by Tom Williams

Andrew Hussey, presenter of BBC Four’s France on a Plate, likes to wear his smart dark suit, whether feasting alone in Parisian brasseries, noseying around restaurant kitchens or careering in an old motor through country lanes. In this way he resembles the style of that fantastically academic host Jonathan Meades. Both, too, drawl to the camera in a low monotone. However, Meades is the deliberately “off-kilter” outsider, seeming like a drawing stuck onto a photograph, parading his outlandish range of language in every paragraph of his delivery. Hussey, by contrast, is the blunt northerner who nevertheless will smile and chatter to his subjects in perfect French. He is amiable, fitting in while not blending in.

Hussey, a professor of cultural studies at the University of London Institute in Paris, traces the history of French cuisine, recording its cultural and political importance over the last two centuries, from the French Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, the Belle Époque to the Algerian War of Independence. An occasional theory within the documentary is that the variety within the French people finds its parallel in the variety of French cuisine, politics and food even functioning as cause or effect of the other. However, I was pleased that he advances such a theory with a healthy scepticism; despite the claims of one Franco-Algerian chef he meets, that when food please others it can create social harmony, Hussey remarks afterwards that he is unsure that the popularity of North African cuisine has eased racial tensions among the French. Yet he successfully highlights the moments of correspondence between French food and culture: how Louis XIV’s ethereal image was built upon the theory that food is paradise; how military operations influenced the strict running of Gordon Ramsay-like kitchens, buoyed by the shouts of “Oui Chef!”; and how recent trans-Atlantic modernism has, in turn, embraced a levelled, time-short culture of food, which has resulted in France becoming McDonald’s second-largest marketplace.

As all academics do, given an hour on BBC Four, Hussey treads the line between pernicious intellectualism and the necessary cheekier moments. There are occasional moments of out-and-out humour; Hussey as a besuited Ray Mears squatting in the forest, dropping a rat into a cooking pot and commenting “Very nice”; Hussey muttering from inside his car “No room, fat lad” to a stranded Michelin man; Hussey casually referencing Bill and Ted. In fact the whole documentary is tastefully touched with lightness.

Hussey attempts to maintain as dry a tone as possible, and when, before a re-enactment of a lavish Louis XIV feast, he calmly drawls “They begin to gorge themselves”, one could be forgiven for thinking that the BBC had hired the voiceover for a Ronseal Wood Stain commercial. But his finest quality, is the occasional surfacing of his delight in the subject matter. Unusually for such a programme, Hussey is no chef, but an irrepressible consumer, a committed eater or, to put it more kindly, a diner. The camera is often set directly above him, capturing his large seated frame on one side of the screen, and a decorated restaurant table in front of him. He is most interested not in the preparation, but in the eventual act. A particularly amiable moment his when he chats to a Lyonnais chef, who has kindly laid out a range of meats before them. Hussey tightens his mouth and can only moan “Mmm” as he is led through each delicacy; I don’t think I saw his eyes widen more at any other point in the programme.

I forgot the sole moment where Hussey does escape from his suit, mounted into a fetching chef’s outfit as he is toured around a back-kitchen. Presumably hygiene rules had intervened, but it is refreshing that within a few minutes he is back outside as the man in black, continuing his monologue while padding his bike around the centre of the Jardin des Tuileries on his bike, as like lines of synchronised swimmers the seated park-dwellers turn their heads around at this passing agent, each whispering to each other “Wasn’t that the fat bloke in the bistro?”