Of course it is not just the French who are fascinated with food (although it certainly does open doors in that country where Taste is regularly voted in as the top sense, and the Liver the most popular organ)

I remember a long time ago a highly sophisticated business man, who worked in advertising, who would have spent a lot of his life entertaining and being entertained, telling me that one of the best conversation makers was to turn to your fellow guest and ask “How do you heat your water ?”
This, he guaranteed, gave you at least thirty minutes to pontificate on the subject of immersion heaters, thermostats, electricity, solid fuel (with subsections coal, anthracite, wood and turf) gas, both town and bottled not to mention the various types of oil, insulation, and nowadays indeed the various alternatives, solar and wind powered etcetera.

I have discovered that it is as nearly as effective as a conversation flower (in the river sense) to confess that I am a chef and have run a restaurant.

Deep down inside every stock broker, teacher, priest, and psychiatrist is a yearning to run a restaurant.
Furthermore they actually know how they, the first in the world, will manage to run a truly successful one.

Their wife/husband/partner can make an amazing Beef Casserole, Chicken Curry or even Stir Fried Vegetarian Satay, and they also know full well that the reason restaurants go to the wall so quickly in Ireland is because thy are “Too Bloody Dear”

“How can they possibly defend charging €20 for a piece of fish which I can buy for €2.50 in the supermarket”

My answer should be -but rarely is, I usually just nod sagely and shut up- that reason that restaurants in Ireland go to the wall so soon is that they are “too bloody cheap”.
This is not a popular notion I know, particularly in these recessionary times.

I am deterred when I enter a restaurant and see that the prices are very cheap.
Somebody somewhere is paying for this if not me.
Usually the person paying for our cheap meal will be a long way away.
Let us take a chicken dish selling in a restaurant for €4.

Trace the chicken and you will find that it comes from a country where they exploit their workers, they are paying for your treat.
I no longer have to spell out the cruelty of intensively reared chickens, that has been well documented, these lads are also paying for your treat.

Just last summer we were approached by an English ex-pat who lives in our village in France who looked into our trolley and said that we must be potty to buy our (free range) chickens here when we could get the buy chickens -and “fully cooked” in a shop in the village for half the price.
Easy known he had been out of the ambit of Hugh and Jamie for a few years.

So all of that stuff does not go for making good dinner party conversation.
This is why I have now adopted a ploy.
If I am placed next to a stranger at a social occasion and they start to ask what I do/did for a living I quickly counter with a quick ; “Tell me, How do you heat your water ?”