One of my favourite restaurants in Morzine is La Flamme. We’ve been going there for years and the lady who owns it is one of the most hospitable, friendly and accommodating establishments in the town. Despite its small size (seating around thirty diners) they’re clued-up about special dietary requirements — something which seems so rare in France — and given enough warning even claim to be able to cater for coeliacs. I’d always felt that the attitude of French cuisine to any sort of food intolerance was along the lines of, “but if you cannot eat [thing] then what is the point of living?!” I do wonder how vegans cope in France? Is there a vicious cycle of no vegan catering leading to the starvation (to death) of vegans, leading to no vegan catering…?

A dish which always attracts attention, especially in such an intimate setting as La Flamme is the ostrich piquard: a hot spiked metal cylinder which is studded with ostrich meat, suspended over dauphinoise potatoes, drenched in whiskey, and flambéed. The meat is tender, rare, and absolutely delicious. By “rare” I mean what the French refer to as seignant (literally, “bloody”), as opposed to the British/American notion of “rare”. As I understand it, the scale goes a bit like this:

English French Appearance raw tartare raw meat, possibly minced almost raw bleu at most this is flash-cooked on each side to seal the meat not done seignant red in the middle, dripping bloody juices rare à point pink nearly all the way through medium bien cuit pink all the way through well-done (burnt!) brown all the way through

Sometimes waitresses and waiters are helpful to foreigners and will speak their language. “Quelle cuisson?” invites an answer in French, while, “how would you like it?” invites an answer in English. This can cause a problem, as I’m sure they translate “medium” to “bien cuit”, but “bien cuit” literally translates into English as “well done” which a French chef would consider to be “charred”. I always answer as unambiguously as possible; in French; “s’il vous plaît, seignant!”

Yum!