to task for not doing as others do which is rather like attacking Chinese cuisine for not including salade nioise. Plain steak and chips may be the favourite national dish, and some foreign food entrepreneurs may have attracted the smart set in Paris, but, as we will see, the allegation that French chefs have become stultified and boring simply ignores the widest-ranging gastronomy on Earth, and one which has a completely different dimension to all the seared seabass with Thai spices on a bed of curried Californian lettuce. When a top French chef lays down his chopping-knife, it is news around the globe, and a guidebook noted as if with surprise that there was only one world-class table to be found between Bordeaux and Tours, a distance amounting to all of 350 kilometres. No other country has as many different cheeses or wines; not to mention a 100-kilogram pumpkin grown by a gardener east of Paris, a 16-foot-wide quiche made from 1,928 eggs and the world's longest tripe sausage all 150 feet of it. Champagne can legally come only from France. Smart eateries off the Champs-lyses may adopt Americanised names, and you may stumble across a Tex-Mex restaurant on the Place de la Bastille, but a French name denotes quality eating around the globe: New York has Le Cirque, Los Angeles Ma Maison, London Le Gavroche and Tante Claire, and both Stockholm and Hanoi L'Opra. Tokyo's Ginza shopping avenue is swamped with French outlets, and Japanese gourmets can spend a fortune eating the potato pure of three-star chef Jol Robuchon in a full-scale replica of a Loire Valley chteau constructed with stone imported from France. Across the sea from Japan, North Korea marked the elevation of a new Great Leader by ordering 66,000 bottles of French wine for the occasion, while China's biggest city has a Caf de la Seine on the riverfront and a brasserie called Chamselisee (say it fast with a Shanghai accent and all becomes clear). France may no longer pro...
