It tastes good, but maybe that's just the sauce? "Keep chewing, that's good," says Harris, and I start to feel better "It's the texture that's so special," continues Harris. "The brains are really soft."But how would passers-by react to such unusual fare? It is difficult to convince anyone to even stop and look at our collection of brain canap? and the enthusiastic sell of "it's Jacques Chirac's favourite food," doesn't seem to cut any ice. "They're almost sweet." The plaice, too, is simple but delicious."This is refined, confident cooking with elegant presentation," Harris says "It's restrained and flavourful. You used to find in old-fashioned French food that they often put too many flavours on the plate - it was just too much.
So it's taken outside influences for French chefs to refine that tendency - restaurants such as Le Gavroche and Gordon Ramsay have really perfected that simplified French cuisine."We're finished, and the nightmare lunch that Chirac had conjured in my mind had failed to materialise. But Harris isn't finished yet - he wants me, for a point of comparison, to try Chirac's favourite French dish, calves' brains, back at his restaurant. "You know the impudence of the man! To have a pop at Haggis, when he has already stated that his favourite meal is calves' brains. Twenty years ago, there were one or two Thai restaurants in London Now every pub sells Thai food.
The days of soggy vegetable layer bake that has been sitting under the counter all day are gone."The rest of our meal arrives, and we try two more open dishes, with a mini-turret of prawns and two pan-fried plaice "Those prawns," coos Harris. It's partly because we have lots of disparate immigrant communities coming into the capital, which is enriching the diversity and breadth of foreign cuisine."There are, also, so many more food writers now, who are writing about food from around the world, and coming back with these wonderful stories and recipes And it's all coming back to London. "But you have a far better chance of walking into a good restaurant in England than you do in France. I had two days with my family in Paris last month - it was hard work trying to find suitable restaurants for my whole family.