Surveys are anything to go by, the French appreciate restaurants first and foremost as a place for meeting and getting together with other people. It is a dimension and a social role which, in France are particularly well developed; indeed, people go to restaurants to chat, to meet with friends or to indulge in a dinner for two. It is no coincidence if business lunches are as popular as ever and if the Anglo-Saxon fashion for a quick snack among business partners has never caught on, despite a persisting economic crisis.

Alain Dutournier, chef at the Carré des Feuillants, in Paris, reminds us that "business people come to our restaurant to dissect their balance sheets and sign their contracts". More generally, meals in France are still served at the dinner table and not on a tray in front of the television; they are therefore still the occasion when the whole family comes together. Nor is there any likelihood of the traditional format of a complete meal (with starter, main course, cheese and/or dessert) being called into question.

But there is more to it than that. Sitting down to a meal is also an opportunity to airone's views about the food served. In France, as a famous Guide du protocole et des usages reminds us, it is not unseemly to discuss the finesse of the dishes and to talk about the food you are eating. These are all habits which, in the countries of northern Europe for example, are still simply not the done thing. To meet around the dinner table to talk about food has never been anything else than an opportunity to exercise one's critical judgement. This "third power" of culinary critique owes a great deal to Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière (1758-1838), who, together with Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), invented the genre, and the impact of their commentaries was such that it terrorized consumers and producers alike. It is a phenomenon that has hardly waned as any restaurant that has been awarded - or lost - a star by the Michelin guide will readily admit. When he received his third star, Bernard Loiseau, the happy owner of the Côte d'Or in Saulieu, admitted: "From one day to the next, my clientele increased by 65%."

A brace of food guides

There are a number of great food guides whose pronouncements can make or undo the reputation of French restaurants. The Michelin guide sets the standard, with some 500,000 copies sold each year. Launched in 1900 by Michelin, the French tyre manufacturers, the red guide is the most sold and the most comprehensive listing of French hotels and restaurants. Almost one French person in fifty buys it, more than one in five uses and reads it from time to time, if only to plan the gourmet itinerary of their dreams. The 1996 edition features 19 "three stars", 76 "two stars" and 437 "one star".

Inspectors for the Michelin guide only reveal their identity once they have inspected the premises and settled their bill. A similar policy applies to the Gault et Millau guide. Everyone knows of the success of this guide compiled by "professional amateurs", the twenty or so critics who visit and grade the restaurants. Founded at the beginning of the seventies by the two food critics Henri Gault and Christian Millau, the guide has, with time, become a very comprehensive classic (with almost 8,000 addresses of restaurants, bistrots and hotels, and sales of 170,000 copies). In 1977, the two founders thought it might be a good idea to make a distinction between restaurants that served traditional cuisine (black toque) and those that opted for a more innovative style of cooking known as "nouvelle cuisine" (red toque). Eleven years later, there were more restaurants with a red toque than with a black toque, proof that the "nouvelle cuisine" phenomenon had swept through the whole of France. This year, following the sensible reorientation initiated five years ago by most chefs, that distinction has been dropped. Of more recent vintage, the guide written by the critic Gilles Pudlowski provides a broad cross-section of the Paris gourmand (1,500 addresses). It features not only a selection of the best restaurants in the capital but also those with the best value for money, the best foreign cuisine, bistrots (in particular those where the emphasis is on wine), brasseries, tea rooms and food shops. This is undoubtedly the most comprehensive food guide on Paris, with-in particular-excellent information on the more working-class districts in the east of the capital. The Lebey guide, particularly the one on Paris bistrots, which sells 12,000 copies (published by Julliard), is full of good ideas for places to eat that are inexpensive, typical and full of charm. It pays a great deal of attentionto detail, especially the quality of the coffee, the chocolate that goes with it, the bread, and is particularly good on central Paris, the Left Bank and the west. The appearance of all these guides is indicative of the growing interest of the French in all things culinary. With the exception of the octogenarian Michelin, the Gault et Millau is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary while the others are barely ten years old. Without the relatively recent and collective fashion for wining and dining, there is no doubting the fact that most of them would not have seen the light of day.

