I thought the best place for French food was Britain. Then my holiday breakfast arrived… | Rachel Cooke

I long to believe the French eat better than everyone else. And, for one morning at least, it seemed to be true

A restaurant with rooms, somewhere in the south of France. At 9am, a perfectly simple breakfast is served: coffee, croissants, apricot jam. But what's this? On a side plate, sits a rectangular slab of primrose-coloured butter, its dimensions exactly the same as those of the croissants. I'm not big on Instagram, but at this point I can't resist. Placing a sugar cube beside it for scale, I photograph the butter and post it with the ecstatic (I may mean slightly hysterical) caption: BREAKFAST IN FRANCE. THIS IS HOW TO LIVE!

Some part of me longs to believe that the French still live superior gustatory lives to our own. Their melons are sweeter, their lunches longer, and no one worries about how much fat is in anything - or so I tell myself. Over supper the night before, a friend and I had talked of the inexpensive set menus we both remember from long ago family holidays, the pair of us competing to reel off the predictable but delicious courses: carrot rappee to start, confit of duck with potatoes and frisee to follow, some cheese and then chocolate mousse or creme caramel to finish. We agreed that there's lately far too much burrata abroad in la France profonde, burrata being shorthand for the way the country's restaurant menus have become blurry and fussy. But now I begin to think there may be hope. In what other country would this quantity of butter be considered an essential component of a decent breakfast?