Matthew's Journal

One bit of iPlayer I enjoyed before going to Scotland (and still available for a couple of weeks) is Remarkable Places to Eat. There are four episodes, and in each one Fred Sirieix (a Maître d'hôtel) accompanies a well-known chef (Angela Hartnett, Tom Kerridge, Michel Roux Jr, Nisha Katona) to a different city, where the chef shows him some of their favourite places to eat in that city. As well as eating there, they meet some of the front of house and kitchen staff, and also get a bit involved in the other aspects of the business (going out to buy ingredients, waiting tables, cooking some of the dishes).

Inevitably, a lot of the eateries visited are heavily booked-up and/or expensive (e.g. La Tour d'Argent in Paris, where the signature Canard à la presse costs €260 for two, and the wine lists starts at €60 and goes North of €10k), but they also endeavour to visit more reasonably-priced places - Sirieix and Roux Jr going into raptures about €5.50 jambon-beurre, for example. I also liked how they talked in the round about how the restaurants operated, including the importance of the front-of-house staff.