Anniversary Episode - Celebrating Five Fabulous Years

Five years ago, Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast was born out of a simple but passionate belief — that French food is one of the greatest love stories ever told, and that every dish, every ingredient, and every chef has a story worth sharing. In this very special anniversary episode, your host Andrew Prior takes a moment to step back from the kitchen and reflect on the incredible journey that has brought us here, from that very first episode exploring the delicious difference between a macaron, a macaroon, and Macron, to six seasons of culinary adventures across the length and breadth of France.

Over five fabulous years, Fabulously Delicious has been graced by some truly extraordinary guests. Gabriel Gaté, the beloved French-Australian chef and television presenter who brought French cooking into Australian living rooms for fifteen years via his legendary Tour de France gourmet segments. Will Studd, the Cheese Authority, documentary maker and one of the world's great champions of raw milk cheese. Bruno, host of the Great Canadian Bake Off and proud son of Clermont-Ferrand, who opened a window into the honest, down-to-earth food of the Auvergne. Molly Wilkinson, the American pastry chef living in France, whose insights into Le Cordon Bleu and the art of French patisserie were a genuine joy. And Katie Quinn, whose knowledge and infectious enthusiasm for French bread — from the laws of the baguette tradition to the hierarchy of the boulangerie — reminded Andrew exactly why he started making the show in the first place.

But this episode is about more than looking back. It's a celebration of the community of Francophiles, foodies, home cooks, and dreamers who have made Fabulously Delicious what it is today — listeners who have trusted Andrew to spend half an hour exploring a single cheese or a single chef in greater depth than most food podcasts would dare. Andrew also looks ahead to two very exciting announcements: the return of his immersive French food tours, and the podcast's very first live episode, to be recorded at the Alliance Française in Manchester.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible. Every answer leads to three more questions. Every episode opens a door. More regional deep dives, more chef stories, more cheese, and more of the unexpected corners of French food culture that nobody else is covering — the next five years are going to be absolutely fabulous. Whatever you do, do it fabulously.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠Substack ⁠

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French Cheese: The Full Story is the most comprehensive episode Fabulously Delicious has ever made on French cheese — covering everything from the monastic origins of French cheesemaking to the raw milk collapse that has seen France lose ninety percent of its artisan cheese culture in a single lifetime. French cheese history, French cheese culture, practical French cheese guidance and a passionate argument for why one of the greatest food traditions in the world deserves your full attention.

The episode begins with a statistic that stops most people in their tracks. Seventy years ago one hundred percent of French cheese was made from raw milk. Today that figure is ten percent. We go back to the beginning — the monastery cellars of the Benedictines and the Cistercians, the extraordinary story of Roquefort as the oldest legally protected food in the world, the history of Camembert and Brie, and the AOC and AOP system that protects French cheese today. The heart of the episode is a guide to the five families of French cheese — the framework that makes French cheese make sense. Fresh, bloomy rind, washed rind, pressed uncooked, pressed cooked and blue — each one explained through its most celebrated examples, from Époisses and Munster to Comté, Reblochon and Ossau-Iraty.

The second half takes you on a regional tour of France through its greatest cheeses, goes inside the French fromagerie to explain exactly how to navigate one, covers how the French actually eat cheese and why they are right about almost all of it, and closes with the future of French cheese — the threats, the revival and why every choice you make at the cheese counter genuinely matters.

If you have listened to the Fabulously Delicious episodes on Brie de Meaux, Abondance or Époisses, this episode is the full picture those episodes were drawn from. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for more French food stories every week.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack 

Merci beaucoup!

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Bordeaux: The Food Capital of Southwest France You Need to Know is the latest episode of Fabulously Delicious — and it makes the case that this UNESCO World Heritage city is one of the most extraordinary and most underrated food destinations in all of France. Most people arrive in Bordeaux for the wine. This episode is about everything else — the lamprey, the canelé, the Aquitaine caviar, the markets, the chefs and the two thousand years of trade and cultural collision that made this port city on the Garonne one of the great eating cities of Europe.

The first half covers the full history of Bordeaux — from the Celtic tribe who first settled on the crescent of the Garonne around 300 BC, through three centuries of English rule following Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry Plantagenet in 1152, to the eighteenth century golden age that built the Grand-Théâtre, the Place de la Bourse and one of the most beautiful waterfronts in Europe. We cover what makes Bordeaux cuisine unlike anything else in France — a cuisine built at the crossroads of Atlantic, Mediterranean and Iberian influences, shaped by what arrived at the docks and what grew in the surrounding countryside.

