I am sitting here in a Michelin listed Restaurant Eugene in Orleans, France, trying to do my job. Scanning the menu with a pen and a notebook by my side, I couldn’t make the decision on whether to choose the item that I understood or, the item that sounded lyrical on the tongue.

“Can I recommend?”

“Oui, s’il vous plait!” Stood by me is a Chris Pine lookalike with a model physique, his suit pressed out of its last wrinkle, his posture and movement unhurried and graceful. Here is a man who was ready to deliver anything I wanted on the menu at my command.

He proceeds to go through each menu item and explaining why I should be having the selected dish. I hmmed and ahhed with his every syllable, but I wasn’t really paying attention, rather let my eyes wander around the curves of his face.

I am writing this to you on paper while eating dinner. By the time you read this it’ll probably be a week old. Dinner may be a posh affair, compliments of the Centre-Val la Loire tourism board, I am still working, and not even the periodic interruptions by the God-of-all-Waiters could take my pen away from me.

This was earlier this month when I spent a couple of days in Orleans learning all about the city’s history. It began with an interest in Joan of Arc, but soon I found that her part in Orleans history really is only minute, taking up 10 days (yes, days) of the thousands of years of conquest and war that has happened before and after. So it seems, the story I need to write needs to change, to reflect a broader view of Orleans.

Except, Joan of Arc is so famous in Orleans (she saved the city from an English siege in 1429) and you simply cannot escape her anywhere in the city. So here I am, with all my notes scattered all around this very elegant dining set, trying to figure out an alternative story.

To say eating in France is a ceremony is not far from the truth. Everything from the chronology of events, presentation of the venue, staff and food to the meticulous way dishes and cutlers are placed and taken away.

There may be great restaurants in London, but I seldom have the same experience of eating as I do in France. For some reason my stories this year had been focused around France that keep bringing me back and each meal had been a gastronomic pleasure.

Delicious cuisines exist everywhere in the world, and while I don’t want to go into a debate on food, because they are all different and comes with a different dining culture, I can safely say this: the French make the ceremony of eating like a performance.

They take it so serious the ‘Gastronomic meal of the French’ is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage list as an intangible heritage.

A couple of years ago, I was having business dinner with a French client. Naturally, dinner composed of aperitif, entrée, main course, dessert and coffee with petit fours. And bottles of wine. There is no meal that passes with a French without wine.

“Why are you not enjoying your food?” During our main course, where I ordered a nice cut of steak with red wine jus, he suddenly enquired with genuine concern.

I was taken aback. Me? Not enjoying my food? Do you not know me? (For reference: I do enjoy food. Very much. Sometimes too much.)

“Yes, I am,” I had replied. “This is a very good steak.”

“Then, why have you not touched your wine?”

A curious conversation following, where it was explained to me that food should not be hurried and the idea of having a drink with your meal is so that you can enjoy how the wine and the food complement each other. The pause caused by a sip of wine also encourages meal time conversations, the pleasure of meal time that has been forgotten in the era of desktop meals and Deliveroos.

So, on this occasion, other than having my notebook with me, I made sure I enjoyed my meal. It isn’t about being pretentious. In fact, if you dine in a French household with home cooked meals, they are also eaten with a sense of pleasure and calm, served with bottles of good wine.

I don’t often gloat, but I really think I could get used to this.