An art accessible to all

After the Second World War, the eagerness to understand the art of good cooking,as illustrated by the critic Curnonsky, was motivated by the determination to forget the difficult times and the shortages, and by the gradual appearance of all kinds of domestic appliances in the home. Cooking remained the prerogative of the housewife; it was the great age of the practical guides and good home cooking, as exemplified in such books as La Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange.

Then came television, which, in 1953, asked Raymond Oliver, the chef at the Grand Véfour in Paris, together with an assistant, to host a programme called "Art et magie de la cuisine". The success was immediate, all the more so since Oliver lacked neither culinary skills nor wit. He turned his recipes from the provinces into Parisian occasions, stressing that "Paris is the crucible, the consecration". Raymond Oliver started a love affair between television and cookery that has never waned with the years. In fact, since the end of the eighties, it has even received a second lease on life, generating some startling phenomena of society and fashion. One of the many food programmes on French television, "La cuisine des Mousquetaires," presented daily on the state-owned France 3 channel by Maïté and Micheline.Programmes have included those of Maïté and her "Cuisine des Mousquetaires" from the south-west, which gave the state-owned regional television channel France 3 some of its highest ratings, and, more particularly, that of Jean-Pierre Coffe. Officiating on the pay-TV channel Canal Plus, this former restaurant owner launched an entire campaign in favour of true, good produce through his fluency of speech, his formidable outbursts of anger and his infectious enthusiasm: lettuces straight from the vegetable gardens rather than the limp, vacuum-packed varieties, real bread from the local bakery, meat from good, identified herds, the observance of seasons, and the key concern for quality at a reasonable price. His crusade, made popular by his books and his famous television shopping sprees, was extremely well received by consumers and professionals alike. A novelty in the autumn 1996schedule is the arrival of the chef Joël Robuchon on the privatised channel TF1, with a series of programmes dedicated to recipes that focus on one product,presented by a great chef: potatoes, with Bernard Loiseau; poultry with Georges Blanc; tomatoes, with Alain Ducasse...

A feast for the eyes: the fashion for cookery books

Another aspect of the French infatuation with cooking is the tremendous boom in specialist publishing. The recent Larousse gastronomique, with its 3,000 regional recipes, a product by product index, a guide for the enthusiastic amateur, is a perfect illustration of the trend of the last twenty years, during which cooking has become a huge market for publishers and the press. Each chef has at least one recipe book of his own, magnificently illustrated: Joël Robuchon (L'Atelier de JoëlRobuchon, published by Du Chêne), Paul Bocuse (Cuisine de France, sold in several hundred thousand copies and translated into twelve languages, published by Flammarion), BernardLoiseau (Trucs, astuces et tours de main, published by Hachette), Alain Ducasse (La Riviera d'Alain Ducasse,published by Albin Michel), Michel Guérard (La Cuisine gourmande, published by Robert Laffont) and also Lenôtre (Faîtes votre pâtisserie, published by Flammarion). More recently, publishers have started to showcase different products with the publication of beautiful books, especially by Flammarion, on tea, coffee, foie gras, chocolate, bread, fine wines... Regional cuisine is also in the spotlight with LaFlandre, by Gisèle Arabian and published by Albin Michel, who are currently publishing France's entire culinary heritage(22 regions in 22 guides, at the rate of 4 regions a year) as compiled by the National Culinary Arts Council.

Magazine publishers are just as active. With dozens of titles, cookery magazines have been one of the greatest successes of the written press over the last ten years. There have been two main niche markets: practical recipes (Cuisine actuelle, with 420,000 copies, Cuisine gourmande) and gastronomy (Saveurs, with 90,000 copies and Gault Millau, with 65,000), which focus more on lifestyle. Cuisines et vins de France (180,000 copies) and even more specialized magazines (L'Amateur de bordeaux, La Revue du champagne, Chocolat magazine, ...) do not have any difficulty finding readers.

The land of all cuisines

Although the French are dedicated to their own cuisine, they also prove remarkably curious when it comes to food from other countries. A few figures show just how far foreign cuisines have come in France over the last thirty years. In 1960, the critic Henri Gault found only one Japanese restaurant in Paris; today, there are 120. Then, there were two or three Vietnamese restaurants; today, there are more than 6,000 in the capital. All in all, there are some 10,000 exotic restaurants in Paris and 40,000 throughout France (see Le Guide des restaurants étrangers de Paris, published by Gault Millau, FF 95.-). This culinary sophistication is also reflected on the supermarket shelves, which provide a broad spectrum of cooked dishes and foreign produce (from Italian mozarella to Greek feta, Indian spices, Chinese sauces and rice, guacamole and Mexican tacos...).

