Haute cuisine?

La France ne vaut plus le voyage

Richard Neat, the inspired British chef who won two Michelin Guide stars for his London restaurant, Pied à Terre, in the early 1990s, had a baptism of fire when he tried to repeat the trick in France. Despite winning another star at his Cannes restaurant Neat, he has now been forced to close after just three years. As often happens on such occasions, there are many different causes, including French labour laws and the effects of September 11. But the main factor, according to the restaurant's management and it French staff, was jingoism - the inability of the French to accept that un rosbif could challenge their divine right to cook the world's best dishes.

There are still, of course, many superb restaurants in France. Yet regular British visitors are aware that most of them have been caught in a gastronomic time warp. They serve broadly the same dishes they have served for decades - and always exactly the same desserts: crème caramel, mousse au chocolat, iles flottantes, tarte aux pommes and glaces. The kind of customers who shunned Mr Neat's inspired restaurant would probably respond with disbelief to the statistics of gastronomic decline. Yet, 25 years ago, there were three Michelin three-star restaurants in the vast area that makes up Provence (which also includes Cannes) and none at all in central London. Last year, there were no three-star restaurants in Provence but three in London (two of them now closed).

This change reflects the cosmopolitan creative vitality that has transformed the culinary contours of London and the rest of Britain. It has been supported by a revolution in cooking habits in the home, nurtured by Nigella, Jamie, Delia and the other celebrity chefs who dominate our televisions and bookshelves. Meanwhile, the French maintain the same stubborn pride in their gastronomic superiority that the British once applied to our quondam prowess in manufacturing. And look what happened to us.