French Food Safari opens with a tour of the world’s largest wholesale produce market, Rungis, on the outskirts of Paris. It’s as big as a suburb and sells every food you can imagine, from Icelandic sea urchins to French forest mushrooms. It’s a food lover’s dream, and Guillaume and Maeve are in heaven, tasting as they go.
French Food Safari journeys under the ground in Paris to the secret bakery of one of the great Parisian bakers – the rock star of bread Jean-Luc Poujaran, who supplies all the top restaurants in the city. A perfect loaf of his naturally leavened bread takes three days to prove and the results are golden crusted and fragrant.
In this episode, we explore the delicious, relaxed, inexpensive style of eating at the bistro – a tradition that's been popular for hundreds of years. We spend time in the kitchen of St Germain chef Yves Camdeborde, who trained in the top restaurants but believed he would have more fun in a bistro. The diners love it, too – his bistro Le Comptoir is now booked six months in advance.
Maeve and Guillaume travel to the mountainous Ardeche region of France to meet artisan goat cheese maker Jérôme Herphelin and his happy herd of goats. Then it’s back into the cellars below the Parisian streets to see how beautiful cheeses like Jerome’s are carefully tended to be at their delicious best for customers. This is the work of a craftsman called an affineur. Plus, we meet Laurent Dubois, whose work with cheese has been so appreciated he was awarded a medal of honour from the President.
In this episode, we travel to Lyon and get swept up in the fun of eating in the local bouchons – relaxed eating houses which have existed for hundreds of years, starting as canteens for the local silk factory workers.
French Food Safari spends a delightful day in a small French village in the Ardeche with top selling cookbook author Stephane Reynaud. This is a celebration of the butcher and the baker, the closeness to the land and the slow calm of village life, followed by a demonstration of warm French hospitality – from the groaning cheese platter with 16 different choices to the huge pot au feu and local delicacies of pork mince cooked over the open fire.
French Food Safari experiences the thrill of the hunt amongst the oak trees of Perigord. Trained dog Alfonse leads Guillaume, Maeve and truffle king Pierre-Jean Pebeyre to find the edible underground fungus referred to as the “black diamond”.
French Food Safari gets the lowdown on how a top-class kitchen works by joining Guillaume Brahimi for a busy night at his restaurant. We witness how hundreds of exquisite meals are created and served.
French Food Safari is taken on a tour of one of the top Parisienne kitchens with three Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy, who cooks up some of his signature dishes for Maeve and Guillaume.