A new law has been passed in France, destination for thousands of school trips each year, which forces restaurants to indicate which of their dishes have been made on the premises and which are created using pre-prepared ingredients, or are fully prepared elsewhere and simply reheated on site.
The new symbol looks like this and will be compulsory from January 2015, although many restaurants who wish to indicate their values and the quality of their food have already adopted it.
This will stop practices such as restaurants buying in irregularly chopped Steak Tartare to make it look as if it has been prepared on the premises - a common practice apparently.
Under the new law readymade pie crust, pate and stew will not qualify for the logo, but there are some exceptions. Chefs can buy bread, pasta, cheese and wine, and also, more controversially, raw products that have been frozen, refrigerated, chopped, ground, smoked, or peeled - though this doesn't extend to oven chips.
So now, in the country of Escoffier, Egon Ronay and Michelin stars you can be guaranteed to know which meals have actually been prepared as you thought they were, and which haven't!
