Ducasse affirms his commitment to grovelling in the restaurant's literature, which promises a ballet in the form of the manager, the unfortunate Denis Courtiade, who will apparently present clients with "marks of attention that accompany them throughout the meal. He offers innovative, liberated gestures. Simple and authentic movements, building the meal into an experience that engages the entire body." (Translation theirs.)

We began with carrot juice. "This," whispered Denis (for it was he), "is a freshly pressed apple and carrot juice, with a hint of ginger." The juice was served with a muesli biscuit. Neither was nearly as nice as the ones I get in Prêt à Manger. I felt apostasy stirring within me, though it could have been the muesli. Obviously, we should have left right then, but I admire Ducasse. I wanted to believe, in the same way that Houellebecq's protagonist wants to experience spiritual transcendence when he contemplates the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. There are two menus available, one featuring the said fish, vegetable and cereals, the other for refuseniks. The second had meat, which was encouraging, but Denis made it painfully clear as he wearily took our order that we hadn't just let him down, we had Let Ourselves Down.

The only radiant moment was the amuse-bouche, a truly exquisite langoustine broth, potent and delicate, the sweet flesh of the shellfish hovering in the aroma like the ghost of Ducasse's talent. Because what followed was one of the most offensively horrible dinners I have ever tried to eat—a truffle-coated betrayal of everything Ducasse claims to represent. We had doubted, and our penance came in layer upon layer of Piedmontese fungus, shaved onto poulet de bresse, blended with kasha, swimming in thick, menacing pools of demi-glace—the culinary equivalent of being caught having a sneaky fag at school and being made to eat the packet. The wine list is ranked by "generations" in five-yearly intervals—there was nothing under €100 a bottle and nothing that could cut the nauseating florescence of the truffles, pervasive and deathly as the hothouse lilies of À rebours. 

In Soumission, François considers Huysmans's view of the sensual and emotional solace offered by food, which remains when fleshly desire and ambition have fallen away. After "a long and fastidious period of modernism", Huysmans's conclusions again obtain, as evinced in François's observation of the number of successful television programmes dedicated to cuisine terroir. The flailing search for roots, for certainty, is answered in Houellebecq's argument on a plate, but it is fake, primped and prettified for viewers who consume it virtually while grazing on frozen junk. 

Paris at present feels gaunt but defiant, bright with starveling solidarity. The food Ducasse is serving is an insult to this shattered city, yet perhaps it represents the aching bitterness which Houellebecq's work engages, the hunger at the core of liberated  (market-driven) individualism from which François gratefully and hypocritically turns away. Ducasse has been a great chef, and may be again. Yet maybe what Soumission is about is the trap that François constructs for himself. As his colleague's youthful second wife serves him with excellent Meursault and delicious coriander-scented pâtés prepared by wife number one, he wilfully ignores that he has chosen a world in which idols may no longer be smashed.