Various - Madrid

Jacques Chirac, the president of France has recently been outspoken on the issue of British Food. When you bear in mind that Chirac's only experience of British food is at Buckingham Palace his criticisms seem uninformed at best. Of course there was a time when British food really was awful compared to what you could get on the continent, but those days are long gone.

It's still possible to eat dreadful food in the UK, but if you know where to go it's getting more difficult. The untold story is how bad some of the food you get on the continent is - if you don't know where to go.

I've just returned to my hotel from that uniquely miserable experience, the solo business dinner in a strange city. Marooned, late at night, in the Spanish holiday season, in Madrid's ghastly business district, I picked an Italian restaurant called Carpaccio more or less at random.

Equipped with a poorly translated menu (with no prices) I decided to go for their signature dish, a Carpaccio Parmesana. The Carpaccio was a single molecular layer of raw sliced beef, smothered in shaved parmesan. It tasted of nothing. No, that's not quite fair - it tasted of shaved parmesan.

For the main course I decided to be adventurous and try grilled baby octupus with a garlic dip. When it arrived I realised that I had been imagining at least an adolescent octopus - at any rate a single octopus rather than an horrific genocide of hundreds of miniscule octupi in a pyramid, accompanied by three boiled potatos and some slivers of boiled onion. Yuck! It tasted of nothing. No that's not quite fair - it tasted of garlic dip.

Last month I had a croque monsieur in a very fashionable area of Paris. I knew that croque monsieur is French for cheese on toast but for €13 I was expecting something a little more interesting. But it was just cheese on toast - "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad" as Mr Chirac would say.

So now I am back in my hotel room, raiding the minibar, watching CNN and waiting for the Easyjet flight that will take me home to Nottingham where I can eat well, in the company of friends.

OK - so I did eat good food in Madrid as well. I had a night out with colleagues in the old city where there are wonderful tapas, scandalously cheap fine wines and beer and great company but let's hear no more about how awful the food is in the UK. You just need to know where to go - hence this blog.