Culinary universe: Paris bites back

A year and a half ago I moved to Paris to train as a professional chef. I was bored by Jamie and Nigella's "rip it up and toss it about" Modern Med cooking by numbers and I wanted to take my cooking to the next level, to learn how to cook more complex food, from scratch, without a recipe, using whatever ingredients took my fancy. I turned, naturally, to classical French cuisine. If anyone can be trusted to make food complicated, it's the French.

But why Paris? Before I left, well-travelled friends openly questioned my decision: shouldn't I be heading for San Francisco or New York, or begging Heston Blumenthal for an internship?

Fifty years ago, there would have been no doubt. After the Second World War, the grand hotels of Paris effortlessly reclaimed the city's pre-eminent position as the world's culinary capital, held since the days of Antonin Carême. As recently as the 1970s, Paris remained at the forefront with nouvelle cuisine movement. But something went wrong in the late 1980s and early 1990s. New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Barcelona, Sydney and, latterly, London supplanted the French capital as the most dynamic foodie destinations. Paris was seen as outdated, conservative and snobbish, labouring in a state of culinary denial, unable to see beyond the heavyweight traditions of bourgeois cuisine and the rarefied rituals of haute cuisine. Even in France they talked about a crisis in French cooking.

But is there a crisis? Has Paris reached the end of its natural life as far as food is concerned? Or can it still compete with these arrivistes? I asked six residents with connections to the food world for their thoughts.

The chef: Pierre Gagnaire, Triple-starred maestro

"When I travel back to Paris what strikes me are three things: produce, energy and competence," Pierre Gagnaire, the man behind one of London's most talked about restaurants, Sketch, as well as two boundary-pushing restaurants in Paris, enthuses as we sit in the elegant dining room of his three-star restaurant just off the Champs Elysées. "My staff here are so eager to learn. They want to please people with their food; there is tremendous love in what they do. There is such a historical depth, a density of knowledge here. This is the cradle of cuisine, where it started.

"I like London very much but the heart of London, in terms of its food at least, has been ripped out, bought by foreigners. It has been colonised by its colonies. And something Paris has that not even London has are the grande tables. There are at least 10 here. But you don't have to spend all that money, you can have an incredible meal for nothing, which you cannot do in London. I was at a corner café in Le Marais yesterday and I ate the most incredible tomatoes, simply sliced with olive oil and sea salt."

Gagnaire agrees that the French have been slow to join the organic revolution - "We are not cultivated in that area, it's true. We don't know how to organise ourselves, we are too poetic" - but feels that the world has been given a misleading impression of the "crisis" in French cooking. "We love to criticise ourselves," he says. " French journalists have not done a good job of defending French cuisine. We have inflicted a great deal of pain on ourselves in this country. It is true that there are complacent chefs here, but it is frustrating when they say that French food is dying or things like this. It is not. It is as strong as ever."

The restaurateur: Gerard Depardieu, The Greatest Living Frenchman™

"Everywhere I travel, I love to eat, not just France," Gerard Depardieu tells me over a morning coffee and filterless Gitanes in his home deep in the 16th arrondissment. "Everywhere apart from Holland. The food is terrible there. I love to eat in England, I love the lamb in England and British beef. I was eating British beef through all of that mad cow crisis. I never stopped."

Depardieu has just arrived in Paris from Spain after filming the latest Astérix & Obélix film, before flying to meet his friend, the president of the Ukraine, to discuss various wine and film-making ventures there. But, it seems, he will always find time to talk food.

"Bio [the organic movement] is a waste of time," he tells me when I mention the Parisians' lack of enthusiasm for organic food - something I always find odd in a country so wedded to the concept of terroir. "Bio is just politics. For me this was obvious years before they came up with the name. You kill the soil with chemicals. I always knew the producers of the food I cooked. You know, I always remember at my grandmother's house in Orly, she had an outside toilet and we would take the shit and put it on the garden. It was marvellous compost!"