The second half goes deep into three of the most extraordinary food products Bordeaux has given the world — the canelé, born from the leftover egg yolks of the wine trade; lamprey à la bordelaise, the true à la bordelaise dish that most visitors never discover; and Aquitaine caviar, the only PGI protected caviar in the world, farmed in the rivers of the Gironde. We also cover the remarkable figures Bordeaux has given to French gastronomy — from Adolphe Dugléré, who served the Dinner of the Three Emperors in 1867, to Raymond Oliver, Philippe Etchebest and Hélène Darroze.

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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The Story of Louis Diat: The French Chef Who Invented Vichyssoise in New York is the latest episode of Fabulously Delicious — and it tells the remarkable and largely untold story of one of the most influential French chefs ever to work on American soil. Louis Diat was born in 1885 in Montmarault in the Allier department of central France, spent forty-one years as head chef of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhattan, cooked for kings, presidents and the Prince of Wales, and in 1917 created crème vichyssoise glacée — one of the most celebrated cold soups in the history of fine dining — inspired by a childhood memory of his mother's kitchen in rural France.

The episode follows Diat's extraordinary journey from a small town in Bourbonnais country, where he was waking up before school at eight years old to make soup, through his classical training at the Ritz Paris under César Ritz himself and the Ritz London, to his arrival in New York in October 1910 at just twenty-five years old. Within weeks he was head chef of the newly opened Ritz-Carlton, with Auguste Escoffier overseeing the inauguration of the restaurant. The story of how a childhood memory — his mother pouring cold milk into leftover potato and leek soup on warm summer mornings — became one of the most famous dishes in the history of French gastronomy is one of the most quietly beautiful origin stories in all of French food.

The second half of the episode covers Diat's forty-one years at the Ritz-Carlton, his cooking for some of the most powerful figures of the twentieth century, the Chevalier du Mérite Agricole he received in 1938 for bringing French culinary culture to America, his time as in-house chef at Gourmet magazine from 1947, and the farewell luncheon he prepared for his kitchen staff on the day the Ritz-Carlton closed for demolition in 1951. It also covers the remarkable Diat family legacy — including his brother Lucien, who became executive chef at the Plaza Athénée in Paris and taught Jacques Pépin.

Louis Diat is one of the great overlooked figures in French culinary history. The New York Times called him an artist of the menu and said he had raised the leek and potato to greatness. This episode is the full story of the man behind that tribute — and behind one of the most famous soups in the world

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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Brie de Meaux — the king of cheeses and arguably the most famous soft cheese in the world — has one of the most extraordinary stories in the entire history of French food. This episode of Fabulously Delicious tells the full story of Brie de Meaux, from Charlemagne ordering cartloads of it in 774 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 where Talleyrand staged a tasting of 52 European cheeses and Brie de Meaux was crowned the greatest of them all. Raw cow's milk, a soft white rind, a straw-yellow custardy interior with notes of hazelnut, almond and mushroom — and a history that spans more than a thousand years.

The episode covers the full history of this remarkable AOC and PDO protected cheese — from the monks of the Abbaye Notre-Dame-de-Jouarre in the Seine-et-Marne who first produced it, to King Philippe-Auguste sending 200 wheels to his courtiers as New Year gifts in 1217, to Louis XVI stopping to finish a plate of Brie and a glass of red wine while fleeing the French Revolution. And there is one gloriously aristocratic detail that tells you everything about this cheese — there is exactly one farmhouse producer of Brie de Meaux making it from their own herd today. That producer is the Rothschild family.

The second half of the episode covers everything you need to know about buying and enjoying Brie de Meaux — how it is made, including the extraordinary hand-moulding process using the traditional pelle à brie that cannot be replicated by machine, the two-month production time from fresh milk to finished wheel, the best season to buy it, how to store it, what wines to pair it with, and why you should always eat the rind. This is French cheese history, French cheese culture and practical French cheese guidance all in one episode.

Brie de Meaux is one of the great cheeses of France and this episode is the story it deserves. Whether you are a devoted fromage enthusiast or simply curious about why one soft cheese from a small region east of Paris became the most celebrated in the world, this episode will change how you think about it. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for more French food stories every week.

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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French Food News April 2026 brings together the biggest stories from the world of French food, drink and gastronomy this month — from a potential merger that could create the largest spirits company in the world, to a World Stuffed Cabbage Championship held in a porcelain factory in Limoges. This episode of Fabulously Delicious covers the full breadth of what is happening right now in French food culture — the serious, the surprising and the gloriously niche — with everything you need to know about the stories shaping French gastronomy in April 2026.

The big business story this month is Pernod Ricard — the French spirits giant behind Ricard, Martell, Jameson and Absolut — confirming merger talks with Brown-Forman, the American company that owns Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve. If completed, it would create the largest spirits company in the world and put a very considerable French stamp on global whiskey culture. We also cover Roland-Garros 2026 and the brand new Jardin des Chefs — a dedicated food destination inside the tournament grounds running from the 24th of May, featuring Michelin-starred chefs, signature dishes and the Balle de Break, a chocolate treat in the shape of a tennis ball that is either the best or most ridiculous idea in French food this year.

