A rumour is stalking the civilised world to the effect that France has lost the culinary plot. Paris, wrecked by le fast food and other atrocities, is considered to exemplify the nadir of French noncuisine.

I must declare my opposition to this slander. Yes, it is possible to eat rotten meals in Paris: a spate of poorly served prix fixes in cramped Left Bank eateries — the kind of Chez Fawlty places that boast fake beams, sour carafe wine and tablecloths splashed with candle wax — is enough to send one running back to snobbish, overhyped, overpriced London. So, too, is the arrogant look of the maître d’ in a Parisian temple of pseudogastronomy. But I don’t yet swallow the chic modern notion that French cooking has succumbed to mediocrity.

To eat really well in Paris, though, it helps to know someone who understands the scene. Happily, I have Jean Bernard. He is not a restaurateur, chef or culinary professional — all of whom have axes to grind — but a simple enthusiast, a man who scours the markets each weekend for seasonal goodies such as truffles, and who would cheerfully pick the locks of a hypermarket for the perfect cauliflower floret.

Anglophile and Jewish, with the physical grace and slow movements of the serious eater, Jean claims to have left Canada because it was impossible to find a good tomato there. But he isn’t a snob or a foodie; he just dislikes pretentious eating. It was he who alerted me to the seasonal selling off of overproduced Bordeaux treasures in unmarked bottles from underground Parisian parking lots.

Parisians, he says, are the ultimate “bobos” (bourgeois bohemians). They got into the habit of eating well when the chefs of the aristocracy were evicted during the revolution, and the world’s first real restaurants opened. Like so much else in Paris, good food arrives there from provincial France. Jean Bernard still believes in real food — la bouffe — and under his guidance I’ve begun to realise how many regional cuisines still thrive in France, and how many ways of enjoying French food still exist. We should think of the business of eating as a vast novel in the style of Balzac — a human comedy in which the good or the renowned do not always triumph, but in which smaller consolations are always to hand.

How and where you eat is, of course, as important as what you consume. The trick, as obvious as this must seem, is to enjoy yourself — and to complain when you don’t. You don’t have to endure the tyranny of the overpriced or mediocre.

THE CAFES

CAFES ARE, of course, in abundance, but an authentic experience can be hard to find. Of the sturdy survivors, the Café de Flore (172 Boulevard St Germain, 6ème; 00 33-1 45 48 55 26) and Les Deux Magots (around the corner on Place St Germain des Prés; 01 45 48 55 25) just about retain their Left Bank leanings, though these days one should eat there without the expectation of meeting any littérateurs.

At the other end of Paris, try the Café Français (3 Place de la Bastille, 4ème; 01 40 29 04 02), facing the Bastille monument, which does the definitive omelette fines herbes. Or go to the Hôtel Costes (239 Rue St Honoré, 1er; 01 42 44 50 00), which has become the hang-out of the fashion crowd and is famous for its teatime scene. The brothers Costes, who came to Paris from the Auvergne many years ago and conquered all, also own the Café Marly (93 Rue de Rivoli, 1er; 01 49 26 06 60). This is where you go to drink coffee between hits of high culture, while admiring the I M Pei pyramid in the Louvre courtyard and the well-dressed Parisian passers-by.

THE BRASSERIES

A GOOD bet for a leisurely lunch or for dinner. The contemporary debate about French food revolves around a consideration of the merits of the brasserie. For some — and Jean Bernard is among them — they are largish, often impersonal, and in their fixed attitudes represent all that is most complacent about contemporary France. Here I must beg to differ. I have had some of the happiest meals of my life in these places.

Brasseries originated in northern or eastern France — the name comes from brasser, to brew — and they are the earliest examples of convenience food. You are encouraged to eat alone in a brasserie, and indulged when you do.

Menus are sometimes almost Japanese in their spareness (and focus on the uncooked, as well as the quality of raw materials); and often only house wine is available. In the best brasseries, service is immaculate, delivered by waiters dressed in black suits and white aprons. Profit-sharing schemes give the personnel a stake in the enterprise.