Depardieu, 58, insists one of the strengths of French cuisine remains its produce: "We have good produce in France, there is a lot of respect for produce. If you go to the market in Brittany there will be different things from the market in Provence. It is true that Rungis [Europe's largest wholesale food market, close to Orly Airport, which supplies most of the markets, shops and restaurants in Paris] is not good, but my restaurants don't use it. Before everything, comes the produce."

As well as vineyards in six different countries, Depardieu owns two well-regarded restaurants in Paris, the Fontaine de Gaillon and L'Ecaille de la Fontaine (pictured, above), both serving relatively simple interpretations of classic French domestic dishes - a culinary philosophy amplified in his acclaimed cookery book, Ma Cuisine (Conran Octopus), published last year. "The problem in many French restaurants is that there is not enough simplicity," he says. "Three-star restaurants get boring very quickly. You don't get surprises with the grande tables, those great chefs can lose contact with humanity, they stop listening" - he refers to Alain Ducasse's empire as a "sect", for example. "I like simplicity. I don't want to denigrate Parisian food, but there is not enough that is simple, it can be so heavy. I like to go back to the time of cooking before they started using so much cream and butter," says the man who had a quintuple heart bypass operation in 2000.

Finally, I ask what advice he would give someone thinking of coming to Paris to eat. "Stay in London: you have a real culture of cooking in England and there is more respect and knowledge about good wine, too."

The blogger: David Lebowitz, American foodie and Francophile

A former pastry chef for Alice Walters at Chez Panisse in California, David Lebowitz moved to Paris five years ago where he now writes cookbooks (his latest, The Perfect Scoop, on ice cream, is published in April by Ten Speed Press), leads guided food tours and writes what is, in my humble opinion, the best food blog in the world (www.davidlebovitz.com).

"The French are living in the past but what an incredible past!" David tells me as we wander around his local market, the Marché d'Aligre in the fashionable 12th. "They have every reason to rest on their laurels: their cheeses are the most amazing thing in the world; they have the best wines, the best salt. In Paris they have the best bakeries and pastry shops, and their chocolates are still among the best in the world [chocolatiers Patrick Roger and John Charles Rochoux are his favourites]. But you do have to get used to the fact that French produce is not always as good as they make out. Most fruit and vegetables are industrially produced, there are very few producteurs in the markets."

Lebowitz has little time for Michelin-starred restaurants, preferring the traditional French bistro, such as Le Square Trousseau on rue Antoine Vollon, where we continued our chat over a steaming and glutinous Pot au Feu: "I can't stand those places where you get a slice of carrot on your plate and you're supposed to take a bite and sit and think about it. My best meals in Paris have been things like goose confit or cassoulet done really well. You can spend €55 [£37] on soup at Arpège [a three-star restaurant], but get a great three-course fixed menu for half that at a good bistro and, despite what people say, I think the service in Paris is really good. What I love is that in France a meal is still a sit-down thing. It takes time. The reason that the French are getting fatter is that they are starting to snack like Americans."

The ambassador's wife: Lady Penelope Holmes, Rosbif-at-large

"I would never say that British food is better than French food," admits Lady Penelope Holmes, wife of the British ambassador, Sir John Holmes, as she shows me around the embassy's palatial kitchen. "That would be ridiculous, but the French are way behind on organic food and use of the internet. And London definitely beats Paris on ethnic food."

Since moving to Paris five years ago, Lady Holmes has been a cheerleader for British food, helping to organise events to promote, among other things, British beef and British cheeses. She has even written two cookbooks - in French - the latest features her favourite sandwich recipes (proceeds go to breast cancer research).

