French food is the worst in the world

There are certain things that are so shocking they can only be said by close friends. And as the British have been in a close friendship – an entente cordiale – with the French since 1904, I am here to say it to our neighbours across the Channel: I’m sorry, mes amis, but your food is the worst in the world.

Such a claim needs evidence. So let’s start with that essential emblem of aspirational French cooking: the menu degustation. Over the years, as a travel hack, I have learned to shudder when I see this phrase – ‘tasting menu’ – on le carte of any restaurant, but particularly a striving restaurant in the French regions. Why? Because I know what it means: several long painful hours of elaborate dining faff as the middling chef horribly overreaches himself and relentlessly strains, foams, quenelles, macaroons, and basically destroys 98 tiny dishes of quite decent ingredients, then signs the menu and adds a photo, which is the last thing you see as you faint from terminal indigestion.