11 reasons why French cuisine is still the best in the world

Even if only 4 per cent of French restaurants cook their food fresh, this remains the finest cuisine on the planet

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Every time I mention French cuisine favourably – it happens quite often – I annoy an awful lot of people. Many rattle the bars of the comments section below. The insults are bracing. I know nothing, shouldn’t be trusted with a knife and fork, let alone a keyboard, and have obviously never experienced Korean bibimbap, whatever Bolivian specialities might be or the gastronomic shangri-la which is Nottingham. I appreciate such responses. They constitute a useful window on the world.
But none convinces me. I’ve been about a bit and eaten all over – in Britain, never better than in the Ribble Valley, rarely worse than in nearby Fleetwood – but nowhere rivals France for quality up and down the price scale, from village bistro to Michelin-starred headliner. Of course, there are rogue outfits – I once, years ago, ate a meal in Montpellier so bad that it would have put the frighteners on Fleetwood – and of course, McDonald’s, KFC and the rest have sprouted. But they don’t threaten French cuisine any more than Disneyland threatens French culture. They merely expand the choice, which is already the widest in the world.
France stays top of the premier league by making the most of its basic elements, the cuisine’s building blocks. Which building blocks? There are dozens. Here are a few I’d like to see in any kitchen, and where to find them.
Find more inspiration in our guide to the best restaurants in Paris.
Lord, how the French love to go on about bread. It is even more of a national obsession than wine and cheese. And the Frenchman puts his bread where his mouth is. Depending on whose figures you believe, the nation eats between 30 and 32 million loaves a day, most (but not all) bought from some 39,000 retail bakeries. That works out at roughly half a baguette per French person per day (down from three full baguettes in 1900). It remains a vital part of the national self-image. If you wish to construct a Frenchman, you only need add a bike, beret and onions.
Bread has been eaten in France since the dawn of time – “copain”, meaning chum, was originally the person with whom you broke bread (“pain”). That said, the baguette itself doesn’t go back further than the 19th-century.
Amongst theories of its origin, the most diverting best claims that the baguette was devised for workers building the Paris Metro, as a bread that could be cut by hand. The usual circular breads required knives, thus favouring underground stabbings, notably in brawls between Breton and Auvergnat workers. Give them baguettes and they didn’t need knives. One still meets people who claim that a baguette should never be cut with a knife. Presumably, they have violent antecedents.
This year’s (2024) best traditional Parisian baguette is, incidentally made by Xavier Netry, a 38-year-old fellow from Guadeloupe working in the Boulangerie Utopie on Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud (11è). Amongst other perks, he delivers 30 baguettes a day to the Elysée Palace. Best bread nationally is from Gourmandises & Traditions in the village of Beaulieu, near Montpellier. I’ll say no more. There are already quite enough people ahead of me in the queue (boulangerie-gt.com).
Some £1,000 a kilo is a hell of a price to pay for an item dug up by a dog or a pig. That is, though, roughly what you will have to shell out for the underground fungus, the tuber melanosporum, in the 2024/2025 winter markets across Provence (Richerenches, Carpentras), the Lot (Lalbenque, Martel) and the Dordogne (Sarlat, Périgueux). Cash only, too, to blokes who aren’t necessarily as honest as they look. And they don’t look that honest. But, as France’s greatest truffle man, Clément Bruno has said: “Truffles ennoble everything they touch.”
Test this in his Chez Bruno restaurant in Lorgues. Otherwise, the Jaumard family over in Monteux, near Carpentras, host one-night truffle discovery breaks for £290 a couple (truffes-jaumard.com). And up near Beaune in Burgundy, where truffles are slightly cheaper, the English-speaking Charles family have truffling and vines: Hautes Côtes, Pommard, Meursault, Volnay. Best of all worlds. Two nights in amongst it all (bed, food, truffle hunting and eating, wine) for £402 per couple (lacombotte.com).
You’re resistant to oysters? Think they look like something in a handkerchief when you’ve a heavy cold? Make for the Huitre La Toulverne on the lick of land beyond Baden on the Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany. Ivan Sélo, the spit of Simon Pegg, will boat you out to the oyster beds, bring you back to his sheds, feed you oysters and white wine and, if you’re still not convinced, well, you’ve had a lovely time anyway. Be prepared for his questions: oysters’ main predators? Daurade, or sea-bream. When a parent oyster expels 12 million larvae, how many survive? Three. (huitrelatoulverne.fr; three-hour session £37).
Where to start? Camembert, obviously. South-east of Caen, the most famous rural hamlet in the world hosts tastings within a good little museum set-up. It explains, inter alia, how a priest on the run from the French Revolution taught local lass Marie Harel the rudiments of soft cheese making (maisonducamembert.com; £3.90). Then Roquefort, another titchy place (population 550), near Millau in the Aveyron. Legend suggests that a shepherd boy around there spotted a beautiful shepherdess, dumped his cheese sandwich in a damp cave and lit out to woo her. He failed, returned to his sandwich which, in the meantime had grown mouldy and, he discovered, delicious. Voilà Roquefort, still refined in those caves. Visit the Roquefort Société for £6.50 (roquefort-societe.com).
