No Muslims Allowed In Maxim's

French style filet mignon is one of the few classic french dishes that is allowed a little wiggle room in its recipe - and still have it be regarded as 'straight-down-the-line' so to speak.

And that, I think is probably because filet steak is easily the most tasteless of beef cuts. Although the meat itself is tender and easy to cook so that it gets that charred-on-the-outside, pink-on-the-inside perfect grilled look, when it goes into your mouth it's like 'what the *!' Nothing. Zip.

Wine reduction sauce, this time with bacon...?

And so, the french do all the sauces thing that they have become justifiably famous for - you get mushroom, red wine reduction, even madeira reduction sauce, parsley butter and champagne, truffles (occasionally) and of course, foie gras. And then, there is a further extension of this 'normal' sauce concept with berries of various, usually red, kinds - cherries or blackberries, typically.

When you want to go for a really top of the line modern red wine, you can do no better than the Chateau Angelus, which is a Bordeaux. Here, in the pic below we have our good friend Daniel Craig and the estimable Eva Green in the excellent train scene from Casino Royale. Unusually for recent Bond movies, this scene stands out as pretty decent for both scripting and shot composition, as well as the Bond 'lore,' as it were. There's nothing wrong with updating the wine... He's got a bottle of Angelus there. So someone has the right idea, anyway. He even has the right kind of piqued cotton off-white shirt, although, unfortunately, for whatever reason which simply defies logic and understanding as far as I'm concerned, his tie is just not sitting correctly, with the back of the collar showing above the knot top. Bad form, really. You can't see it in the shot angle of the below pic, but trust me, it's in the film in the front-on close-ups. Just jarring...

So what's the point and who cares what one eats for dinner? Well no one cares and there is no point if you're at home in your bath-robe, but when you are out wearing your piqued fabric marcella shirt, there is a point and I'm not telling you what it is...

Well okay but you have to keep it a secret: if you're a Britisher - you know, a citizen of the country of Caesar Brutus Germanicus - then it doesn't at all matter what your ethnicity is, where you came from originally or what the colour of your skin is; but it matters a whole lot that you are perfectly alba candida in your outward appearance and in your manners. And, like the sauces rule for filet mignon, you don't even need to be exactly candida all the time.

Beau Brummell was in Paris a lot, you know, despite being a Brit. So was Oscar Wilde. 

It's called civilization. And civilization includes Martin Luther King and Madras sport coats. But it does not includes people who think you can mudabarra your slave girls. And then fail to tell people that's what the Quran actually says. Ian Fleming or Muhammad...? Well, I know which one the angel Gabriel visited.