Is it all over for the French chef in London?

It’s certainly not for French food but witness the amazing success of Le Petit Maison in Mayfair and you start to see the point made to me by a former holder of two Michelin stars returning to London after a stint abroad. The head chef there is African and his number two is Indian – and they are belting our some of the best French food in the city.

British born chefs have been at it for some time: Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing have consistently out-shadowed the likes of Michel and Albert Roux, with the irrepressibly charming Raymond Blanc being the only one left flying the French flag with credibility.

Joel Atunes – once the toast of London when at Les Saveurs decades back– has returned to the capital with a Mayfair restaurant which I think is great but not many people are sharing my opinion. My French chef pal believes there is now enough home-grown talent for French chefs to have effectively become redundant.

That’s a huge admission for him to make and a great commendation to British chefs.

We now need to see that vigour applied not just to French food, but also to Indian and Oriental cooking because while there is a free flow of workers between borders across Europe, Indian and Oriental restaurant owners can no longer fly in talent from their parts of the world.

Once as a school kid I did a French Exchange and stayed on a farm near Picardie. The farmer’s wife announced one evening that in my honour we would be having curry for dinner and she served us all dollops of rice and sprinkled curry powder on top. “Voila – curry!” she said and in the spirit of entente cordiale, I ate it.

Maybe the struggling French chefs can help revive our curry industry or take our curry revolution back there. Both sides of the channel need it!