In Alsace, wars keep French and Germans apart, fermented cabbage brings them together. (It’s sauerkraut in German.) Then again, I wouldn’t bother sharing this insight. Locals will think you simple-minded. Go instead to Krautergersheim, French capital of choucroute for an intro to the subject at producers Meyer-Wagner (choucroute-wagner.fr). Later, drive 30 minutes north-east to Strasbourg and the Maison Kammerzell by the cathedral. It’s a terrific 15th-century half-timbered building full of frescoes, stairs, alcoves, snugs and vaults. Order its choucroute dish, with the full cardiac-arrest array of accompanying pork cuts, and you’ll need winching from the table with a block and tackle. Fortunately, the Kammerzell’s bedrooms are to hand (maison-kammerzell.com; doubles from £97).
The huge-rumped white cattle graze a rustic southern Burgundy which, with pastures, hedges, rivers and streams, invariably reminds me of rural Lancashire. So that’s great. That they also furnish the best beef in France is a bonus. Test this claim at the Maison Doucet top-end hotel and restaurant in Charolles (whence Charolais), north-west of Macon. If you resist the six-course beef menu in Frédérc Doucet’s posh restaurant (it’s £129), try the Charolais menu in the associated Bistrot du Quai, for £44. Stay overnight, doubles from £101 (maison-doucet.com).
Mushroom hunting through French forests is, especially in autumn, as popular as adultery. As potentially lethal, too. You need to go roaming with an expert, to distinguish your ceps and chanterelles from the death caps and European destroying angels, thus avoiding a slow, painful death. Franck Quinton is the man. He is more enthusiastic, and more knowledgeable, about mushrooms than any person you’ve ever met. At his Michelin-starred Manoir Du Lys hotel and restaurant just outside Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, in southern Normandy, his mushroom breaks involve fungus-hunting, eating, cooking, drinking, eating some more and staying in what is a fine family hotel. Around £556 per couple for one night (manoir-du-lys.com).
If you disapprove, skip on. If not, follow me to the south-western Gers departement where, outside the market town of Condom (please: all the jokes have been made; they weren’t funny the first time), the Martin Neuf farm produces the best duck fat liver I’ve recently tasted. Plus pork products from Gascon black pigs. Birds and beasts are raised free range and the welcome terrific, in a remote and rolling land of sunlit certainties (martinneuf.fr). Later, drive on to the Hotel de France in county capital Auch, a lovely provincial town hotel, creaking stairs and all, reviewed and corrected for the 21st century. Dinner in the Grande Salle restaurant is wonderful and astonishing value for money (hoteldefrance-auch.com; doubles from £69; five-course dinner from £47).
Every region of France reckons that it’s ace at charcuterie (salami, cold cuts, cured or preserved meat, call it what you will), and they all are. A special mention, mind, for mountain meats from the Auvergne and Pyrenees – you really need to try the Bigorre jambon noir sliced paper thin – and the black pudding of Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy. Mortagne is French black pudding (boudin noir) capital.
The little old town has five producers, a Saturday morning market replete with the stuff and, on the third weekend of March, the only international black pudding festival that anyone needs. “Black pudding contains six times more iron than spinach,” says boudin noir master J-Claude Gotteri. “It should be provided free by social security”. Eat it at the Hotel du Tribunal on the three course, £37 dinner menu; stay over for from £91 (hotel-tribunal.fr).
I’m assuming you can manage this one yourselves. Wherever you are, turn into the nearest vineyard and Bob’s your uncle. If he’s not, if the welcome is cool, leave at once. There’s certainly a nicer winery nearby.
The best French pastries come with a story (and, generally, ship-loads of cream). Devised in Lyon in the early 19th-century, the éclair was initially called “la petite duchesse”. It was, though, so good, therefore eaten so quickly, that the name changed to “éclair” (“lightening”, in English). Or so it’s said. The wheel-shaped Paris-Brest cake – choux pastry filled with praline mousseline cream – was created in 1910 to celebrate, and promote, the epic cycle race of the same name. It also, allegedly, recalled the laurel wreath bestowed upon the winner.
Meanwhile, the tarte tropézienne – a brioche cake cut in half and filled with a decade’s worth of crème pâtissière and butter cream, finished with orange blossom water (or rum) – was the work of a Polish pastry cook, Alexandre Micka, established near St Tropez. He was on the canteen team for Brigitte Bardot’s 1955 break-through movie, And God Created Woman – and so impressed BB with his pastries that she insisted the cake be called “tarte tropézienne”. (There is, of course, no possible double entendre in French.)
My favourite, though, is the tarte tatin, from the Loire valley. Late on in the 19th-century, the Tatin sisters, Caroline and Stéphanie, created this upside-down apple tart by accident in their restaurant in La Motte-Beuvron. La Maison Tatin, their family home – now a hotel-restaurant – still serves it, to winning effect (lamaisontatin.fr).
This article was first published in October 2023 and has been revised and updated.
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