Gervase Phinn: Culinary frights

As part of her training as a modern language teacher, Christine had spent a year in the beautiful French town of Arcachon on the River Garonne. One evening my wife, keen to introduce our children to French cuisine, took us to a restaurant she had frequented when a student and ordered a typically French meal.

When I saw the plate of oysters, langoustine, lapin en aspic, escargots, cuisses de grenouilles, biftek saignant, moules marinires and calamar, I recalled my first visit to a French restaurant as a boy of 15, with my mother and her friend.

It was a smart restaurant in Montmartre and a rather arrogant waiter presented us with the menus – huge, square, fancy-looking folders with all the dishes written inside in French. None of us could speak a word of the language and we stared for an inordinate amount of time until my mother's friend, taking the initiative, called the waiter over, and pointing to the set menu, placed the order. The waiter returned to the table some time later carrying a bowl of cut lemons in small glass dishes, a large bottle containing a liquid which looked a lot like vinegar and a huge plate of oysters, open and sparkling in the bright lights and resting on a bed of brown shiny seaweed. Then the snails arrived. I stared in horror as the waiter placed the small fork before me to enable me to extract the garlic smelling gastropods and said, smirking, "Bon Appetit!"

We were cautious eaters in our house back in Rotherham and tended to look with great suspicion on the rare occasions when we were faced with food with which we were unfamiliar. We never ate spaghetti (unless from a tin soaked in tomato sauce), any cheese (other than Cheddar); we never touched garlic, mayonnaise (we ate salad cream), veal, shrimps, yoghurt, noodles, brown bread, sweet potatoes, pt, any spices other than salt and pepper or anything else deemed "foreign". Fish came rectangular in shape and smothered in bright orange breadcrumbs. When the fish arrived that evening, head, skin, tail, fins, eyes and all, I lost my appetite. The third course, cubes of white meat suspended in a pale yellow jelly, made me feel sick.

Some say that memories fade surprisingly quickly with time. Well, the recollection of my mother's face when she saw the oysters, the snails and the fish will never fade. Her mouth dropped open. The three of us must have appeared a comical trio as we sat upright and motionless, staring at the untouched food with expressions of distaste. My mother called for the bill which she paid hurriedly and we left, I am sure much to the amusement of the waiter and other diners. The whole meal had remained untouched. In the restaurant in Arcachon my three sons surveyed the repast before them with eyes like chapel hat pegs. Christine explained that the meal comprised rabbit in jelly, snails, frogs' legs, steak, mussels and octopus. Richard and Matthew pulled faces and, reaching for the baguettes, announced they would settle for the bread. Dominic, the youngest, tucked in with gusto and tried everything, much to the disgust of his brothers and the amusement of the waiter and the other diners. Henceforth, he became known as Dominique la poubelle (the dustbin), an appellation he delights in to this day.