How delicious! Britain, not France, is now gastro heaven

From English fizz to divine seafood and cheese, the UK now outclasses our Gallic neighbours for top-notch nosh, says ROSE PRINCE

Adozen native oysters washed down with vintage champagne, then a large tranche of oozing, bloomy, artisan Camembert — there is no finer or more elegant lunch.

You could be enjoying such delicacies on holiday in normandy and, for decades, you may have wished we did this just as well at home. But, as sure as the fabled tortoise overtakes the hare, now we do.

At last the British are beating the French at what they do best — producing the greatest food and wine. This week, online cheesemonger Cheesegeek reported that 1,000 cheeses are made by artisans in the UK, while only 550 equivalent cheeses are made in France.

Two French champagne houses, Taittinger and Vranken Pommery Monopole, have bought vineyards in the South of england — a salute to our sparkling wine producers and terroir if ever there was one. our english ‘champagnes’ are also winning international prizes. As for our seafood, it is riding a high. now the most sought-after in the world for its variety, quality and abundance, sales are flourishing at home, too, despite claims that Brexit would be its death knell.

Tourists are flocking to the British coast in pursuit of the freshest lobster, crab, dover sole and turbot, while there’s an expanding market for buying fish online, direct from the boats.

Please, allow us culinary underdogs to enjoy this sweet moment. These three gastronomic sectors belong to France; it’s one of the reasons why we holiday there, and even move there.

We British have been mocked mercilessly for our love of soggy chips, warm beer, hot breakfasts and overcooked beef. The French have long imagined that we live off canned beans and frozen dinners, that the microwave is our cuisine grand-mere. And we have endured centuries of insults: ‘You can’t trust people who cook as badly as that [the British],’ French president Jacques Chirac once sneered.

Yes, those words hurt but, at long last, the British are sitting down to a large plate of justice and having the last laugh — and here’s why.

REJOICE IN OUR CHAMPION CHEESE

The proliferation of speciality UK cheeses is an incredible story of progress. Before World War II there were more than 3,500 artisan farmhouse cheese-makers in Britain.

Most were forcibly shut down since all dairy milk was needed to make milk powder for the war effort. After the war, there were only 100 left making cheese on the farm.

‘our cheeses are lost to england,’ wrote dorothy hartley in her seminal 1954 book, Food In england, and for anyone born before 1980, post-war cheese meant block Cheddar and dairylea. It was the French we turned to for our dinner party cheese.

one by one, however, small dairies began to revive the old great generic British cheeses such as West Country Cheddar, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Lancashire and Wensleydale, making the cheeses by hand and wrapping the rounds in waxed cloth, like in the old days.

From the late 1970s until the present there has been a British cheese-making revolution. Many of the brands are ‘modern British’ cheeses, styled on the great cheeses of europe, mimicry being flattery, of course.

We now have more than passable versions of Camembert, Brie, pecorino, manchego, Roquefort, Vacherin Mont d’or or small, fresh ashdipped goats’ cheeses like those found in French markets. names such as Wigmore, Baron Bigod, Lord of the hundreds, Penystone, Winslade and Tunworth are listed among the long roll call of truly great cheeses.

Pioneer cheesemongers such as neal’s Yard dairy began selling the new cheeses in their central London shop to great acclaim. They now sell online as with Cheesegeek, the Fine Cheese Co. and many more. According to the Speciality Cheese Association, the artisan cheese sector is worth £100 million a year.

HOW WE LEARNED TO LOVE SEAFOOD

A gAMe-ChAngIng shift in the way the British appreciate seafood now means we are eating the very freshest local fish at home or in restaurants. It was not always so — remember the stinking counters of