Eating Out, Marco Peirre White - Brasserie Les Halles

How strange it is that if you want proper French food outside France, you have to go to America. You might have thought that you’d get some of that hearty authentic fare – and I’m talking tripe and the like – a mere hop across the Channel in England. Yet even in London, the so-called gastronomic capital of the world, you struggle to find the real deal.

It’s because the British simply aren’t up for it. Which is why I find myself dining in Brasserie Les Halles in New York. The large menu features the likes of blood sausage, pork confit and choucroute (a Frenchified version of sauerkraut that comes with all kinds of bits of pig) – in other words, just the kind of menu that the British can’t cope with.

This place – and the other branches in downtown New York, Washington and Miami – is owned by Anthony Bourdain. (For reasons that should now be clear, don’t expect him to open one in London.) You might know Bourdain from his books or TV shows, in which he travels around the world eating and doing scary food-related things. But I know him personally – I helped him shoot his first deer – which might explain why, when I walked through the door, I was greeted by the staff like a long-lost uncle and had a glass of champagne delivered to my table the moment I sat down. The waiters swarmed around me like bees. And did I enjoy that? Of course. Difficult as it may be to believe, I love attention. But don’t think that will stop me from delivering my honest opinion of the place, which, incidentally, feels very Parisian. So those lucky New Yorkers needn’t bother getting on a plane.

The menu features blood sausage, pork confit and choucroute: just the kind of menu Brits can’t cope with

One thing that impressed me was the portrait of Fernand Point, the man who invented nouvelle cuisine. It’s a wonderful style of dining that is often misunderstood and misrepresented, especially by English chefs. But then the English do get things wrong. Just think of Steve McClaren.

And so to lunch, which started with soup of lentils. It hadn’t been overcooked or puréed and didn’t therefore resemble porridge, and it had been made with a good stock. What’s good stock, you might ask. Well, it’s an expensive one, because you need to use the whole bird, rather than just the carcass. Then you give the meat to the staff, maybe in the form of a chicken pie. The quality end of the catering trade lives on chicken for this reason – you know when the staff have had too much because they start clucking.

Next I had pork rillettes, just the kind of dish that embraces the flavours of the whole animal, fat and all. And just the kind of thing that Brits avoid. Most of us prefer a Mediterranean-style cuisine, or a Japanese one – a diet that offers the chance of remaining slim. Do you know a British woman who doesn’t want to be a size eight? Well, in America they’re more adventurous. They seek knowledge, they like a menu packed with strange-sounding dishes, and they’ll order and enjoy them.

I also ordered and enjoyed the choucroute garnie; it was simply delicious and enhanced even more by the mustard and all those meaty ‘garnishes’ – smoked pork loin and breast, veal sausage and frankfurter. But it was too big a portion and could have fed two people. Quite why they always do this in New York is beyond me. Don’t they want you to have pudding?

Well, I did anyway. A lovely baba au rhum, and then melon sorbet. At which point I retired to my hotel. All that meat and two puddings was quite enough adventure for one day.