LAST month French leader Jacques Chirac reportedly ripped into British cuisine. The president apparently told fellow leaders at a summit in Russia that, "you can't trust people who cook as badly as that".

Immediately TV chef Rick Stein was on the defensive.

"I'd actually cooked for him at Downing Street a few years ago," says Stein, "and he drank beer all night. And not just French beer but German beer.

"When that story came out my response was that, as someone who likes to drink beer all through a banquet, I wonder if he's the right person to comment."

The 58-year-old chef is perfectly placed to get involved in the British food versus French food debate. Not only is he successful in this country, but recently he took the time to go over to France to investigate French cuisine for his new TV series and book French Odyssey.

"I think with French food the produce is generally better," he says, "and therefore it is possibly more easy to eat well in France. But I think we are so keen to narrow the gap that we're on the way up really.

"You might almost say we're on the way up and they're on the way down, but they're still a lot further up than we are," he laughs.

"I think we still have things to be embarrassed about. But not with our cuisine, at least when it's done properly.

"I recently had a conversation with a Frenchman who lives in London who said he really loves English cooking because it's so simple. But it does depend on good quality ingredients and that's where I think we've been slipping up for so long."

Stein spent much of last summer in southern France on his French odyssey, traversing the country by a canal boat - "It just made it interesting," he says. "We realised it's not something many British people would have done."

The idea for the show and book came about when Stein heard something he found difficult to believe - that the French were going mad for fast food. Curious to see if this was actually the case, he put his idea of an odyssey to France to the BBC, they loved it and off he went.

"It had been some time since I'd spent any time in France," says Stein. "I wanted to see what things were like there because we'd heard these rumours that fast food was popular and that restaurants were going downhill. But we discovered that things were still pretty good, generally.

"The markets are still very good, people's attitude to cooking is still very good, although some of the restaurants are maybe not so good. Maybe the British have moved on a bit there. But generally it's a fabulous country for enjoying food." That said, McDonald's and the like are making their mark on the country.

"You go into any large town in France now and there's always a McDonald's," says Stein. "But I think generally there's plenty of other food as well. I think they just find fast food perfectly acceptable.

"I asked the skipper of the barge we were on, Bernard, what he thought of McDonald's and he said: 'They've got very clean toilets'," laughs Stein. "I think he was saying that they're not bothered. They've got plenty of other good restaurants, fantastic markets, and, yes, they go to a McDonald's occasionally."

As he talks about the trip, it is clear Stein had a hugely enjoyable time. He even discovered some new food he had never come across before, such as a type of seafood called a violet, as well as an eel dish that had chocolate in the recipe and pig's chiplings - "Not everyone's cup of tea but I loved them."

But if you are a regular viewer of Stein's culinary adventures you will notice that there is one aspect of the usual Stein trip that is missing in this series - his faithful dog Chalky.

"I missed him," says Stein. "He would have loved the trip because we stopped at the most lovely rural parts of France and he could have zipped down the old gangplank and gone off on little hunting expeditions. We could have taken him on some great walks.

"But we didn't get him chipped in time for the trip, plus he is getting a bit old, I have to say. But he's in the series quite a bit just sitting at home watching us on the television."

Stein also left behind his publicist girlfriend Sarah Burns. The couple have been together since 2002 when he split from his wife Jill after an affair. Stein still works closely with Jill who, as his business partner, looks after the couple's businesses in Padstow, Cornwall while he's away.

"I actually still work quite successfully with Jill," says Stein. "It hasn't really been difficult at all. It wasn't pleasant, the split and all that, but I think we were both determined to make sure the business didn't suffer.

"We did think about selling it but we've got 250 people working for us. It's not something you'd want to do really."

The chef has nurtured his business interests in Padstow into a small empire, helped along no end by his regular appearances on television. What is sometimes jokingly referred to as Padstein takes in two hotels, one with a bistro, a patisserie, deli, café, gift shop, cookery school and a fish and chip shop.

Now Stein's three sons are picking up their father's legacy. While Jack, 24, and Charles, 19 only work in their father's businesses while on breaks from their university studies, Edward, 26, has become very involved, working as a produce manager at Stein's deli.

"It is nice they're interested," he says. "They see it like I do really, they've got the same sort of interest in the quality of it. Not just in the food and the cooking, but in the good relationships with the rest of the staff."

Leaving things in his family's capable hands, Stein can move on to his next TV project - a series looking at the Cornwall of Sir John Betjeman, being made to mark the late poet's 100th birthday.

"We thought it would be nice to look at Cornwall the way he looked at it," says Stein. "To recite lots of his poems, talk to lots of people he knew, ask them what he was about.

"Will I be making any pasties on the show? Why not?" he laughs. "I used to make them, loads of them. In the early days of making pasties I was down there in the bakery hand-crimping them myself. It makes your thumbs ache a bit, but, yeah, I'll have a go again."

• Rick Stein's French Odyssey, BBC2, Wednesdays, 8pm