Tasteful tour has Britain at its best

He wrote them in one of his cookery books, which he then gave to me in his two-Michelin starred restaurant, Le Gavroche in London. My thousandth cookery book, to be precise.

I’ve been collecting cookery books for more than 30 years and yes, I do know my way around them. You don’t just get baked beans on toast in our house.

Being a bit mad on cooking has been a lifelong passion that began with making sausage rolls every time my auntie came to visit. No doubt she got heartily sick of them but she never said...

So now I’m at a point that where some people might curl up on the sofa and flick through magazines, read novels or watch soaps, I read cookery books. Can’t get enough of them. They’re my equivalent of crack cocaine. Hence the mammoth collection.

But what has Michel Roux Jnr’s place got to do with it? Chatting to him in his restaurant marked day one of a five-day gastro tour eating in some of the finest, nicest places Britain has to offer.

We’d been saving up madly to treat ourselves to our culinary-fest and eating at his place was the fulfilment of a long-held dream. It didn’t disappoint. And it wasn’t just the food.

For Michel Roux obviously holds the view that if people are going to pay good money to eat his offerings then the least he can do is come out of his kitchen and say hello. After all, those devouring his dishes are those that have put him where he is today.

Day two of the trip saw us at Tyddyn Llan, a Georgian country house on the edge of Snowdonia, with the highest Good Food Guide rating in Wales, the guide’s readers’ restaurant of the year in 2010 and the holder of a Michelin Star.

Think local and seasonal, happy lambs in nearby fields that end up on the plate, that Welsh staple of laverbread – seaweed to you and me – and you’ve got it. The trip here was at the recommendation of friends who’ve been raving about the place for ages. And now we can see why.

Next on the list was L’Enclume, in the beautiful, small Cumbrian village of Cartmel at the southern tip of the Lake District just on the fringe of the top edge of Morecambe Bay.

A different treatment this time, with just three tasting menus on offer, with food not just locally sourced but every morsel cultivated or reared on the restaurant’s nearby farm.

Some say this place is like Heston Blumenthal’s culinary cauldron, the Fat Duck, only up north. It’s true that chef Simon Rogan is something of an alchemist too, but if you’re after stodgy, ’otpot type food go elsewhere, for this food is light of touch, creatively sating your appetite without over-stuffing you.

Day four was nearer home, at the Yorke Arms, in Ramsgill above Pateley Bridge, which is sort of like London dining in the Dales. The food is award-winning and chef Frances Atkins is only one of a handful of female Michelin Star holders in the UK.

Last, but by no means least, was The Star Inn, at Harome near Helmsley, where chef Andrew Pern has shrugged off the disappointment of losing his Michelin star at the beginning of the year and is turning out best of British dishes of imaginatively treated, high-quality ingredients.

It’s almost as though the Michelin shackles are off now and the kitchen’s imagination is running free, because the food now has a new edge to it and its tables are full to prove it. It just goes to show that a Michelin star isn’t everything – far from it. Nor should it be.

For what was increasingly apparent as our trip progressed was that this wasn’t just a culinary indulgence, but a feast for the eyes of all that’s best of what Britain has to offer.

Mooching round Portobello Market in London’s Notting Hill the day of our trip to Le Gavroche was an amuse bouche of what was to come.

Flashing through the May blossom countryside on the train journey back north before heading out to Wales served as an appetiser for the mountains of Snowdonia.

And driving along deserted roads in the shadow of imposing Lakeland fells or over the breathtaking roof of England that is the northern Pennines was the main course of a trip that highlighted why this country of ours can be such a wonderful place to be.