FOOD FIGHT! EN CROISSANT!

From the Globe&Mail

Paris, London in new bun fight

London — French President Jacques Chirac's low opinion of British cuisine provoked a reheated feud in Tuesday's British newspapers.

[...]Taking offence at the French is a staple of British journalism, and newspapers eagerly rose to the bait.

Don't talk crepe, Jacques!” scorned The Sun.

“Chirac's bad taste jokes on Britain plunge relations into the freezer,” said a sub-headline on the front of the Daily Mail.

“Take one unpopular president, a brace of struggling statesmen and a couple of global summits. Heat up a hoary national stereotype, leaven with wit, sit back and watch 'les rosbifs' [the British] simmer,” The Guardian said in a front-page story. It quoted food critic Egon Ronay as saying: “A man full of bile is not fit to pronounce on food.”

The Daily Telegraph said Mr. Chirac's bad temper was understandable, after French voters overwhelmingly rejected a new constitution for the European Union.

“After all, he has just been kicked in the teeth by his own people's resounding ‘non' to his dreams of a European superstate,” the Telegraph commented in an editorial.

“But this is no way to conduct high politics. How would Mr. Chirac feel if others descended to his level of argument, and called him a snob and a has-been, who pongs [stinks] of garlic?” the Telegraph said.

The Sun said Mr. Chirac also could have damaged his country's Olympic bid by criticizing food from Finland in the same conversation ...