IT’S often said the English eat to live, the French live to eat, having spent a few days in France it’s hard to disagree.

Eating in France is a national pastime that often lasts for hours and there’s plenty of joie de vivre in the preparation.

In general the food was superb but I did have a tricky encounter with a tuna steak.

In my defence I like my steaks bloody and I tend to respect chef’s judgement. But in this case I swear blind this fish winked at me from the plate. If it had seen a frying pan it was only as it swam past the kitchen. As my friend said: “You’ve got two choices with that fish, either eat it or let it swim away.”

So with some trepidation I asked the waiter if chef might cook it a little. He returned a few minutes later to tell me basically, non.

Now had this been in England or if my language skills were better I might have argued the toss but weakly I accepted my fate and picked up my fork.

I have to say the taste with a liberal splash of lime juice was a pleasant surprise but the texture of raw fish is not really for me.

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