The image was striking: a mob of protesters in Paris overturning tables laden with silverware, smashing crystal goblets, and setting fire to linen napkins. This was not a scene from 1789 but from a series of coordinated attacks on exclusive gastronomic events across France this week. The targets were the so-called 'grands banquets' private dinners hosted by the country’s elite at Michelin-starred restaurants and chateaux. The perpetrators? A radical left collective calling themselves 'Les Affamés', who argue that such displays of culinary excess are an affront to a nation where food bank queues grow longer by the day.
But here is where the story takes a twist. While French streets burn over foie gras and truffle oil, Britain watches with a peculiar mix of horror and smugness. Our own class system, often maligned as ossified and unjust, has proven remarkably stable in the face of similar provocations. Why? Because we have perfected the art of ‘invisible hierarchy’. The British elite do not flaunt their wealth with firework-fuelled banquets; they host quiet dinners at private members’ clubs, where the only signal of status is the cut of a Savile Row suit. The French, by contrast, turned dining into a public spectacle and now find that spectacle turned on them.
The psychology is fascinating. In France, food is identity. The Michelin Guide is scripture. So when protesters target a banquet, they are not just attacking inequality; they are attacking French culture itself. In Britain, our class divisions are territorial, not culinary. The aristocracy retreats to country estates; the upper-middle class to garden parties. The proletariat, meanwhile, has its own rituals: Sunday roasts, fish and chips, the pub. There is less overlap, less visible friction.
Yet the anger beneath is the same. Surveys show that British resentment of the super-rich has risen sharply since the cost-of-living crisis. The difference is that our resentment still finds its outlet in satire and resignation rather than street violence. The French protest; the British tut. For now, that tutting keeps the tables from being overturned. But as Les Affamés inspire copycats in London, one wonders how long our stiff upper lip will hold.