The episode also covers the 2026 Roux Scholarship, one of the most prestigious culinary competitions in Britain, with deep French roots, where winner Harrison Brockington from Gather restaurant in Totnes impressed judges including honorary president Mauro Colagreco with his Mediterranean-inspired surf and turf. We look at the Le Cordon Bleu London pâtisserie scholarship worth over £75,000, open now with applications closing the 29th of May. And we discuss a fascinating Le Monde article on why young French chefs under thirty are increasingly reluctant to take on management roles in professional kitchens — a significant cultural shift for a country where the chef has always been an almost mythological figure.

The episode closes with the World Stuffed Cabbage Championship — held at the Bernardaud porcelain factory in Limoges, presided over by Philippe Etchebest, and won by Frenchman Olivier Caillon. Because every month of French food news should end with something that makes you smile. Search Fabulously

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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The Story of Roger Vergé: The Chef Who Brought Sunshine to French Cuisine is the latest episode in the Fabulously Delicious Story of French Chefs series — and it tells the full story of one of the most important and most joyful figures in the entire history of French gastronomy. Roger Vergé, founder of Le Moulin de Mougins on the Côte d'Azur, creator of cuisine du soleil and one of the founding fathers of nouvelle cuisine, is a chef whose influence shaped an entire generation of cooks — and whose name deserves to be far more widely known than it is.

We start at the beginning — Commentry in central France, the blacksmith father, the aunt Célestine who gave a five year old boy a wooden bench so he could stand next to her at the stove and watch her cook. From there we follow Vergé through his classical training in Paris at the Tour d'Argent and the Plaza Athénée, his extraordinary years working in Morocco, Algeria and Kenya, and the experiences that gave his cooking a perspective completely unlike anyone else in his generation. In 1969 he opened Le Moulin de Mougins with his wife Denise — a converted seventeenth century olive oil mill near Cannes — and within five years it had all three Michelin stars.

The chefs who trained at the Moulin de Mougins went on to define fine dining across the world — Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud and David Bouley among them. We cover the full story of the restaurant, the cooking school Vergé founded to share his cuisine du soleil philosophy, and the extraordinary 1982 project that saw him partner with Paul Bocuse and Gaston Lenôtre to open Les Chefs de France at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center in Florida — bringing serious French gastronomy to an audience that would never otherwise have encountered it. Because Roger Vergé believed that French food should be for everyone.

He retired in 2003 and died in June 2015 at his home in Mougins, aged 85 — in the village he had made famous, where the sunshine was always brightest. The Gault Millau described him as the very incarnation of the great French chef for foreigners. His own description of his cooking was simpler and more beautiful — cuisine heureuse, happy cooking. This episode is the full story of the man behind that philosophy, and why French gastronomy was warmer for his presence in i

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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The Story of Fabulous French Chefs Part Four brings together five extraordinary figures in French gastronomy — François Vatel, Marie Antoine Carême, Alexis Benoit Soyer, Urbain Dubois and Raymond Oliver. Five centuries of French culinary history, from a seventeenth century maître d'hôtel whose story became one of the most dramatic in the history of French food, to the pioneering television chef who brought French gastronomy into living rooms across France in the 1950s.

We begin with François Vatel — responsible for feeding two thousand guests over three days at one of the most elaborate banquets in French history, whose story ends in tragedy. From there we move to Marie Antoine Carême — born into poverty, abandoned at ten, who went on to cook for Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I and the Prince Regent of England, invented the chef's toque and codified French cuisine into a system professional kitchens still use today. The king of chefs and the chef of kings.

The second half covers Alexis Benoit Soyer — the Frenchman who redesigned the Reform Club kitchen, fed thousands during the Irish Famine and followed Florence Nightingale to the Crimean War. Urbain Dubois — who developed the style of service most of the world still uses today. And Raymond Oliver — the chef who brought French gastronomy to television before anyone knew what a television chef was supposed to look like.

Part Four is the most varied and most surprising instalment of the series yet. Go back and find Parts One, Two and Three for more — and search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full catalogue.

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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Abondance cheese — one of the great forgotten Alpine cheeses of France — has a story that stretches back to the medieval monasteries of Haute-Savoie and all the way to the papal conclave in Avignon in the fourteenth century, where it was served to cardinals from across Europe. In this episode of Fabulously Delicious, we're telling the full story of Abondance cheese — the semi-hard, raw cow's milk Alpine cheese from the Abondance Valley in Haute-Savoie that most people have never heard of, and that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Comté and Beaufort.

