This isn’t surprising. I’ve eaten some mediocre restaurant-prepared stuff – most recently, this week, shin of gristle with trace elements of beef accompanied by way too many root vegetables – and been very happy with, again recently, bought-in sea bass. (I asked; the restaurateur replied honestly.)
It may be, then, that bought-in meals are good or bad depending on whether, well, they are good or bad. It may also be the only way out, if we wish to avoid further mass closures.
“Home-made” also raises the question of what counts as “home-made”. May one buy in the pastry, if the tarts are then prepared on site? And what of frozen stuff? The rules of the original voluntary scheme of 2014 allowed frozen produce to be delivered – all except frozen chips. There’s scope here for months of negotiation.
Final nuance: food is only one part of the restaurant experience. If the company is good, the personnel pleasant and smiling, the atmosphere convivial and the wine ample, I’ll happily overlook details of where the food was prepared. As long as it’s ok, of course.
But – end of nuancing – it’s evidently better in general that chefs prepare their own food. We might understand why they don’t, and sympathise, but it’s better if they do. And better if we’re informed via the menu. Then we may take notice or not. This shouldn’t be a moral crusade (mass-produced lasagne is not the work of the devil) but merely a way of keeping French gastronomy in the premier league.
And making the most of its basic elements, the cuisine’s building blocks. Which building blocks? There are dozens. Here are 10 I’d like to see in any kitchen, and where to find them.
Truffles
Some £900 a kilo is a hell of a price to pay for an item dug up by a dog or a pig. That was, though, roughly what you had to shell out for the underground fungus, the tuber melanosporum, earlier this year in winter markets across Provence and the Dordogne. 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.”