There are many variations, but the message is the same: “Youse surrendered; youse are shitebags.” If Britain had been in the same position geographically, would we have done the same? Who knows: better just to sharpen the stick of history and poke the French with it year after year.
One major benefit of them raising the white flag, though, was that the Nazis didn't find it necessary to bomb so much of France to oblivion. I mean, London is a great city, but it's not pretty – not like, Rome, or Edinburgh, or Bordeaux, all of which escaped the majority of the Fuhrer's fury.
It feels slightly embarrassing to have not known that Bordeaux was so bonnie, that so much of it remains satisfyingly stone-clad and ancient. But it is, and in the spring sun, it's a goddamn pleasure to chase an eccentric guide through its narrow streets to learn about it's long, fraught history.
But scran is why we're here, specifically to eat at the Grand Hotel's Michelin-starred Pressoir D'Argent, right in the centre of the city. It's a proper five-star location, with five-star service and rooms. We've always preferred smaller, more-personal hotels, but so far as a grand city centre property goes, this place is helluva classy. It's restaurant is well worth it's star, too.
It's tempting to compare the announcement of a new edition of the Michelin Guide in France to the Oscars, except the Oscars are a good deal more predictable, and a lot less punitive. Brad Pitt sits at the Academy Awards every year, looking pretty and winning fuck all. Still, year on year, he gets richer and more famous. The same does not happen to Michelin-starred chefs. Winning a star can add on a good chunk to the business: but losing one does not have an equal or opposite reaction – it's devastating. If you get up to the third star – their maximum – you're in a group of just 105 eateries around the world, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Nazi-death-professor-lookalike Heston Blumenthal.
Even though they are tied to its automotive origins, the Guide's definitions of its stars are so matter-of-fact as to seem breathtakingly arrogant. The hallowed third star means nothing more than: “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.” It does not claim to be a life changing event, nor does it say that meals will likely cost over £200 a head with wine. It's just worth getting out the house for – like your weekly shopping.
Meanwhile, two stars – held by the likes of Noma the official best restaurant in the world – isn't even worth that effort. Michelin's verdict is just that it has “excellent cuisine, worth a detour,” - like McDonalds.
Finally, a single star, the kind of thing a chef works his whole life for, means simply: “An excellent restaurant in its class.” It doesn't sound like much at all, but one star is all they have here at Pressoir D'Argent.
And yet the meal they lay on for us is comfortably one of the most unforgettable we've ever eaten. The starter, two fat scallops and a buttery foie gras swimming in a bowl of chestnut, black truffle and hazelnut froth, is a juicy joy. The wine that's been paired with it is a light Bordeaux which cleanses residual fat from every mouthful, allowing the flavours to dance across our tongues anew.
This before the main: a hearty portion of beautifully-cooked Atlantic Sole, served with an oyster bearnaise, the chef's speciality. Now a different wine arrives, fleshing out the taste, somehow adding to the overall experience. This is wine-pairing at its best – as Wee Mo points out: it's like the food is the outline, the wine the colouring in.
Then the dessert: marinated red pepper served with raspberry ice cream. It sounds like the sort of thing a child would come up with while playing chef, but it works. The raspberries takes like raspberries, the peppers taste like peppers, the snozberries taste like snozberries... All this and just one star – for a second I seriously doubt that Michelin know what they're talking about.
The next morning we head to La Rochelle, another absolute gem of a city, and another I knew nothing about. We're both tired en route – it turns out that eating 4,000 calories and drinking five glasses of wine at 10.30pm isn't a great recipe for good night's sleep. I know, I know... These diamond rings are making all this typing hard too. It's an obscene complaint – to eat so well and to moan – but we wake up the next day with a kind of food hangover, nauseated by the prospect of breakfast. But by the time we get to La Rochelle and have toured around its ancient streets (some of the buildings are up to 1,000 years old; 400 gargoyles look down from the haggard buildings) we're at least a little peckish again.
Tonight we're eating at Coutanceau, a two-star restaurant located on the edge of La Rochelle's old harbour. Primarily a seafood restaurant, the saveur (flavour) menu – which at €55 offers tremendous value – features wonderfully fresh poached oysters as a starter, before a generous portion of brill, served with green celery risotto and crunchy red cabbage. Dessert is a sumptuous chocolate fondant with a pistachio heart. It's all solid, if a little unspectacular – it's a lot less Willy Wonka than the night before.
Still, the restaurant is very busy, even in March, before the season has really got started. As we waddle out between the tables, I stop to talk to Nicolas Brossard, the restaurant's director, half-suspecting he won't care about what the Guide has to say either.
“Oh it's absolutely important,” he says quickly. “Perhaps 50 percent of the people here come for the stars and if we lost one, we might have to close. It's that serious. We are the only two-star restaurant in the region – with them you can set a certain price and people will travel just to eat here.”
This, quite honestly, is more what I had expected from those working in the French fine dining industry. Does the annual release of the red guide bring nerves? “I can't sleep for two nights before,” nods Brossard before I've even finished asking the question. “And because we never know when the inspector has been, you don't know if maybe something has gone wrong that night – if maybe we ran out of a fish. So it's very...”
Stressful?
“Yes. Stressful.”
