Sue Perkins’ Big Adventure: From Paris To Istanbul review: She raved about pan-fried crickets and mealworms . . . cordon bleuggh!, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Sue Perkins’ Big Adventure: From Paris To Istanbul (Channel 4)

Rating:

Parisian pan-fried crickets in passata, served with diced leek and scattered with petals, followed by mealworms soaked in honey with a topping of nougat ice cream … that’s what you call cordon bleuggh.

Exploring the French capital at the beginning of her Big Adventure: From Paris To Istanbul (Ch4), Sue Perkins was urging us to enjoy ‘sustainable’ gourmet dining in a back-street restaurant.

Chef Laurent Veyet told her, ‘I want to make people care about the planet, and we have to be careful what we eat.’ 

I couldn’t agree more, and I’m particularly careful not to eat crickets or mealworms.

This isn’t the first time six-legged fare has been urged upon us as a solution to the global hunger crisis. Usually, though, it’s extolled by scientists for practical reasons: crickets are full of protein and cheaper to rear than cattle.

Sue Perkins poses with a giant croissant. ‘Sue raved about the flavours, but I have my doubts about her reliability as a food critic’

Sue outside the Eiffel Tower. She ‘must have a hankering for glamour, because she also stopped at a modelling agency where she learned to do the catwalk strut’

Treating a plate of insects as an epicurean experience is a new departure.

Sue raved about the flavours, but I have my doubts about her reliability as a food critic. 

When Laurent asked if she cooks at home, she told him earnestly, ‘All the time. I love it, I’m obsessed with it.’

Funny — she’s lined up to appear later this month on BBC2 with former Bake Off chum Mary Berry, learning how to make a basic rhubarb pie.

This show is a travelogue with, so far, no travelling. Sue made a pretence of choosing a tuk-tuk over tickets for the Orient Express and cited a family motto: ‘Miss a train, gain an adventure.’

Her adventures in Paris weren’t very daring, but she did avoid the usual tourist sights — Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower were not on her list. 

Instead, she visited a rooftop farm, a cluster of allotments on top of the Paris exhibition centre at the Porte de Versailles, which produces up to 440lb of fruit and veg daily. 

It even boasts a miniature vineyard. Then she went backstage at the Crazy Horse cabaret, where the walls are decorated with plaster casts of breasts, and had a lesson in exotic dance from instructors Lola Kashmir and Etta D’Amour.

Wearing a bobbed blue wig that made her look like the Vicar of Dibley on acid, she tried high-kicking while hanging from straps. 

Sue must have a hankering for glamour, because she also stopped at a modelling agency where she learned to do the catwalk strut. 

This time, her teacher was a young woman called Daniella, who was about 7ft tall in heels, and who claimed she learned the technique from Giorgio Armani himself.

Daniella was once a ‘normal kid’, she said, until a friend dragged her to a photoshoot in Milan, where the designer spotted her: ‘Armani was like, “I love zis girl, no?” So I started working from the next week.’

Clearly, it helps to stand out from the crowd. If all those protein-packed crickets help to breed a race of super-tall supermodels, perhaps insect cuisine will catch on.