Appetite for Gallic gastronomic delights remains as healthy as ever

Hong Kong's love affair with French food and wine has been flourishing for decades - and its ardour shows no sign of cooling.

Many of the city's finest restaurants are French in style - even if the chef holds a passport from another country - and all levels of the cuisine are represented, from the croissants and croques monsieur, hurriedly wolfed at Delifrance outlets at breakfast time, to leisurely fine dining in five-star hotels in the evening.

Hong Kong got its introduction to modern French cuisine in 1982 when the great Paul Bocuse came here to open the Restaurant de France at what was then the Regal Meridien Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Bocuse and his lieutenants prepared the nouvelle cuisine of which he was the leading exponent at that pioneering restaurant, which sadly closed a number of years ago.

Today, we have restaurants overseen - albeit mostly from afar - by the most important French chefs of the post-nouvelle cuisine era: Joel Robuchon, Alain Ducasse and Pierre Gagnaire.

Robuchon, who also supervises and occasionally cooks at Robuchon a Galera in Macau where he was awarded three stars in the controversial Michelin Guide to Hong Kong and Macau 2009, is considered by many the greatest chef of the 20th century. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon in The Landmark was awarded two stars. The tasting menu affords a good introduction to Robuchon's style.