• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2174 0

moderation and simplicity in cooking for the cheap publicity and quick profits of showy food served in and out of season to gullible customers with more money than sense. It is, however, perfectly easy to keep away from such pretentious and phoney places, three or four stars in the guides all too often indicate expensive décor and fussy service rather than good food; but it is equally inadvisable to go too far in the other direction. Half the complaints one hears come from people who expect to go to a humble bistro or transport café, the equivalent of which in England it would not occur to them to enter, and there to find an impeccably served and perfectly cooked meal of choice ingredients for the price of a glass of beer and a sandwich in an English public house. They will, of course, be disappointed, and the publicity recently given to the Cafés Routiers in this country is partly to blame. These transport cafés are places where an adequate meal, served, it is true, rather more attractively than in their English counterparts, is provided in a somewhat perfunctory manner by nimble but overworked waitresses who have not the patience to stand at your table while you deliberate upon your meal; nor has the cook the time to attend to special orders. You must take what is on the menu, unless you want sour looks and a bill out of all proportion. Occasionally you come across an exceptional establishment of this kind; if it happens to be your first experience of such a restaurant, it would be unwise to assume that it is typical; but if you are not in a hurry and if food happens to be one of your serious interests, it would probably be worth staying in the neighbourhood and making friends with the proprietor, who will almost certainly be pleased to provide special local dishes to order, particularly in the evening when there are not so many customers.

For it should be remembered by the traveller in France that in provincial towns and in the country the main meal of the day is at noon. Nowadays many summer tourists economise by having picnic lunches, and this is an admirable plan in some ways because the buying of provisions in the local shops and markets is not only itself an entertainment and an education but gives the traveller a good idea of the resources of the country; in the market you can find out for yourself which are the genuine local cheeses, what kind of sausages and hams are favoured in the district, what vegetables and fruit are in season, what is the particular characteristic of the local pâtés, and which fish have been plentiful in the market, so that even if you can’t afford the really good restaurants you will at least get some idea of the region’s food. On the other hand, when you arrive at your evening’s destination, you may well find, at any rate in the more modest hotels and restaurants, that the specialities on the midday menu were all eaten up and you will have to make your choice from the already rather too familiar terrine du chef, the truite aux amandes, the entrecôte garnie, the poulet rôti and the crème renversée of the routine and relatively expensive set meal.

The cooking of these dishes would possibly make them into notable meals here in England, but in France one’s expectations are higher, and one’s disappointment at a dull meal consequently greater. But still, with a little forethought (one’s plans all too often go astray when driving about the countryside, but I am supposing for the moment that they have not) one can nearly always get good food in France. Often it happens that a long day’s drive, arduous sightseeing, or hours in the unaccustomed sunshine have made one too tired to cope with a ‘menu gastronomique’ of seven or eight courses even if money is no object, and in any case so much of one’s enjoyment of a meal depends upon having the right food at the right moment. So as long as one arrives in good time for dinner, it is always worth explaining to the patron of the restaurant or the hotel what sort of meal one would like; the chances are that he will be able to provide one or two of the