Francophiles rushed to Bouchon Racine, feeling suffused with happiness before they’d had a single bite. Reading the blackboard menu – pork terrine, rabbit with mustard, crème caramel – was enough. It became almost impossible to get a table but there was a lull before others opened. Now it’s a fast-flowing stream. I came out of hospital after a serious illness last year and went straight to Camille, a new French restaurant in Borough Market. It felt as if it had been there for ever. Regional French dishes, many of which I’m not familiar with, are its foundation.
I talked to Alex Jackson about why he fell in love so intensely with French cooking. We were both changed by living there, he in Paris, me in Bordeaux. “Food is important there and yet it isn’t,” he says. “It’s a given that food is an important part of life but that doesn’t mean making a big fuss or cooking complicated dishes. And they give proper time to eating.”
Weekend lunch at someone’s home in France will be several courses including cheese and a green salad (neither of which require cooking). The main might be a good roast chicken and there’d be something as simple as salami and crisp radishes to start. It’s hard to explain the sense of wellbeing and ease I felt eating this kind of food on that first trip when I was 15.
Dining and Cooking