Delia's wrong. I waded through butter and cream in Paris and it was wonderful.
Now I’m not in the habit of dissing Saint Delia. I grew up in the Delia Smith era when cookery programmes weren’t filled with the ‘mild peril’ ( as film classifications state) of competing amateurs or professionals - where the stakes (or should that be ‘steaks’) are high and the temperature starts low, slowly ratcheting up. They were a more sedate affair, often on a Sunday before lunch, activating the salivary glands before you sat down to dry - as opposed to dry-aged - beef and a slab of Walls Viennetta.
I knew people who worshipped at the altar of Saint Delia and I regularly sought help in her books to achieve a Bechemal sauce without lumps. I still have some of those books in the kitchen where the shelves tell the story of popular TV chefs through the years: Delia, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater etc. However, recently I found myself daring to question Delia.
A headline caught my eye stating that Delia thought it was nigh on impossible to get a decent meal in France now because they had drastically cut down on butter, cream and flour. When I read it, I was pretty much fresh off the Eurostar after three days in Paris. My body composition was probably seventy per cent butter and thirty per cent cream. My reaction: ‘Quoi, Delia?’ followed with an almighty ‘Bof.’
It was my daughter’s first time in Paris, so for me it was imperative that she experience some of the classics. People whine on about how there’s some really bad food around in Paris, but that applies anywhere. I was poisoned by Egg Nog ice cream in Rome, but then my family collectively rolled their eyes at my choice. ‘Why the hell did you choose Egg Nog out of all the flavours?’ Fair point. You can go into any decent café in the UK and be served with a bullet-hard jacket potato or an overcooked poached egg that fails to yield it’s golden innards and crumbles into a soul-crushing powder. I also have a healthy mistrust of Trip Advisor as you’ll have someone on there complaining that the gazpacho in Seville was cold or that carbonara in Rome is nothing like mac n cheese.
The irony of standing with the hoards eating a Prêt croissant for breakfast at the Eurostar holding-pen at St. Pancras was not lost on me, but when we arrived in Paris around lunchtime, we nipped into a restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli which was reassuringly peppered with people enjoying a lunchtime glass of wine outside. Here, my daughter enjoyed baked snails along with the mortification of carefully picking up one of the shells in the pincers provided, only for it to shoot across the room and clatter on the floor. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been me. Meanwhile, I was in raptures over a chèvre chaud salad. My husband will tell you I would wax lyrical over a piece of old shoe leather if you told me it was French. I protest that I do have a level of discernment, but he’s probably not too far off the truth.
We unashamedly hit some of the main tourist traps. The Café de Flore delivered on soupe à l’oignon which came in a bowl the size of a small font, with the caramelised onion broth blanketed by a duvet of Gruyère and bread. If anyone has found a way to eat French onion soup with an ounce of decorum, then I salute you. I was still digesting that morning’s omelette from Angelina which was so stuffed with oozing Emmental and ham it looked like it might spontaneously combust at the mere prod of a fourchette. Instead - because I obviously needed to cut through the cheese with something sweet in the afternoon - I went for the pâtisserie du jour, which was a bitter dark chocolate tart that glued itself to the roof of your mouth, in a good way. On days like this, 600 odd steps up the Eiffel Tower, 350 odd up Sacré Coeur and hours getting lost in the Louvre are a necessity to ensure that blood is circulating around your body rather than purely butter or chocolate.
One day, we shoehorned ourselves around a table on the pavement of a café overlooking the Place du Tertre in Montmartre, where I saw a woman strolling by with one of those hairless cats (shudders) peeking out of a handbag. It was predictably heaving and, as this was the day we’d climbed endless steps, our legs were weak and we were famished. It was more a question of where could we find a seat rather than looking into the finer merits of the various establishments. I wasn’t expecting much. My husband and daughter went for the tartiflette, which is a bit of a ritual in our house, usually made once a year on a cold November evening and enjoyed in the ‘burbs rather than the Alps. A taste will transport you there though, if that’s your kind of thing. I had a taste of theirs and didn't need transporting anywhere as I was deliriously happy to be in Paris. It was the most delicious alchemy of meltingly soft potatoes, cheese and lardons.
Another evening we went bougie in Langosteria in the Hotel Cheval Blanc. My husband knew it and when he told me he’d booked a restaurant that does Italian food in Paris, he received much derision from yours truly. ‘We can’t go to an Italian restaurant in Paris.’ It bordered on the sacrilegious. Obviously, I had to eat my words. Specialising in seafood and pasta with incredible views over Paris and a cool, but not intimidatingly so, vibe it was quite the culinary experience. I half expected Sylvie Grateau to swoosh through with one of her split to the thigh and slashed to the navel numbers, or Emily to be quibbling with one of her many lovers on the terrace. That thought also made me want to flagellate myself that I had been ensnared by the series whose name I dare not speak. ‘Do you think that’s a real Birkin bag?’ my daughter whispered as a very soigné diner glided by. ‘Most probably,’ I replied.
Our last evening was spent at the Brasserie Flottes on the Rue Cambon, the closest to Chanel I’ll ever get. It had me as soon as we walked in and the manager pored over a handwritten ledger to find our reservation. I wanted to give him a sort of analogue high-five. As we were led downstairs, a British couple passed us on their way up and announced to one of the waiters that they were leaving. It was 7pm. The woman’s voice was laced with disappointment and she gave no further explanation as to why they were leaving, obviously relying on some inherent French waiter telepathy.
As we were led to our table, I saw that this part of the restaurant was empty. I assumed they thought they had been stuffed away downstairs and had taken umbrage. However, it was early, and within half an hour of us sitting down a steady stream of diners joined us. I was amused by an exchange between the waiters:
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est, ‘We’re leaving.’ Ça veut dire quoi, ça?’
‘J’sais pas, moi.’ Accompanied by THE shrug.
The waiters were bemused, understandably, because the couple had done that British thing of being very disappointed and expecting everyone to understand the entire history behind that disappointment. They were no doubt going to leave a review on Trip Advisor. Acutely embarrassed by my compatriots, I felt an urgent need to ramp up the charm and spoke in my best French and was rewarded with being spoken back to in French (in Paris!). My daughter delighted them by going for the moules. My goats cheese spinach toast starter was the size of a substantial main and we all hacked away at a giant profiterole to round off the meal and repeatedly expressed our undying gratitude. I hope my diplomatic efforts are recognised.
So, I think I have provided enough evidence here for a case that butter and cream is very much still flowing freely in France. For a short spell, it was freely flowing through my arteries. The classics are still going strong and I’d urge Delia to hop back on the Eurostar to check it out again.
