marked by the presence of an aluminum plant for nearly a century (1907-2003). The potential significance of agriculture, husbandry, and culinary traditions to the cultural heritage has yet to be considered, perhaps because today it is inconceivable in this valley marked by the failed plan to urbanize and emancipate inhabitants from agricultural life. Lastly, the article suggests extending the theory of heritagization to social conditions located far upstream of the heritage commodification, conditions that relate to the construction of a benevolent gaze that a collective can (or not) use to look at its shared past.