Andrew Vine: Culinary con trick that’s still hard to stomach

THE waiter glided to the table with all the haughty grandeur that the French are so good at, and murmured “Bon appétit, Monsieur” as he set the plate down.
Oliver TwistOliver Twist
Oliver Twist

It was a big plate, a foot in diameter, and sitting exactly in the centre, as if painstakingly positioned with a ruler and calipers was a piece of beef approximately an inch-and-a-half square, artfully set off by a drizzle of sauce the colour of creosote.

The waiter, moving as smoothly as if mounted on castors, returned bearing the vegetable dish – enough mashed pumpkin to just about fill two egg cups. He smiled dazzlingly, inclined his head with practised graciousness and slid silently away.

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Nearby, in the annexe to the dining room, people attending a champagne reception were eating vol-au-vents bigger than my main course. On the next table, an amuse-bouche appeared a feast in comparison. Outside, in the woods bordering the hotel, the owls hooting in the darkness were hunting mice with more meat on them than I had on my plate.

My pal and I contemplated the plate for a while, and then he took a picture of it, to give his wife a laugh when we got back home. I briefly considered approaching the kitchen in the manner of Oliver Twist and asking: “Please, sir, I want some more”, but thought better of it since diners elsewhere in the restaurant appeared to be cooing delightedly over the minuscule portions and favouring the waiter with dazzling smiles of their own, even though I know cats that would yowl in protest at being fed such meagre rations.

It was gone in a couple of mouthfuls, 23 Euros’ worth, and precious little sustenance after a frosty November day outside exploring the battlefields behind the D-Day beaches.

I don’t suppose the vernacular of the Barnsley area has much currency in rural Normandy, even if translated into French, but the dry-as-dust put-down of food that isn’t much cop – “If that was my dinner, I’m still hungry” – sprang to mind.

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We had, regrettably, stumbled into a bastion of that great culinary con trick, nouvelle cuisine, when we’d been hoping for France’s finest – steak and frites, great bowls full of mussels, hearty cassoulet – to see us through a winter’s evening.

It’s always struck me as chicanery to run a restaurant on the principle that diners leave hardly less hungry than when they came in by serving paltry amounts of food and charging through le nez for the privilege, especially given France’s enthusiasm for what it eats and traditional generosity in serving it.

There can be few better illustrations of the old adage about being able to fool some of the people all of the time than by getting diners to enthuse over footling amounts of grub marooned on a vast plate with only a trickle of sauce around the edge for company by persuading them that they’re at the cutting edge of discerning good taste when it comes to eating out.

But there they were, perfectly happy with their nouvelle cuisine, pushing their food around the all-but-empty plates, and chattering away as a minute main course was followed by a tiny dessert and then by pieces of cheese hardly big enough to tempt the mice that the owls had in mind for supper.

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My first exposure to being taken for a ride in the name of foody fashion came at what had been a rather splendid French restaurant in Yorkshire 20-odd years ago. It was always packed to the rafters and the tables groaned under the weight of the portions.

But then the owner’s son had a nasty attack of trendiness. Out went the check table cloths and boeuf bourguignon, and in came the big plates, drizzled sauces and pretentiousness. Loyal customers persevered for a while, and then drifted away. The owner eventually exerted his paternal authority after a woman diner at a table next to mine looked down at her vast plate to see three morsels of food, each the size of the marbles we used to play with at school, sitting forlornly on it.

She called over the owner’s son, and said with great sweetness: “It’s terribly kind of you to bring just enough food for my budgie, but I’m afraid I’ve left him at home.” Shortly afterwards, the check tablecloths were back where they belonged, and so were the customers.

Still, outposts of this silly culinary minimalism remain, and there are diners daft enough to enthuse over it, as opposed to stumbling into it unwittingly on a cold evening when the menu posted outside gives no clue that what’s on offer might just about feed a 10-year-old, provided he’s already half-full.

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It took a Gerard Depardieu lookalike of impressive girth and charm to match to put matters right the next day. He emerged from the kitchen of his restaurant to chat after serving up a magnificent meal, and listened to our tale of nouvelle cuisine woe. He smiled, raised a forefinger and tapped the side of his head. Ah yes, the good sense of the French.