From the desk of Barnaby 'Biff' Thistlethwaite, Gonzo Correspondent at Large.
File this under: The Frogs are hopping mad again. Yes, mes amis, the land of baguettes and brie has erupted in a furious garlic-scented rage over the audacity of... wait for it... a large banquet. The French left, a collection of humans who look perpetually like they've just sniffed a truffle that turned out to be a button mushroom, have declared war on opulence. Specifically, a banquet hosted by President Macron for some visiting dignitaries, featuring course after course of obscenely rich food.
But here's the kicker, the twist that would make a croissant blush: a British food critic has been dragged into the fray, praising Britain's own culinary offerings as 'balanced.' Balanced! Compared to the French banquet, which apparently offends the left's delicate sensibilities like a bad Camembert. The Guardian's Paris correspondent, in a state of acute hysteria, reported that the banquet included 'truffle soup, lobster, and a pyramid of petits fours.' The horror. The absolute, unadulterated horror of eating well.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, Britain's food culture is being held up as a paragon of 'balance.' Let me translate that for you: Balance means we've replaced elaborate banquets with a Greggs sausage roll and a cup of tea. We call it 'pub grub' and serve it in establishments that smell faintly of stale ale and regret. But no, suddenly Britain is the voice of reason in a world gone mad with gastronomic excess. A world where a Labour MP once famously complained that the House of Commons canteen doesn't serve enough 'mash.' Mash, for God's sake. Balance, indeed.
I tracked down this mysterious British food critic, a man called Jeremy Soames-Leatherington, who apparently wrote a column in the Telegraph titled 'Why Britain Must Never Succumb to Gigantism in Dining.' Gigantism! The man speaks as if banquets are a disease, a cancer of the culinary corpus. 'The French left has a point,' he told me, adjusting his monocle. 'When you serve a dozen courses, you are fundamentally saying that excess is acceptable. In Britain, we have a simple ploughman's lunch. We understand that food is fuel, not a circus.'
Fuel? Circus? I've seen a British ploughman's lunch. It's a lump of cheddar, a pickled onion that could double as a paperweight, and bread that predates the Magna Carta. But suddenly, this is the diet of sages. The French left, in a desperate bid for relevance, have adopted the British approach as a model of socialist virtue. 'Mangez British' could be their new slogan, if they weren't too busy burning their own flag.
Let's be honest: The French left are a basket case. They've been in a state of perpetual agitation ever since they realised that 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' doesn't apply to the queue at the boulangerie. And now they're moaning about banquets? I propose a solution: a state-mandated, politically correct, balanced meal. A single lentil. Cooked in tap water. Served on a bed of austerity. That should satisfy them until they find something else to be furious about, like the size of a baguette or the price of a coffee.
In the meantime, I'll be at the pub, enjoying a 'balanced' diet of scotch eggs and gin. Because if there's one thing Britain does well, it's drinking away its culinary inadequacies. And that, mes amis, is true balance.
