Some four centuries ago, the French statesman, the Duc de Sully, observed ‘The English take their pleasures sadly, after the fashion of their country’. Nowhere is the contrast between French and British behaviour more apparent than in restaurants. Where the British tend to eat their meals quickly, the French enjoy protracted sessions at the table.

There are many theories about why this should be so. One is that the British like to eat their food while it is hot. The French, it is argued, never having grasped the importance of serving hot foods on hot plates, see no benefit in rushing. A friend, basing her theory on observing French women dining à deux, suggests that they talk so much that eating becomes secondary to conversation. Whether or not that is true, most of us have encountered those vast French family Sunday lunches, where several generations foregather, and which can easily run from noon till well after five.

This brings us to another contrast. French restaurants actively welcome children and members of the waiting staff cheerfully accept their sometimes bizarre behaviour. British restaurants do their damnedest to discourage them. The result is that French children, having been taken out for meals from an early age, soon acclimatise to that environment. British parents are obliged to take their children to fast-food and chain restaurants, which offer play areas and other distractions; consequently their offspring when taken out to eat in France tend to behave relatively badly, though they are still often indulged by friendly waiters.

From this French attitude to under-age diners stems the ubiquity of the children’s menu. While this may not be the case in the très snob establishments of Paris, it holds good in the regions. It is even the case in such palaces of gastronomy as the triple-rosetted Paul Bocuse, just outside Lyon. While an adult meal might call for a second mortgage, the children’s menus are little more expensive than in your neighbourhood brasserie.

Unquestionably, the French generally seem able to regard eating out as a social occasion, while still taking their food seriously. You have only to take part in the sort of open-air communal feasts common in French villages to appreciate this. It is also often the case that a couple expecting a quiet meal will find themselves on the fringe of a large party, only to be regarded as loosely associated with it by virtue of the hospitable ambience.

Another example of the French capacity for concentration on their food struck us during a recent visit to Avignon. The main street is undergoing huge roadworks which have caused the pavements to be uprooted and to be surrounded by high metal fences around the necessary machines and materials. Despite this, tables set out on the remaining slivers of paved space were full of customers, chatting and eating away, apparently oblivious to surrounding noise and dust-clouds. Imagine that happening in Britain!

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The article first appeared in the February 2007 issue of The Connexion, the newspaper for English-speakers in France. To order a free trial copy of The Connexion click here.