Christmas here, Christmas there... Holiday traditions in France versus those in the UK

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00:00You are celebrating Christmas then. Just how are you doing it? We're here in France. The main

00:04celebrations were very much last night with people gathering together to eat traditional

00:08seafood. Where I'm from originally, the UK, Christmas centers very much around lunch

00:13on the 25th. Turkey usually, which of course for Americans is eaten mostly at Thanksgiving,

00:18but you're enjoying yours at the moment in the UK. I hope you're enjoying it. Well,

00:22we're going to discuss the festive traditions now of Christmas with Oliver Woodhead, who is the owner

00:28of L'Entente Le Brasserie here in Paris. Thanks very much for joining us on the program. It's

00:33quite interesting, isn't it, to look at the different way that different countries deal

00:37with and cope with Christmas. It is very different between different countries, isn't it?

00:42It is indeed. Hello there. Merry Christmas, everyone. I've got a restaurant here and we

00:46do normally about 90% French clientele, 10% the rest. Today, we have 200 bookings and

00:54it's quite international, but I'm surprised by we're about 50% French today, which I'm

00:59surprised about. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how you've got time to talk to us, to be honest.

01:03You must be incredibly busy. Yeah, I've jumped out. I've left a minute. But so in a restaurant

01:09setting, you're absolutely right. It would be turkey normally, but a big whole turkey, which

01:14is easy to do at home or not easy to say loads of cooks, it would dry out in a restaurant setting.

01:20So here we do deboned, roasted guinea fowl with stuffing inside so we can slice it down and then

01:27just do big rondelles of them. And what do you do on the night before, on the 24th? Because as I

01:33said, for French people, it's very much about seafood. I mean, are you doing seafood or is that

01:37a no-no because, of course, you're a British restaurant? No, no, no, absolutely not. We have

01:41oysters and we have a salmon rillette on the menu, which is one of the starters today in the fixed

01:45menu. And last night we were also very busy, which is great. It sounds like you're doing a kind

01:51of a mix between the two, hoping, I'm sure you are, but hoping to please everybody, as it were.

01:57Yeah, we're doing OK. Also, what's funny, so a lot of our North American clientele, I would say

02:05some traditions from the UK are exactly the same in North America. Others maybe haven't made it.

02:11And Christmas crackers, that we have shipped over 1,400 of them for December, it's amazing

02:18how many tables really don't know what they are. And then the question is, do you pull them

02:24separately or do you cross hands? A bit of each, I think. Depends who's next to you.

02:30It is funny, isn't it, how those traditions go across countries. I mean, you mentioned Christmas

02:35crackers. When I first came here about 15 years ago, you didn't see Christmas crackers over here

02:40at all. But if you go into the supermarket today, most of them I think you will find Christmas

02:44crackers. Yeah, we had to order a huge pallet three months ago. Just to make sure you get them.

02:52And it's difficult, isn't it, getting the food that you might be used to. I mean,

02:56you know, we're both obviously British guys living here in France. Shouldn't we just be

03:01eating French? But for example, there's just those odd things that you absolutely adore from when you

03:07grew up as a child. And it used to be quite easy to get quite a lot of them here in Paris. But after

03:12the closure of a certain well-known British supermarket, which is no longer here in France,

03:17it can be quite hard, can't it? Yeah, we're working on a little deli project for that. But

03:22suet in our mince pies, what do we do? So a sandu in French. So I found a way. I found a way to get

03:30industrial quantities of suet into Paris. Yeah, not so easy, not so easy. So tell us about your

03:39plans, because presumably you've also got plans for the new year as well. Well, the idea is we're

03:43opening a wine bar and a sandwich bar and then hopefully a wine shop that has a deli aspect to

03:50it. But those are all projects. They're works in progress. And there is definitely demand out there.

03:56And for example, in January, which is Burns Night further down, but we do haggis throughout the month

04:02and it absolutely flies off the menu, haggis, neeps and tatties.

04:05I don't even know if I've ever had it. And I'm actually a quarter Scottish, which is probably

04:09terrible to say. Oh no, there's just one final question that I've got for you. My absolute

04:13favourite, and I know this really is a love or a not love, is the Christmas pudding. And I know

04:19there's an Irish shop here in Paris. So I went to the Irish shop about three weeks ago, bought one,

04:25and I made my brandy butter last night to go on the top to make sure that I've got that nice

04:30and fresh as well. Do you do Christmas pudding? Absolutely, we do. But here we do it with creme

04:35anglaise. We don't retail them, but the little sprig of holly on the top and icing sugar and

04:41absolutely been flying out all of December. OK, well, that's a date then. I shall be knocking

04:46on your door at some point over the next week to get another portion. Yeah, one more week left.

04:52One more week. OK, right. It's in the diary. Great to have you with us. Thank you very much.

04:58Thanks for being with us. Oliver Woodhead there, who's owner of Longtente, the British

05:03brasserie here in Paris.

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