French newspapers have taken exception to Rayner’s forthright assessment of one of the chief jewels in France’s culinary crown.
Le Figaro asks “What fly stung the treacherous critic?”
In Libération, restaurant reviewer Elvire von Bardeleben dismisses Rayner’s review as mere contrarianism rather than a serious attempt to appraise the chef’s work: “This isn’t criticism, it’s entertainment. It’s very excessive to provoke laughter…He came to make fun of a French chef with a funny and effective speech on anti-rich rhetoric…It’s also a logical Englishman versus pretentious French frog eaters.”
But, predictably, the hottest examples of ire were manifested on social media.
Rayner has retweeted some of the angrier messages himself in a bid to defuse them:
Rayner grew up in Harrow, and learned his first lessons about food from his Jewish mother. A pigeon served so rare that ‘it just might fly again given a few volts’ was never going to pass muster.
