The Michelin-starred restaurant Les Ambassadeurs, overlooking the Place de la Concorde in the Hôtel de Crillon serves exquisite food at prices to match. A starter that has become a signature of 37-year-old chef Jean-Fran-çois Piège is caviar golden d'Iran/nage corsée/langoustines. The price for this creation is €130.
Past the glittering chandeliers, the harpist in the tea-room and a courtyard patio where customers drink champagne poured from Baccarat crystal jugs is the hotel's more informal dining option, L'Obélisque.
This month a new addition to Piège's repertoire was on the menu in L'Obélisque: riz d'équité/curry/langoustine. The primary ingredient is "fair-trade rice".
Fair-trade basmati rice, grown by Indian families who have received a fair (above market) price for their product and worked in fair conditions (in a co-operative no less) will be served with Dublin Bay prawns in a fair-trade Madras curry. The dish will be among several (non fair-trade) choices on a €50-per-head menu.
It doesn't seem long since fair-trade food meant dubious-tasting coffee, dusty tea and chewy dried fruits sold in Oxfam shops or "alternative" co-operatives where world music played in the background. Fair-trade food and beverages have now gone mainstream, stocked on supermarket shelves, served in coffee shops and advertised in national newspapers. Fair-trade coffee now accounts for 4 per cent of all coffee sales in the UK.
The fair-trade market in Britain is the biggest in Europe, bigger than that of the US. The growth has been phenomenal. In 1998, total fair-trade retail sales in Britain were £16.7m. Just seven years later, in 2005, they reached £195m.
Mercure and Novotel hotels in the UK serve fair-trade coffee. Many vegetarian and organic restaurants fly the flag. But upmarket hotels and restaurants have been slow to catch on. London's Sanderson Hotel serves a fair-trade chocolate cocktail called "Divine Experience" (£8). And customers at Rick Stein's and Jamie Oliver's restaurants sip fair-trade coffee. But few other top-end restaurants or bars boast fair-trade ingredients.
Perhaps it is the incongruity of serving "equitable" products in elitist establishments. "An expensive price does not match with a fair-trade dish," says Piège, who only serves the fair-trade prawn curry in the less expensive L'Obélisque restaurant. But at €50 a head - a month's wage for many in the developing world - it's all relative. Hôtel de Crillon also sells fair-trade Mexican coffee at €6.50 a cup.
Quality and taste are usually the deciding factors for Michelin-starred chefs, not ethics. For some, fair-trade is synonymous with poor quality. According to a spokesman, Gordon Ramsay's restaurants don't use any fair-trade ingredients, just the "best produce".
However, Piège thinks that fair-trade ingredients are, by definition, of better quality than most "because human beings are taking care about the ingredients. The taste is also better because it is not an industrial production."
The UK's fair-trade labelling organisation, the Fairtrade Foundation, is pleased to see fair-trade going upmarket. "It's not at all incongruous for fair-trade products to be served in expensive restaurants," says Ian Bretman, deputy director. "We want to move fair-trade away from being a charity. After all the whole point is that people trade their way out of poverty."
He is glad there are now "some really good quality products" that merit being on the menus of top restaurants because they "add value".
But what do the growers say when they hear that their rice or coffee is commanding premium prices? "Growers are aggrieved that they get such a small percentage of the final sale price," says Kevin Cleaver, the World Bank's director of agriculture and rural development, who, with his Peruvian wife, also owns a coffee farm in Peru.
In a "market price" situation, says Cleaver, three to four cents from each cup of coffee sold goes to the grower. A fair-trade grower gets two to three times that. As for the Hôtel de Crillon's €6.50 cup of fair-trade coffee, Cleaver fumes: "They're making a killing. Is it really fair? It's fairer, yes, but 'fair-trade' in this situation is a marketing ploy that's benefiting the ultimate seller."
Supermarkets "are driving prices down, paying just what'sadequate to keep [third world] farmers in business", says Cleaver. Meanwhile, in industrialised countries, huge subsidies go to farmers.
"The net result of subsidies and tariff protection is messy," says Cleaver. "Fair-trade is a positive thing among all this, but it's stilla drop in a bucket."
Paul Miles was a guest of Eurostar (www.eurostar.com) and Hotel Lutetia (www.concorde-hotels.com)
