When Hot Dinners attended the press launch of the 2010 London Restaurant Festival, organisers Fay Maschler and Simon Davis were keen to keep details of some of the key events to themselves, so they could feed us choice titbits between now and October.
Happily critic AA Gill has no compunction about keeping schtum and blithely reveals in his review of Bistrot Bruno Loubet this week that he's been approached to take part in a new debating event as part of this year's festival events.
'Fay Maschler, the doyenne of my profession, has just called to ask if I’d take part in the London Restaurant Festival debate on whether French cuisine is a spent force,' he writes in The Sunday Times today.
Although Fay and Simon Davis said that last year's lectures at King's Place would evolve into "contentious debates" this year, this is the first we've heard of the debate subject - which certainly lives up to the "contentious" tag. AA Gill doesn't mention whether he's accepted Fay's offer, but given the essay he then launches into about good and bad French food, it looks as though he might.
