Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium (9781447214182) by Durrell Gerald

Author:Durrell, Gerald [Durrell, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447214182
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2011-11-30T06:00:00+00:00

The Michelin Man

Many years ago, when I first started to travel in France, a kindly friend pressed a copy of the Guide Michelin into my hands, rather in the spirit that prompts the Gideon Society to fill lonely hotel bedrooms with copies of the Bible. The Guide Michelin (known affectionately as ‘the Mich’) is to a traveller and gourmet what the Bible is to a Christian, the Koran to a Mohammedan or the sayings of Buddha to a large section of the world. It is your guide, mentor and friend when travelling in France. It is small, fat and red – like so many cheerful French peasants you see who have become well-padded and polished over the years by good food and wine. Within its scarlet covers are the dossiers of some two thousand hotels, pensions and restaurants, their inner-most secrets revealed.

A glance at the Mich and you know every reasonable hostelry within a fifty-mile radius of your position. It tells you whether the hostelry in question allows dogs in your room, whether they are ‘tout confort’ or dismissed as merely being acceptable; whether they have garages, telephones, private baths and other adjuncts of modem living; whether they are quiet (a red rocking chair as the inspired symbol) or whether they have a ‘jar din fleuri’.

But in addition to this almost Scotland Yard dossier on each place the Mich does something more: it tells you about food. France is an eminently sensible country where people take food seriously as an art form, which indeed the cooking and presentation of food is; an art form which has, unfortunately, become almost extinct in Britain. In France the choice of a dish is made with the same care as you would employ in choosing a wife, and in some cases even greater. Therefore the Mich has printed in its margins against the various restaurants certain symbols that guide and succour the person who takes food and its preparation seriously.

The first symbol is a small etching of crossed spoon and fork. One of these denotes a plain but adequate meal, two or three mean comfortable or very comfortable while four crossed spoons and forks mean the presentation is of exquisite excellence. After this the mind becomes bedazzled.

Four crossed spoons and forks accompanied by a star mean you will have an ambrosial meal in ideal circumstances and are on the first rungs of the gastronomic ladder that leads to that Paradise where you discover a place with four crossed spoons and forks and three stars. There are, however, only four of these in France. Getting three stars in the Mich is considerably more difficult than obtaining the Victoria Cross, the Croix de Guerre or the Purple Heart, and to get even one is an achievement that would make any serious chef die happy.

Once you have assessed the culinary worth of a place by the spoons, forks and stars in the margin you may then move on to something else which the Michelin company thoughtfully provides.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.