‘On va manger anglais ce soir?’ — ‘Shall we eat English tonight?’ — is not the sort of thing you’d expect to hear a Frenchman say, especially a chef. But my friend was quite clear on the phone. ‘Le restaurant, c’est anglais, comme toi.’ My initial disbelief gave way to suspicion. I remembered that he once led us to a Franco-Italian-Japanese hole-in-the-wall whose signature dish was spaghetti with sea urchins and fermented soya, on the grounds that it was ‘different’. It was. ‘I’m not in the mood for fish and chips,’ I told my pal. ‘How about Chinese?’ He sighed. ‘It’s not that kind of English restaurant — it’s good. It’s got a great review in Le Figaro.’ And he was right. The paper had not only praised this particular place but devoted a full page to praising the new battery of British chefs in Paris.
