The English don't know how to cook, while the French used to have the knack, but are now losing the plot. It's spatulas at dawn for Jean-Pierre Langellier and Rick Stein.
Dear Rick, As a correspondent for a French newspaper, I am open to any new adventure in the UK. I don't want to revive the ancestral war between 'rosbifs' and 'frogs', but I must say that my experience with food in this country (mainly in London, I admit) has not, so far, been especially exciting. One basic problem strikes me: why are so many excellent British products such as lamb or fish so badly treated before they reach the table? Or totally excluded from the menu in most trendy restaurants? I prefer to eat in a pub where the cook stands by his traditional knowledge, such as the marvellous Boot & Flogger in Southwark. Yours, Jean-Pierre
Dear Jean-Pierre, I welcome the opportunity to exchange views about British food in British restaurants. As a restaurateur who once had to put up with a 'humorous' party of Frenchmen asking for mint sauce to go with their sea bass, I know the low esteem you chaps have for our cooking. I would suggest that we are quietly getting better at it and, possibly, you are quietly getting worse. Some of the traditional dishes I've had in Paris recently have been tired and executed with a distinct lack of passion. I concede your point about some of our trendy restaurants still not serving up good-quality produce, simply and correctly cooked, but there are places that do it well in London, such as City Rhodes, St John and Smiths of Smithfield. And for sheer exuberance with fish, may I recommend J Sheekey. All the best, Rick
Dear Rick, Thanks for your recommendations. I hope they are not fully booked for months. You have a point: even in Paris, the passion in cooking is fading, but I can give you right away, a list of, say, 30 modest neighbourhood restaurants in Paris where you get excellent value for money. In London, you have Gordon Ramsay or dubious 'exotic' restaurants and not much in between. Cheers, Jean-Pierre
Dear Jean-Pierre, I take your point about our lack of traditional neighbourhood restaurants. But until recently restaurants were not a prominent part of our culture. Maybe you should consider pubs and ethnic restaurants as the real neighbourhood restaurants in Britain: places such as the East End Arms in Hampshire; the Drewe Arms in Devon; or the General Havelock Inn in Northumberland. The Karachi restaurant in Bradford has customers who have been going there every week since the mid-Sixties. You would hardly disparage this place, and such fine local restaurants in London as Mangal Ocakbasi in Dalston or the Mandarin Kitchen in Queensway, as "dubiously exotic". Cheers, Rick
Dear Rick, Thanks for your good pubs, which I have noted down carefully. But is it worth travelling to Bradford in winter to taste a new selection of sausage and mash? To be fair, it's true that the food offered in pubs has improved. We can now enjoy quiche and lasagne. And, in a normal pub, at least the prices are not too painful. You were not, I presume, expecting me to be silent about the main handicap of British restaurants: the bill? London is still the most expensive place in which to dine in all of Europe. As I know you will have the last word, I can't resist quoting one of those ugly Gallic jokes about British cooking: "If it's cold, it's soup; if it's warm, it's beer." Bon appetit!, Jean-Pierre
Dear Jean-Pierre, I have no way of disproving the suggestion that London has the most expensive restaurants in Europe. All I can say is that Paris prices can astonish, too. Take Alain Ducasse's place at the Plaza Athénée, with a set menu of around £120, or the 'traditional' bistro L'Ami Louis, where I recall the milk-fed lamb as being in the region of £30 a head. Gordon Ramsay's £25 lunch menu at his London restaurant is another example of "charging like a wounded bull". Ah, the old warm-beer-and-cold-soup joke. Our beer is brewed to be served at cellar temperature, so that the aromatic qualities of hops and malted barley charm the senses. Serve many of your beers unchilled, especially those stubby ones that our countrymen buy in vanloads in Calais and Boulogne, and you'd wonder whether it was really beer you were drinking. As for the soup, well I just don't think that that's true about restaurant service in this country any more. Our produce is improving, too. Your food shops and markets are a marvel, a true indicator of a civilised country, but our food is improving fast. Take a trip to Borough Market and you'll see what I mean. It's not up to a market like Bastille in Paris yet, but it is moving that way, full of dedicated producers and suppliers, optimistic and full of promise of good things to come. All the best, Rick
Jean-Pierre Langellier has worked as Le Monde's correspondent in the UK and Ireland for 18 months. Before his stint here on the culinary frontline, he lived in Laos, Nairobi and Jerusalem.
Chef, author and broadcaster Rick Stein has made six popular cooking series for TV. He lives in Padstow, Cornwall, where he runs the Seafood Restaurant and champions British food produce.