Francois Simon is the influential restaurant critic for Le Figaro and a writer perennially irritated by the complacency of the French culinary establishment. Recently Simon visited the US expecting to return home with a glowing report on the American dining scene. Instead, he flew back to Paris with a distinctly bitter taste in his mouth. He ate at New York's three most acclaimed restaurants, Le Bernardin, Daniel and Per Se, and all three meals fell substantially short of expectations. "There were some good things, but nothing that was really fantastic," he says. "There was something missing."

Simon experienced an even ruder shock driving from Chicago to Los Angeles via the famed Route 66. The story he had hoped to write after several weeks spent eating his way from coast to coast was not the one he ended up writing. "I'd wanted to be able to report that the US is getting better and better as food goes and to tell the French we're not always the best. It was so disappointing to not be able to say that."