I live in France and many restaurants are excellent. Some aren’t, of course, especially in big cities where they depend on passing, never to be seen again tourists.

But it’s still pretty much the case that you can get a decent meal in most dining establishments here.

The first I’d like to mention is the Thoumieux, where we ate in at the end of 2021 rather than in 2022, but so what.

I first ate there with photographer Stuart Clarke, who’d learned of its existence from the guy who was the Daily Telegraph’s Paris correspondent for 25 years.

Now I like to eat there whenever I go to Paris, which hasn’t been that often these past few years. Marie-Helène and I ate there just over a year ago and the foie gras and the duck were as excellent as ever.

Earlier this year we ate at The Marcel in Sete, down on the coast south of Montpellier. The Marcel has a history for me going back more than 20 years, when I used to go and eat there with Steve and Bob and Mat when we were all freelances working on our own, missing the conviviality of the office Christmas party.

Now, it has a Michelin star and is very, very much worth the €100 or so it’ll cost to dine there. The two dishes below are the cheese plate and the crystallised sage leaves which come with the coffee.

We ate during the summer at l’Entrecôte in Montpellier, always the best place if you fancy steak and chips.

Later in the year we went back to Paris and ate at Chez Paul, an ancient bistro with a no-nonsense, real French food menu. It’s absolutely excellent – so excellent, in fact, that after eating there on Friday evening we booked a table for lunch on Sunday.

This is the menu Chez Paul, a real old-school production full of real, old-school food which was just absolutely perfectly delicious. What’s good? It’s all good.