Sublime

The star chefs, men like Ducasse and Guérard and Bras and Troisgros, enjoy a level of celebrity and popular prestige reserved in other countries for the gods of sport and television.

Then, my wife, Sara, gave me a book called Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour. The recipes were short, the ingredients lists relatively so and the language straightforward.

Cigale Récamier;

St. Antoine, the patron saint of truffle growers,

In contrast, the Michelin inspector’s approach to a restaurant is the same as that of any normal customer. When he makes his reservation, his name doesn’t ring any bells in the kitchen. (Even France’s highly tuned network of gossip among chefs hasn’t yet managed to identify inspectors, for reasons we shall come to later.) When the inspector arrives