UNLIKELY as it would have seemed a decade ago, the Italians and French are being lured to Britain for the quality of the food.

Written off for years as the poor cooks of Europe, the British are enjoying a revival in the popularity of cuisine and native produce. Regional specialities such as Wensleydale cheese, Arbroath smokies, Cromer crab and Melton Mowbray pork pies account for business worth £3.7 billion a year.

Lord Whitty, the Food and Farming minister, said: “If people are looking for fine food they don’t need to go to Provence and Tuscany any more, they can head straight for the English countryside.”

He has approved a £2.5 million budget to promote Britain’s eclectic cuisine and exploit the market for “gastro-tourism”.

This celebration of British food will please farmers and growers who gather this week at the Royal Agricultural Show at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, the country’s most prestigious farm event.

Lord Whitty said: “Five years ago even the regional food market was really very niche and really not there. But now you go to any market town and there is a specialist food shop or a farmer’s market. This alone will not turn around the fortunes of UK farming but it will give high added value to farming and bring new jobs to rural areas.

“I’ve just had a visit to the Forest of Dean and visited the Three Choirs vineyard and quite frankly anyone going there would think they were in the South of France. It’s just superb.”

Sir Don Curry, head of the Government’s sustainable food and farming strategy, is delighted by the progress, but thinks more can be done.

He would like to see regional food branding at motorway service stations — a scheme which exists on the Continent — so that motorists can stop and buy local produce to take home.

Sir Don said: “There is a real story to tell here about local foods, and motorway service stations are ideal centres. I think regional development agencies should be taking more responsibility and promoting these rural food malls.”

A partnership between Food From Britain, which promotes British produce and exports, and Visit Britain, the tourism authority, has been set up to boost the rural, culinary economy in counties such as Cumbria, Herefordshire and Cornwall.

A new section on the Visit Britain website called Taste has been launched to help British and foreign visitors to plan journeys around the nation’s food trails.

This year a dozen journalists from France, Italy, New Zealand and the USA, including a representative from the widely read American food and entertaining magazine, Bon Appétit, were treated to a taste of gastro holidays available in Britain.

The big push, however, is planned for the autumn when ministers and Food From Britain will promote the nation’s specialities at the Salon del Gusto in Turin, Italy, an international event that attracts thousands of consumers and food buyers.

Charlotte Lawson, director of Food From Britain, said: “We shall have a major presence in Italy and this will give us an opportunity to push food tourism. We have done some survey work and 70 per cent of visitors have said that they want to see more regional food on menus and 30 per cent have told us that the quality of food and drink on offer is one of the most important influences in their choice of destination.”

She added: “With 24.2 million tourists coming to the UK countryside already you can start to see the scale of what might be possible. There has never been a dedicated marketing campaign to promote our food and drink and we think there is a real market out there. We are now making more cheeses than the French and have about 400 different makes. Our vineyards are doing so well that even some French firms have made inquiries to take them over.” Adrian Bevan, of Visit Britain, said that the French, Belgians and Italians appear to be most interested in taking holidays in Britain to get to know its food and drink.

According to Mr Bevan, many visitors coming here are combining a short stay in London with a break in areas renowned for good local food. These include: Ludlow, Shropshire; Padstow, Cornwall; a triangle on the Welsh borders around Brecon, Abergavenny and Hereford; and York. Manchester is also on the itinerary for its Chinese and Asian restaurants.

People are also attending food festivals such as the Pembroke Fish Week in West Wales, the Isle of Wight Garlic Festival and a Blossom Trail in Kent which takes in fruit growers and vineyards.

Mr Bevan said that the most popular British products include West Country cheddar, Colton Bassett stilton, Scottish smoked salmon, Cornish pasties, Edinburgh shortbread, Whitstable oysters, Kendal mint cake, Welsh lamb, Norfolk mustard, West Country clotted cream, Herefordshire and Somerset ciders, and Scottish whiskies.

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