On holiday in the Dordogne, I face an annual dilemma. My weekly Any Other Business column ruminates on the financial world with occasional restaurant tips to lighten the tone – and many readers tell me they frankly prefer the menus du jour to the boardroom dramas. My difficulty is that in a single page of The Spectator there’s never space to do justice to both. Last week , I ended up cramming seven restaurants into one short paragraph, a paltry snack where I’d like to have offered a banquet. So here’s my 2025 tour de France, as I called it, at somewhat fuller length, perhaps one of these days to be super-sized into an entire guidebook.

This set of recommendations, I should explain, come mostly from British readers and friends in other parts of France. We’ll get to my own selection

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