Chefs from the Grand Hotel Europe preparing to storm the Bastille It's no great secret that when it comes to food, French cuisine is considered the best in the world.
So it might seem a trifle impertinent for a Russian and an English chef to turn up at one of the top hotels in Paris to introduce the hotel's head chef to some new ideas. After all, as the saying goes, "you don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs!"
But then the Russians have always had an uncanny knack for taking the best the world has to offer, adapting it to their own manners, culture and style, and thus reinventing it and calling it their own. After all, they did it with ballet, why not cooking?
Recently Grand Hotel Europe chefs Ilya Lazerson and Graham Brundle did exactly that at the highly-rated Hotel Crion. The French chefs were so impressed with the visiting chefs' culinary imagination, they have adopted some of their dishes for their own menus.
Seventy years of communism almost consigned high Russian cuisine to the dustbin of history. But there are those like Mr Brundle and Mr Lazerson who would like us to remember that "la cuisine des tsars" included some of the finest dishes ever to grace a princely table.
This has not been easy and has required considerable research poring over dusty and faded cookbooks from the last century tucked away in the city's libraries. But then, as Mr Lazerson said, "I find research interesting. I'm an intellectual and want to open people's eyes to what Russia has missed over the past 70 years."
So what can one expect from fine Russian cuisine? Surely it's all fatteningly simple beetroot soups and meatballs coated with suet?
Try this sample of dishes for starters: Bouillon de pot au feu Solyanka; Borscht Saint-Petersbourg; Assiette traditionnelles de zakouskis Russes and Salmon de la baltique marine puis fume.
And if that doesn't whet your appetite, then Saint-Jacques Murmansk au caviar and Esturgeon fume pates betterave et safran should rouse the curiosity.
Russian chefs have always had good ideas, but what they lacked were the sauces to accompany their traditional dishes. We've all heard of Beef Stroganov -- it's one of Russia's most famous exports, of course. But how many know that Count Stroganov packed his chefs off to France to find the perfect sauce to complement those tender pieces of beef on a light fluffy bed of rice?
Mr Brundle, 25, said, "When I was working at the Ritz I learned French, Italian and English cuisine, but coming to Russia I really didn't know what to expect having had no experience of Russian cuisine.
"Because Russian `high' cooking has had no exposure or development for 70 years, we had to do masses of research. It's been a real eye-opener," he continued.
"We were able to give the French a lot of new ideas they had never experienced before and they were all over us for the entire week we were in Paris. They were after our recipes and used them in two banquets. Our marinated salmon and salmon blinis went down a treat and it's been a wonderful opportunity for us to see what it means to hold a reputation."
Mr Lazerson added, "the Communists forgot about Russia's cuisine and the food became over-simplified and spoiled. The traditional Russian dishes which were influenced by Western Europe were discarded because the was considered bourgeois. They didn't like anything foreign."
According to Mr Lazerson, a good chef knows his base product and where he can take it. It takes someone who respects what they are making, respects the ingredients and at the same time is not afraid of trying out new things.
"Cuisine can never be stagnant. It is a developing art form that needs inspired ideas. This is what Russia lacked for so long and why I am eager to discover and rediscover Russian cuisine so we can compete with the rest of the world," he said.
The chefs found it interesting to be simultaneously both guests and chefs at the Crion. It was a perfect opportunity to see their work from both sides of the fence -- the kitchen and the dining rooms.
"We were working under some of the biggest names, which was impressive, and it was useful for us to learn that you don't have to be in a hurry to make great food," said Mr Lazerson.