I was so thrilled to find your blog! I miss your columns in the much-lamented Gourmet and I treasure your book – it was a wonderful asset on our last trip to Paris.

Although it's been at least 5 years since I've eaten at Ducasse au Plaza Athenee, I will always remember the experience, and not just because of the gift of the menu. The food, the service, the ambience… everything was perfect! I absolutely agree with you that when spending such a huge amount on a meal, it needs to completely amaze and delight one. I've often had the experience of spending perhaps half the amount that a meal at a 3-star would cost and being disappointed, because, while everything was perfectly executed, nothing astounded me, and there was nothing that I couldn't have made myself at home.

It's sad to read that haute cuisine has fallen out of favor. I hope that its most talented practitioners can hang on and keep cooking their sublime cuisine until it comes back into favor again. I'm sure it will — it's too wonderful to disappear forever.

Thanks very much for your comment. Like Francois Simon, I really do see the haute cuisine tables as a national, even international treasure, and the world would be an infinitely poorer place if they were to vanish. And I agree with you that there does seem to be some sort of inverted snobbery working in the French food world right now, with a particular hostility to haute cuisine coming from some of the country's trendier young critics. Myself, I'm a dyed in the wool Curnonsky fan.

Best, Alec

What a heartening post and one with which I totally agree. When I eat at a three star restaurant, I want all the bells and whistles they can throw at me: simplicity to a certain degree, yes, but really I want to be dazzled by technique, inventiveness, fabulous ingredients and a little chutzpah too. It always seems odd to me how so many of the French critics are quick to condemn haute cuisine. Francois Simon once joked to me that the government ought to support the struggling grande tables as national treasures, but, actually, there is something in that. It would be a shame if they were relegated to history because of some inverted snobbery about the – actually quite justifiable – costs of their menus. Happily, if we really are about to enter the Age of the Sauce, as I hope we are (and all things come in cycles, don't they?), then they won't need any support, people will come flocking back for a sublime, clear, meaty jus, I am sure of it!

Best

Michael