Le Fat Duck? Merveilleux!
In a move certain to leave a bitter taste in French mouths, France's most feared food critic has heaped praise on an English restaurant.
Francois Simon of Le Figaro crossed the Channel to find out why the Fat Duck in Bray, Berks, had been named (in a British magazine) the "best restaurant in the world".
And how he loved it. "The Fat Duck reminds us that in England you can eat divinely (just as you can in Finland)," he said, in a dig at French president Jacques Chirac, who said in July that British cuisine was the second worst in the world after that of the Finns.
He praised the cooking of Heston Blumenthal, the owner-chef, saying it demonstrated a "disarming poetry" and that he was reminded of the quirkiness of the film Mary Poppins.
"There is in Mr Blumenthal's cooking the reverie of a madman, an attractive candour, the twists and turns of a whirling dervish, an approach which is both spontaneous and highly technical," he wrote.
