The Guardian's 'how to make the perfect' food writer talks to us about cycling, fiction and her favourite French eatery

After embarking on a cuisine-themed Tour de France in her bestselling travelogue One More Croissant for the Road, British food writer Felicity Cloake has now turned her hand to foodie fiction. 

The award-winning author and journalist writes the Guardian’s long-running How to make the perfect… weekly recipe column, has published five cookbooks and three food-focused travelogues, and in May this year released her first novel: The Underdog (see below).

She will be appearing as a guest author at Festilitt, a franco-english literary festival in Parisot (Tarn-et-Garonne) from October 9-11.

“My honest reaction to the invitation was: who wouldn’t want to go to south-west France for the weekend? Sounds delicious!” Ms Cloake told The Connexion.

The festival started in 2013, stemming from a desire to unite French and English-speaking communities through a shared love of reading - an idea Ms Cloake described as “incredibly exciting.”

“My French is not good enough to make reading in French a pleasure for me unfortunately, but I am trying to read more books in translation. You can tell so much about a culture and its values through its literature I think, and to confine oneself just to one’s mother tongue is a shame,” she added.

As well as her love for reading and writing, Ms Cloake is a keen cyclist and is gearing up to bike from the south-west of Paris to Parisot in time for the festival. 

“It is so hard to bring a bike from the UK to France, but I will bring it in a bag on the Eurostar. If I had more time I would have got a ferry and cycled from the north coast. It is always such a joy to cycle in France. It is my favourite thing to do,” she said.

Exploring French cuisine by bike

In her book One More Croissant for the Road, a Sunday Times bestseller and a BBC Radio Four book of the week, Ms Cloake cycled 2,300km across France on a journey themed around 21 classic French dishes.

The idea came to her during a cycling trip with friends.

“I thought I knew France quite well at that point because my parents had a house down in the Var for over a decade - but I had discovered this new slow-paced way of seeing it.

“Bike travel is great because it is slow enough to pick up all the little details and fast enough that you can see the landscape changing around you - from the slate tiles in Brittany to the terracotta further south, and the shift from cider to wine.

"The journey is the adventure. I think there is no better way to travel France,” she said. 

A particular highlight from her food-inspired Tour de France came after a long cycle through Haute-Savoie.

“I rode the col de Joux Plane, one of the big Tour de France climbs, and my aim was to go from Samoëns over the col to Morzine and eat a tartiflette. It was the middle of summer and people thought I was mad but the sporting achievement, the views and then the pay off at the end was difficult to beat,” said Ms Cloake. 

Another of her stand-out French food experiences happened further north, in Blainville-sur-Mer in Normandy at a restaurant called La Cale. 

“It is on a beach and I think it is only open in summer but they do the most lovely moules-frites there and oysters and shoulders of lamb.

"It is chaotic in what I would say is a very un-French way, very casual - it is just brilliant. The man that owns it is beautifully eccentric and hilarious and as an experience it is hard to top. 

“It is not hard to find good food in France but the thing that can make a restaurant really special is creating an atmosphere that just makes you want to sit there all afternoon,” she said. 

Foodie fiction writing

When writing her novel The Underdog, it is no surprise that Ms Cloake found herself gravitating towards familiar food themes, while enjoying an added layer of fictional freedom.

“I knew I had to set the book in the food world because that is what I know and what I enjoy writing about.

“Unmoored from reality, I could just create the most fantastical menus and it was really fun. For example, one of the characters is an up-and-coming chef and I invented a signature dish for him called ‘Textures of Turnip’. It is the sort of ridiculous thing I can see on the menu of a really trendy London restaurant, but which also sounds really underwhelming,” she added.

The author also explained how her novel ties into Festilitt’s key theme for 2026: ‘how can we live together in this strange, new place?’

“In The Underdog, the narrator has a quarter-life crisis. She has made sensible decisions for all of her life and thinks everything is all on track, and then something happens to throw all of that out. She realises that she should be doing what she loves and she decides to give up her law career and become a chef. 

“You should be adaptable and ready to go with whatever the world throws at you, no matter how strange. It is never too late to change and there is never something you have done that you can’t undo,” she said.

Ms Cloake is currently writing her second novel. Details are yet to be announced, however she did reveal the book is set in France and will feature at least one recipe allowing readers to immerse themselves in the story by baking along at home.

Read more from this interview in The Connexion’s upcoming November print edition.