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France’s taxe foncière: ‘I pay per year here what I paid per month in England’
A British resident in rural central France compares her taxe foncière with the property tax she paid in the UK
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Should French restaurants start charging for bread?
‘We have people who make a meal out of bread and a carafe d’eau ’
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France’s Nutri-Score makes a farce of healthy eating
The system was introduced in 2017 to help shoppers improve their diets
True stars in the kitchen
Michelin’s system of giving restaurants stars has gone far beyond its initial purpose of indicating somewhere reliable to eat
The restaurant business in France has become a pressurised contest to produce extraordinary dishes using idiosyncratic combinations of novelty ingredients. Top chefs can only try to push ‘best-chef-ness’ beyond its outer limits.
Most diners, however, want something else. They know – although it is heresy to suggest it – that you cannot beat a traditional dish home-cooked by someone who knows what he/she is doing using local ingredients and served in agreeable but unpretentious surroundings.
Anyone who stumbles across such a restaurant does not care whether it has stars or not.
