It might be a small thing to you, but to advocates of British cuisine, it means a lot. From November 4, all Eurostar Premier carriages will serve savory dishes created by a young London chef, Jeremy Chan, chosen by the railway company. And all this under the noses of the legions of French star chefs and other best workers in France who would have been entrusted with this tempting mission. Enough to shut up those who, on our side of the Channel, persist in looking down on English gastronomy, considered bland and clumsy with its boiled meats, quivering jelly and mint sauce. More than a cliché, it is the cornerstone of a culinary war that France and England have been waging for centuries, and an inexhaustible subject of national jokes fueled by a number of pop cultural productions, ranging from Asterix to films by Louis de Funès. What if history was reversed?
Chef Jeremy Chan, pastry chef Jessica Préalpato and head sommelier Honey Spencer. © Koray Firat
In recent years, markers of British culinary tradition have appeared everywhere on French stoves. After a long journey through the desert, pies have become desirable again to the point that two former “Top Chef” candidates, Hugo Riboulet and Albane Auvray, dedicated a Parisian restaurant to them, Groot La Tourte. A stone's throw from the Palais Garnier, the Public House establishment, decorated by Laura Gonzalez, has been rolling out for several months an English pub menu signed by chef Calum Franklin, whose work on traditional English flavors and know-how have made it a star across the Channel.
Protestant culture, standardized flavors and rationing
In bookstores, one of the most beautiful and exciting culinary works of the fall is by Julius Roberts, a “gentleman farmer” followed by a million people on Instagram. Throughout the pages of “The Farm Table” (ed. Hachette), the chef rehabilitates a number of forgotten classics of British cuisine, such as chicken and tarragon pie, chicken livers with spices, cabbage soup , with bacon and very sexy potatoes… “After Covid, when restaurants reopened, people did not flock to starry and chic restaurants. They just wanted to have a good time with their friends around a simple and comforting table: that's everything that British cuisine promises,” says historian Ben Mervis, whose bestseller “The Book of British Cuisine” ( ed. Phaidon) has just been published in France. “Food allows you to decode a culture, to understand people and what connects them. When I arrived in England, I wondered why so many people hated their food. »
Cherry trifle, recipe from the book “The Book of British Cuisine” (ed. Phaidon). © Sam A Harris
Several factors explain its appalling reputation: an austere Protestant culture, condemning the pleasures of food and viewing food above all as fuel, while France elevated it to the rank of a refined and hedonistic art. Industrialization, which emptied the countryside of its farmers and flooded the country with standardized flavors. Finally, post-war rationing, which ultimately converted the English to bland, utilitarian products straight from the factory. “Ah, English cuisine… At first, we think it's crap and, then, we regret that it's not,” Jacques Chirac is said to have said to a stunned Tony Blair during a Franco- British. The French president was unaware that at the same time, on the other side of London, a chef named Fergus Henderson was inventing, at the St. John restaurant, a culinary philosophy that all the great French chefs claim twenty years later. later: “nose to tail”, cooking from snout to tail, that is to say using all parts of the animal. Anti-waste, respect for living beings, celebration of forgotten culinary traditions, return to favor of offal… It's hard to do more in keeping with the times.
“It’s a bit limiting to serve fish and chips under the pretext of being English”
Since this summer, the new Parisian bistro Cendrillon, located in the Belleville district, has been largely inspired by Black Ax Mangal, a cult London restaurant whose menu, sharp but uninhibited, even downright zany, could be described as punk gastronomy. . Marrow bones, marinated squid and caviar supplement; fried crab and papaya salad; tomato, lamb broth and Thai basil… The dishes are fun but refined, the foreign culinary influences assumed and the general atmosphere chaotic.
Also read: 15 English recipes other than Fish and Chips
Are English chefs the future of Parisian bistronomy? That's what Jack Bosco Baker, who is opening his first restaurant, Magnolia, in Paris this week, thinks. Originally from York, where his father, a two-star chef, worked for the Queen of England, he dreamed of a bistro where he would cook French dishes nourished by his English influences without falling into clichés. “It's a bit limiting to serve fish and chips under the pretext of being English. What we bring to the Parisian scene is more diffuse: I would describe our approach as romantic, because we look at French cuisine and its magnificent products with different eyes, when French chefs have perhaps lost a little of their passion. » The new British generation to the aid of the French scene? Jacques Chirac would scream. But let's be reassured: in the Eurostar Premier carriage, it's still the French star pastry chef Jessica Préalpato who creates the desserts. One everywhere, ball in the center.
