French cuisine

Thursday

Adam Begley

French lessons, with tears: inside a Lyonnais kitchen

You can’t say he didn’t warn us. In the final sentence of his previous book, Heat, a joyously gluttonous exploration of Italian gastronomy, Bill Buford announced that he would be crossing the Alps: ‘I have to go to France.’ And here he is, in Dirt, another rollicking, food-stuffed entertainment, determined to unearth, as it were, the secrets of haute cuisine. Lyon, being the gastronomic capital of France, is where he decides to dig in, having uprooted his family (wife, twin toddlers) to facilitate his investigations. Gourmets and gourmands will savour this account of his five-year adventure — and so will students of the author’s curious, compelling character.

Monday

John Keiger

Save French food!

From our US edition

The annual publication of the century-old Michelin restaurant guides creates an excitement in France akin to the Oscars, but the 2020 Guide Michelin is provoking dyspepsia. This is the first time since 1965 that the restaurant founded by Paul Bocuse — the pope, the Napoleon, of French cuisine — no longer figures among the 27-strong group of French restaurants receiving the ultimate culinary accolade: three-star status. Two years after the maestro’s death, the black truffle soup and volaille de Bresse en vessie Mère Fillioux no longer seduce Michelin inspectors. What Bocuse called la sainte trilogie, butter, cream, wine, has lost its infallibility. And Monsieur Paul is not the first to go.

french food

Saturday

Alice Pfeiffer

French women do get fat

From our US edition

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Paris ‘And please meet Alice, who has brought industrial cheese,’ said our Parisian host as she introduced me to the other dinner guests. Imagine my despair! I had failed her, not to mention her guests, on the sacrosanct fromage. A fate worse than death. Food is a national obsession for the French. The couple throwing the party presented us with a three-course meal, all made from scratch using seasonal produce from the local market. To think that I almost brought a six-pack of beer.

french women