"In Britain, I actually think we are more connected to the people who produce our food. Things like farmers, markets and the internet have helped a lot. For instance, the Scottish chef Nick Nairn recommended some hot smoked salmon produced in the Outer Hebrides. I looked it up on the internet and they delivered it straight away. That would never happen with a small French producer. Another thing they have missed out on here is the idea of gastropubs serving traditional food with a lighter, more modern lift. You still go for lunch in Paris and they bring you an enormous blanquette de veau, which is nice, but halfway through you are full. And there is no real equivalent to St John, for example, but wouldn't it be exciting if there was? "

Lady "call me Penny" Holmes admits that she rarely eats out but when she does it tends to be at the more memorable venues: "I did like Les Bouquinistes, Guy Savoy's modern bistro place. We took the Prime Minister there; it has a great atmosphere and he really enjoyed it. Savoy came to a reception here afterwards and we have since become friends."

Other favourites include Joel Robuchon's La Table in the 16th. "John took me there for my birthday and it was one of my most memorable meals. You could taste every ingredient, but then they brought out a little cake and sang 'Happy Birthday' which was very embarrassing. I also like Le Timbre, which has an English chef, Chris Right. It's a little place and he serves quite bourgeois, traditional food, but gets his cheeses from Neal's Yard and he's starting to do British puddings, which are enormously popular in France right now."

The scientist: Hervé This Molecular gastronomy pioneer

He is the chemist whose culinary experiments have influenced a generation of chefs, but now Hervé This has a new area of exploration: love. " The most important ingredient we give to food is love," he explains as we sit in his chaotic laboratory at the Collège de France. "In Holland they've already done experiments asking people to judge the quality of food when they eat it alone compared to when they eat it with friends and they say the food tastes better when eaten together. I propose an experiment where you have four people at the table - one has meat, one has sauce, one has vegetables and the other has bread or drink and they must share to eat. My theory is the food will taste better!"

I ask whether he regrets that, aside from Pierre Gagnaire with whom This has worked closely for five years, the scientific approach - the foams and gels and liquid nitrogen - of molecular gastronomy were never really embraced by the chefs of Paris. "I have been trying to change the way they cook for 20 years. I am on a mission! The older cooks are afraid because they don't understand, but the young cooks are not afraid of technology and have taken it on. What I am interested in now is constructivist cuisine: how chefs construct dishes to maximise the flavours and textures. This has never been formalised before."

He shows me a photograph of a dish he ate recently at a top French restaurant - a conventional bowl of gnocchi in a wild-mushroom sauce. He then shows me a diagram of how he would turn it into what he called "a three-dimensional chessboard", with each square made up of a cube of either gnocchi or mushroom: "And the sauce will be in the centre! Imagine how that would feel to eat!"

The three-dimensional chessboard: coming soon to a restaurant near you.

The critic: François Simon, Le Figaro's fearsome food writer

"Paris is always terrific for food," François Simon, the esteemed restaurant critic, enthuses. "The produce is excellent and the technical aspect of the chefs is among the best in the world. The sauces and pastries are the best in the world, too. The food market at Rungis is one of the best places for produce."

During two decades writing about food, Simon, who visits restaurants incognito, has terrorised the chefs of Paris with his fearless views and rapier wit. He has not been afraid to criticise the likes of Robuchon or Ducasse - two of the greatest chefs of the last 30 years - for their relentless empire building, for instance, so I am slightly surprised to hear him praising the city so highly. I am not sure I agree with his assessment of Rungis for a start. I've been and it is full of industrial tomatoes from Italy and wax-covered peppers from Holland.

"Yes, it's true," he concedes, "you do see standard produce in Paris markets, but if you know the small, discreet places to shop you can get very good things."

And what about the city's conservative approach to food? "Well, French people are not so good at imagining the future, perhaps. Paris is slow to move," says Simon. "Then again, when I eat out I want gentleness, love and good food. Molecular food is funny, but you only want to eat it once a year. If you want the future, go to Tokyo.

"Actually, Parisians are changing the way they eat. They don't have time for the three-hour lunch any more. Now there are 20 ways to eat lunch. This is the best moment in time for food because anything is possible. We have had a crisis but crisis is so good for creativity and I am really very confident for the future."

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