My grandfather, Richard Steinhardt, was a gourmet.

Plateau de fruit de mer at Le Dome

My grandfather, Richard Steinhardt, was a gourmet. Before the war he used to make special trips, even crossing borders to try recipes from restaurants he had heard about. His father was the foreign editor of a national daily in Vienna and you can see him on the steps in the famous picture of the Archduke Ferdinand who is in his silly hat and about to be assassinated.

My great grandfather, used to go out into the Vienna like a "Grand Seigneur" and occasionally leave his little family at home to fend for themselves, while he had to meet and chat with luminaries. He must have met a lot of interesting people and had some influence. Vienna between the wars was the centre of Europe together with Paris. In winter my grandfather remembered him going out into the night, sophisticated and lordly, wrapped in rich furs, leaving them at home to enjoy dumplings and stews. Some people say my great grandfather didn't share his lustre.

Grandpa so longed, himself, to be the "Grand Seigneur" He married a beautiful young German girl, and they went to live in Paris. My grandmother describes Paris between the Wars as "heaven on Earth." Not quite the City of "Down and Out in Paris and London". When Grandpa Richard came back from his business, he would describe, in minute detail, all the dishes he had tried and my grandmother had the task of reconstructing them.

Heini tells this story:

"When I came to Paris to visit Lisa and Richard and see little Eve, it was 1937, Richard met me at the station and he asked me with a smile. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat. And I said yes, thank you and he took me to a little restaurant that he knew near the station. It was very small, but it was fashionable, you see and so Richard took me there. The only table available had a pillar coming out of the middle of it and so in order to converse we had to lean to one side.

"The restaurant was famous for its hors d'oeuvres and so Richard ordered all 40 of them. And I had to try each one. And he asked me what I though of each one. By the end I was exhausted and full. I couldn't eat another thing. But Richard went on to order the two main courses.

"Your grandfather loved food and as he was travelling all over Europe for his company, as far as Russia, he knew where all the good restaurants were. Sometimes he made a special trip to another country to try a restaurant that had had a good review and that people were talking about."

Granny did and she became a great cook. We visited them in Paris in '67 and and when we finally left Africa and came to England in 1969, we spent Christmas with them in Meudon. Granny Lisa prepared wonderful Christmas diners for us: roast goose stuffed with chestnuts, red cabbage, beautiful deserts: It was colourful, fragrant food with ingredients we never saw in the UK. My grandfather would take my parents to restaurants and very, very occasionally we would join them. There was so much more rigmarole about going to a restaurant in France. If the food was worthy my grandfather would complement the waiter charmingly and sometimes ask to speak to the cook. If it wasn't then dark clouds gathered.

In 1974, when I was fourteen they lived in the South of France. I was in boarding school in the north of England. My grandfather decided he would complement the rather poor education I was getting in Teeside with trips to all the good restaurants along the coastline, from Vingtmille to St. Tropez.

He used to love to go early in the market in Cannes to buy fresh prducts from the stalls. He really got a kick out of it. Once he said with a smile "Try this" and he gave me a large heavy peach. "Lean over the balcony." he said. When I bit into it the juice just ran dripping down my chin. "Is it nice?", he said smiling. He got a real enjoyment out of watching other people enjoy food.

There was a civility and charm to his way of enjoying food that I never see nowadays. Not at home, not in restaurants.

We never had Bouillabaisse in these restaurants, we always started with "Soup de Poisson." A lovely ritual. Scrape the garlic onto the dry stale bread. Sit the bread in the soup plate, put the rouille onto the bread, sprinkle over the Gruyere and then ladle on the soup. The soup melted the cheese. To be eaten with good Rose wine. I articulated his philosophy of cooking to him one day.

-"It is easy to make a good dish with expensive ingredients, but only a good cook can make a good dish from simple ingredients."

I said it, but when I did it was almost like a pupil repeating something back to a teacher. "So, grandpa, what you have been trying to say to me is this...Yes?"