][1]There is a fun piece in The Times today about the annual meeting of Le Club des Chefs des Chefs.
Billed as the world’s most exclusive gastronomic society, Le Club has fairly stringent membership criteria: to be accepted into this highly elite club, you need to be the current personal chef of a head of state.
As well as promoting the cuisine of each country, Le Club has a diplomatic role. They are responsible for ensuring that everyone has a jolly time when world leaders sit down to eat at major meetings. No-one wants WW III to start over incorrect seasoning of the lobster bisque.
According to Le Club’s website, Talleyrand told Napoleon, ‘Give me good cooks and I will give you good treaties’. Today, the maxim of the Club des Chefs des Chefs is: ‘Whilst politics can sometimes divide people, good food always brings them back together’.
Le Club’s annual bash kicks off in Berlin today before moving to Paris next week. Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande are said to be attending two of dinners separately in a move to strengthen fraying Franco-German relations.
Naturally, there is loads of interest in the favourite foods of the assorted prime ministers, kings, queens and other heads of state. The trouble is that the chefs don’t want to divulge their masters’ preferences for fear that they will be served them at every state meal. Jacques Chirac was said to have a fondness for tete de veau, or to use the American phrase, head cheese. Once this became public knowledge, he was served it so often that he became sick of the dish.
Apparently, the Queen is a very popular head of state to cook for as she will eat anything. The French president Hollande is said to hate artichokes while the Obamas really don’t like beetroot. Famously, Nicholas Sarkozy, or rather his wife, is said to have banned cheese from French state dinners to prevent the former French president from packing on the pounds.
Annoyingly, The Times’ piece is behind their firewall but, if your school boy French isn’t too rusty, then Le Monde has a piece on Le Club here.