The story of Abondance cheese begins with the Cistercian monks of the Abbaye d'Abondance in the French Alps, who began making this extraordinary Alpine cheese in the Middle Ages as a way of preserving milk through long mountain winters. The cheese they developed was so remarkable that by the fourteenth century it was travelling far beyond the valley — all the way to the papal conclave in Avignon, where it was served to the highest ranks of medieval European society. A tiny Alpine valley sending its cheese to the cardinals of Europe. Which tells you everything about the quality of what the monks had created.

The Abondance Valley in Haute-Savoie is one of the most beautiful corners of the French Alps — dramatic peaks, wooden chalets, flower-rich mountain pastures near the Swiss border. And at the heart of it all is the Abondance cow — the chestnut and white breed perfectly adapted to mountain life, producing milk rich in protein and fat that gives Abondance cheese its distinctive fruity, nutty, buttery character. The cheese received its AOC status in 1990 and its AOP in the years that followed, protecting everything from the milk to the shape of the wheel — and ensuring that one of France's great Alpine cheeses remains exactly what it has always been.

Abondance cheese melts beautifully — perfect in fondue, gratins and Alpine dishes — and is at its absolute best between June and December when the cows have been grazing high in the mountains and the milk is at its most aromatic. It's the kind of cheese that makes you wonder why it isn't as famous as its Alpine neighbours. After this episode, you'll understand exactly why it deserves your attention.

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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Alexis Benoit Soyer was born in a small town in northern France in 1810, and by the time he died in London in 1858 he had changed the way Britain thought about food forever. He redesigned the kitchen of one of London's most prestigious private members clubs from scratch, invented cooking technology that had never existed before, fed thousands of starving people during one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the nineteenth century, and transformed the way armies ate in the field. He was famous in his lifetime — celebrated, eccentric, larger than life in every possible way. And today, almost nobody knows his name. This is his story.

We're going back to the beginning — Meaux in northern France, the Protestant family, the seminary he was expelled from at eleven for sounding the bells in the middle of the night, and the journey to Paris that set everything in motion. From there we follow Soyer to London, where his arrival at the Reform Club in 1837 changed the course of British food history. His revolutionary kitchen design, his extraordinary banquets, his cookbooks written specifically for the poor as well as the privileged, and the way he used his fame and his skills to address the social issues of his time in ways that most chefs of his era simply didn't think to do.

The centrepiece of this episode is the Irish Famine — and Soyer's response to it. In 1847 he travelled to Dublin, set up soup kitchens capable of feeding thousands of people a day, and developed recipes specifically designed to provide maximum nutrition from minimum resources. It is one of the most remarkable acts of humanitarian cooking in history, and it sits alongside his work in the Crimean War — where he followed Florence Nightingale to the front, redesigned the field kitchens that were making soldiers sick, and invented portable cooking equipment that the British army used for the next century.

This is a revisited episode — updated, expanded and brought back because the story of Alexis Soyer deserves to be heard by as many people as possible. He is one of the most important figures in the history of French and British food culture, and one of the most unjustly forgotten. By the time this episode is over, you will understand exactly why he matters — and you will not forget his name again.

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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Every month the French food world delivers stories that stop you in your tracks — and March 2026 is no exception. We're opening with the sweeping new trade deal between Australia and the European Union, which after eight years of negotiations has finally been signed — and buried inside the headlines about beef quotas and defence partnerships is a fascinating food story about naming rights, geographical indications and what it means when a country built on migrants claims the names of European cheeses and wines as its own.

From there we move into the Michelin Guide France and Monaco 2026 — the big one. 62 new stars awarded at a ceremony in Monaco, a brand new three-star restaurant in Savoie, and a guide that is clearly rewarding a new generation of chefs opening deeply personal, sustainability-focused establishments throughout France. We also cover the Bocuse d'Or Europe coming to Marseille for the very first time, with Denmark taking the top spot and France finishing fifth on home soil — with all eyes now on the grand final in Lyon in January 2027.

The second half of the episode gets into the stories that show just how politically charged food is in France right now. The government's long-awaited National Strategy for Food, Nutrition and Climate — and the extraordinary row that erupted over whether to use the word "reduction" or "limitation" when talking about meat. France's new ban on foods containing EU-prohibited pesticides, and what it says about the ongoing tension with South American agricultural imports. And a new Ipsos poll that found 97 percent of people in France have a good opinion of French food — but placed Burgundy at a somewhat controversial 28 percent in the most gastronomic region rankings. The people of Dijon will have something to say about that.

We also cover the BBC Eye investigation into the illegal trafficking of European glass eels — a trade worth more per kilogram than cocaine that criminal networks have nicknamed the cocaine of the sea — and finish with festivals and events, including the Fest'Oie goose festival in Sarlat, the Merci Chef French culinary week in Athens, and the French Cultures Festival running across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas throughout April. Everything you need to know about what's happening right now in the world

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My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack , Merci beaucoup!

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