British restaurateur, Antony Worrall Thompson, one of the new TV chefs who replaced lofty superiority with approachability, was the star turn at Bord Bia's international forum on fine foods in Kinsale, Co Cork, last weekend.
The master of dressing-down produce and making restaurant food more affordable (which many noted did not yet pertain in their host town), admitted during a scintillating race through recent culinary history, that in his dark past he was lured into the nouvelle cuisine game.
He saw the opportunity when he noticed that women "wanted starters and puddings and not what I call `intercourse' in between", but they were lousy tippers and lousy drinkers. Nouvelle cuisine is gone for good, he said, though he was irked by the kind of charges associated with it "slipping back up again" in London, and by the practice of restaurants saying "please be here at seven and gone by nine".
In Kinsale, he admonished some local restaurateurs for smothering beautiful local produce with French sauces. Definitely passe.