The fashion for foreign cuisine is inseparably linked to the spirit of open-mindedness celebrated by "nouvelle cuisine". In the wake of Raymond Oliver, French chefs at the end of the sixties discovered exotic cuisines, in particular those of the Far East. The thirst for novelty, for something different,went hand in hand with the daring approach adopted by a few great innovators such as Alain Senderens, Michel Guérard, the Troisgros brothers and André Chapel. From their travels in Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong, they brought back new flavours such as coriander, ginger, Thai spices, curry, saffron, ingredients that can now be found in any French supermarket.

Between the custodians of traditional cuisine and the modernisers celebrating exotic products stands Paul Bocuse, the arbiter, secure in his unique skills. He is the supreme authority on French cuisine; he was one of the first to reach the giddy heights of national and international stardom, giving the name of the French Former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who decorated him, to one of his dishes (his V.G.E. truffle soup). In France, chefs are recognized and celebrated, like Bernard Loiseau and Georges Blanc, decorated by former President François Mitterrand. Which says everything about the involvement of the French public authorities on behalf of gastronomy, a veritable state affair.

The kingdom of the chefs: from supermarkets to schools It has to be said that chefs are an important source of revenue and it is hardly surprising that all the great food manufacturers fall over themselves to obtain their endorsements. Bernard Loiseau and Royco, Joël Robuchon (Fleury-Michon), Paul Bocuse (William-Saurin), Alain Senderens (Carrefour), Michel Guérard (Findus frozen foods). They have all contributed a great deal towards improving product quality and taste-bud training. Through the National Culinary Arts Council (CNAC) (see box) and the "TasteWeek", the chef Alain Senderens and the wine expert Jacques Puisais, chairman and vice chairman of the CNAC, have spared no effort in teaching children, from the youngest age,how to appreciate diversity and quality. For, while regional traditions are, by and large,passed on in France (see box), there has been a certain standardizcharacterizedation in eating habits,characterised by less bread, an increase in the consumption of mineral water and fruit juices, milk-based desserts and frozen foods to the detriment, in particular, of fresh produce (fruit and vegetables). However, thanks to the contribution of these professionals of good taste, consumers have become more demanding and more watchful, and do not hesitate to put their personal tastes first. So long as they are shaped by Alain Senderens, things are going in the right direction.

The French answer to hamburgers

The young Frenchman Pierre Truchet, an expert in marketing, teamed up with a French business partner to establish two chains of fast food stores, providing France's answer to American hamburger chains. They created "Pomme de pain" and "Aubépain", both of which offer selections of sandwiches based on traditional French products (boiled ham, rosette de Lyon, comté du Jura, etc.) as well as salads and baked products (quiches, tarts). There are already fifty-five "Pomme de pain"and fifteen "Aubépain", with some ten new points of sale each year. An inexpensive and attractive alternative to the burger bars.

  A National Council for Culinary Arts

Founded in December 1989 and presided by Alain Senderens, the CNAC, which consists of France's great chefs, qualified personalities and the directors of food companies, has been entrusted with a dual mission by the French authorities (Ministries of Agriculture, Culture, National Education, Health and Tourism). On the one hand, to co-ordinate taste policies, which consists essentially, since 1993, in sponsoring the "Taste Week" campaign (established in 1989); in fact, its seventh installment recently took place throughout France between October 14 and 20, 1996. Once again, it was an occasion to promote taste and to educate the taste buds, for example by organizing meals and tasting sessions in schools and universities. The CNAC's other vocation is to carry out an inventory of the country's culinary heritage as part of a global policy aimed at relaunching regional produce, which the "100 notable taste sites", selected for their contribution to the history of French gastronomy, must include in their menus.

fugues en france set up programs for food lovers in france Cooking courses in April at the Ritz cooking school and Le Cordon Bleu as well as in Provence : Avignon

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