Hear ye, hear ye! Gather round everyone, there is something I simply must complain about, and I am about to make it your problem. Misery loves company, and so do petty whinges. So, picture the scene: I, your humble French columnist, am sitting at my desk on a bright and sunny morning. I know I have to write about something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it ought to be.
While procrastinating, I am chatting away with a dear friend, who happens to be the Sunday Times restaurant critic. Does she perhaps have any thoughts on what this dilettante may wish to tell readers about, I ask? She thinks for a moment, then says: how about French food in Britain? It always makes you angry, she tells me.
I can’t quite see what she means at first, then she reminds me of the time she sent me the menu of some chic new Gallic brasserie opening in the capital, as she wanted my thoughts on it. Was it really that authentic? That’s what she longed to know. Instead – and I have no real memory of this, but I do trust her – I told her that “there’s no world in which I’d pay 16 quid for something they would have given me at my school’s cafeteria”.
Now, it’s fair to say I didn’t think much of it at the time, but my friend was right to bring it up. There is a pattern at play here. Only a few weeks ago, I took a friend who was visiting from New York to my one reliable French lunch spot in central London. I ordered my merguez frites, as I always do.
For the avoidance of doubt, it really isn’t an elaborate dish: the chips are crispy and the spiced sausages are tasty but, on a very fundamental level, it’s a lunch of sausage and chips. How much do you think it cost? I ask because it’s now keeping me up at night. It cost £20.
To be clear: if you made a French person in France pay €23 for a plate like the one I was served, they would personally start a riot. Or, at the very least, they would refuse to ever set foot in your restaurant again, and would spend the rest of their week – month, life – complaining about the indignity of receiving that bill.
This is what I would like to complain about to you today. There are hundreds of thousands of French people living in Britain, mostly in London, but also elsewhere. We’re a people known for our love of food. There are millions of British people living in Britain, and they also love French food. There are millions of people from elsewhere living here as well, and it feels safe to assume that at least some of them enjoy it too. Why, then, hasn’t cheap and cheerful Gallic grub become more commonplace here?
I get that there are items that will always be more expensive on this side of the Channel, from fancy cheeses to specific bits of charcuterie and bottles of wine. That’s fine. I’m not asking either country to entirely rewrite international trade laws just because I want some reasonably priced rillettes.
That doesn’t mean more can’t be done, however. Forgive my (quasi) Brettonness, but take galettes as an example. Are ham, eggs and cheese hard to source in Britain? No. Is buckwheat flour impossible to find? No. Then why – why, why, why – isn’t it possible to find a decent galette complète in London for a reasonable price?
I once thought I’d hit the jackpot a few years ago, walking off the South Bank and coming across what looked like a cheap little kiosk. I ordered a ham and cheese galette and… well, where to start. The galette was no galette at all, but instead a crêpe. Yes, it was sweet. The ham was just about edible, but the cheese… god. I can barely bring myself to tell you about it. They’d used squeezy cheese, from a tube, and liberally poured it, cold, over the ham.
I ate one bite, winced, ate a second one, started retching, then went to buy myself a Pret sandwich instead. It was harrowing. A worse attack against the French than Waterloo. The experience scarred me so badly that it was ages before I considered ordering French food in London again.
I did recover after a while, but my wallet has been the one taking a hit instead. London’s Brasserie Zedel and Edinburgh’s Chez Jules aside, all French restaurants here take a “daylight robbery” approach to their pricing. There can and should be another way, though. That’s what I choose to believe.
If even just one place were to open in a big city, and start offering decently priced, unfussy French bistro classics, they would become gazillionaires in a matter of weeks. Others would surely follow, and everyone would be happy. Who will be the one taking that first step, though? Could it be you, reader? I think it could. You would make me so happy. Please and merci.
