There was a particular little shop that used to exist on almost every French street corner, and although most of them have quietly disappeared, their ghosts remain if you are lucky enough to spot one. You will be walking through some entirely ordinary town or village, when your eye drifts upwards and catches an old façade, it's painted signage faded and faint, but sure enough - perhaps above a mobile phone shop, an estate agent or some other high street blandness, you will se

There is a recognisable sort of chap standing beside a very clean car outside a top hotel. He wears two principal things - a peaked cap, and an expression of professional, unbothered serenity. He opens the door. He inclines his head. He says "Sir" and "Madam" with the respectful deference of a fellow who has said it many times. And when you have spread yourself across the leather interiors, he glides you smoothly across town without, it seems, doing anything so vulgar as maki

I am a sucker for things that are not really traditional food parings. I mean I love things that do go together - fish and chips, buttered toast, and cream on jam, but I do like a new challenge. Enter, Roquefort & Honey Ice Cream. Found on a menu at a not-very-posh bistro in the stunning town of Sant Malo. There were clearly less challenging flavours on offer, and I could very much have made a far more vanilla choice, but something about it made me want to dive headlong into

There is a fine line between what we understand as appreciation and what we immediately deride as snobbery. Somewhere along the way, we decided that knowing too much about wine, coffee, or olive oil, made us a bit "too" something. You will know by now, that I love to look at the roots of words. The Etymology. The Verbal archaeology that whispers through history, where words and phrases orginiated and how we have skewed them to suit modern purpose. Frustratingly, the origins o

It's hot here. The sort of heat that suggests any kind of movement is a bad idea. Last night I sat in the pitch-black kitchen, with the fridge door open. It was not as effective as I would have liked. It was like being interrogated by the faint smell of Melon. Now then, if we played a word association game, and I said "Summer".. chances are someone would respond "Ice Cream". It is a horse-and-carriage relationship. A friendly rebellion against the sun - saying "OK if you want

I recently stumbled across an article in Forbes magazine, comparing two pieces of real estate. The first was a 996-square-foot "tear-down" in West Los Angeles. I had to look up the term "tear-down". It is basically a house that no-one wants to live in, and is far cheaper to knock down and build from scratch, than to fix up. The second property, was a 4,806-square-foot Château in France on 24 acres, with 8 ensuite bedrooms and a guest house. They were both listed for the same

Like many British people, I came to goat's cheese quite late in life. I mean, when I was a kid, you could order fruit juice as a starter in a fairly posh restaurant... yes, children, it was once thus. Anyway, in our house, goats didn't produce cheese, cows did. And they made it all in a place called Cheddar. Britain in the seventies, was not a place where food was discussed with any particular reverence. It came either hot, or cold. Cold was for lunch, hot was for dinner. Bre

Aren't cherries just a wonderfully optimistic fruit? They arrive quite suddenly, unlike the well guarded blackberries of Autumn, which just take forever to ripen and seem to do so one at a time. Cherries just appear. Reckless and post-box red, they are a bounty of equal opportunity, for birds and beings alike. In France, cherries are not simply fruit. They are a seasonal event. A brief national orthodoxy that, for approximately three glorious weeks, has everyone smiling. Here

There was a time, and I might be showing my age here, when butter became the subject of a deliberate, fatty witch-hunt. It seemed to be a hearing behind closed doors, for us butter lovers. It was accused and found guilty of shortening our lives and making us fat. The Western world fell under a wave of nutritional anxiety. Butter, which had been besties with bread for such a long time, was suddenly recast as the insidious villain of the kitchen. Into its golden yellow slippers

March 15th sits in that peculiar place in the French culinary calendar where winter has not quite finished and spring has not quite sprung. The markets still have a bit of an Irish feel to them - with much space still given over to leeks and potatoes. But you can sense that local market aficionados are sensing an arrival of sorts. The first crop of bright, green asparagus. The French love their asparagus. They have been cultivating them since the 15th century and their popula

In the late 1940s, on Long Island, just east of New York City, a new kind of American landscape was being built. It was called "Levittown" - one of a few that would appear in the 40's and 50's, designed originally for returning WWII veterans, with affordable homes, solid construction, picket fences and identical facades. But along with the mortgages came something else: lawn obligations written into property deeds. The owners needed to agree to maintain their grass to a legal

Red roses. Valentine’s Day. Floral messaging that has no room for manoeuvre or misconstrue. Important, perhaps becasue our February 14th intentions need to be absolutely legible. Our designs and desires must have clarity and meaning. The red rose then, is a comfortably predictable symbol, bought and sold by the dozen. In fact, 250 million red roses are produced globally, for this day alone. Beautiful, classic, fully unmistakable. Even if we feel that a red rose is actually st

Vanessa is American. Her entire family is American, as is her accent, her passport and most of her cultural references. Yet she says she doesn't "feel it" any longer. This makes me sad. We English feel that national identity (not Nationalism) represents a central value - not a totally defining one - but nonetheless a solid sense of tribe, to which humans have been hardwired, since the dawn of people.

Many of us tend to have a dim view of February. It really does seem to be the black sheep of our calendar. Short-changed on day numbers, an awkward ending to the cadence of that rhyme to remember - "30 days hath November" - it feels like the month that also ran - the racing term for runners and riders that were not really worth a real mention.But let's forgive the slightly gawky floundering of February. It was never a month designed to feel like such a fly in the hearty, w

February 1st is associated, in France, as well as various other parts of Europe, with Sainte Brigitte - a saint who rarely grabs the headlines like "the popular kids" - Francis, Jude and Christopher. There are no medallions - none of her miracles come to mind...

Turns out this photo is a fake, by the way... Even though if it did fool the folks at Forbes magazine, but... that's OK. It says what I want to say, AI or not. It's a picture that "shows" French farmers protesting in Paris. They are there, by the way - as I type - with tractors and trailers, and even sheep, lining the grand Avenues and Boulevards of the Nations capital, hosing down Government buildings with the occasional muck-spreader. When French farmers are unhappy, they q

I think we like to think we know what "Encore..." means. It's one of those French-isms that has been globally exported as successfully as "joie de vivre.." and "je ne sais quoi-t-ever". It shouts "More..." or "another round"... One last song before the lights come up. It’s a strong and crowd-friendly, shouty word, associated with appetite, enthusiasm and thunderous applause...

Today is a particluar kind of Sunday. It's flea market day. Not any one in particular, just one close to us. In fact there is very possibly one taking place every day of the year in France. The French "brocante". The word itself is pretty old. It comes from the 15th century verb "brocanter" meaning to barter or trade in small goods. It's roots are a bit more practical than poetic. The things for sale, were never supposed to be rare or carry any kind of prestige. It was all ab

The word surrender did not always carry the white flag with which we associate its use today. It comes into English from the Old French "surrendre" - formed from sur (over) and rendre (to give back). Its Latin root, reddere, means to return, to restore, to hand back what was borrowed.

Truffles have been around since the Pharaos were in short pants. Quite why the first sandal kicked the first truffle, prompting its wearer to bend down and take a mouthful, is another story altogether. But we have been loving them ever since... King Francis I of France (let's hope he didn’t endure the challenges of rhotacism) was the first noble notable to put truffles on the royal platter. His truffly gusto was duly noted by the brilliant lawyer-turned-chef, Jean Brillat-Sav