Every time I mention that French cuisine remains the greatest in the world, I duck. Below-the-line comments on the website go berserk. “The last steak I had in Paris was tougher than a truck,” they shout, occasionally in CAPITALS. “Frankly, the Frogs have lost it”; “You’re joking, right?” “Do you get paid for this sort of treachery?” (No – it’s voluntary work in aid of the disadvantaged.)

And so they continue, yard upon yard of invective. But, really. Well. They are wrong. Simple as that. Let me count some reasons.

There’s Stéphane Boucher’s oyster boat on the Bay of Arcachon, where shucking shellfish and drinking white wine enraptures any early evening. Or a Strasbourg bierstub, where the eating...