Fast food is gobbling up classic French cuisine
SIR – Jane Shilling’s observations on the decline of French cuisine (Comment, December 11) are, sadly, only too true, as we have seen in the 34 years since we bought a second home on the Brittany coast. The four-course menu has all but disappeared from local restaurants, the explanation being that cheese has now become too expensive. Classic French sauces no longer accompany the plat de résistance, as the knowledge and skills to prepare them have not been passed down. Time after time, the choice in many restaurants seems limited to one meat, fish or vegan dish, “le hamburger or fish and chips”.
On a visit last month, further evidence of Americanisation was provided by giant posters for Black Friday deals in all the shops.
Peter J Howard Bothenhampton, Dorset
SIR – Jane Shilling may see the French facing culinary humiliation with the opening of the first Krispy
Kreme outlet in Paris. But that is nothing compared to the demolition of Les Halles, the Covent Garden of Paris, to make way for the vast multi-storey shopping centre of the Westfield Forum des Halles, where the doughnut chain has just opened its branch.
Little did I think in the late 1960s, as I sipped my midnight soupe à l’oignon at a restaurant amid the porters and barrow boys who were on their break, that within a couple of years the culinary heart of the city would be torn out.
Thankfully, the brasserie Au Pied de Cochon lives on, as does E Dehillerin, the specialist shop that sells the finest kitchen equipment to the catering trade and keen cooks. And even if the fried-chicken chain Popeyes has recently opened its first branch at the Gare du Nord, there is still Terminus Nord brasserie across the way where, only the other day, I ate a delicious suprême de volaille. John Adamson
Cambridge