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These, and others from further afield, are, I’m pleased to see, unusually abundant in the dishes that follow: my rabbit comes with two different preparations of the (locally) famous carottes des sables, grown in sand and fertilised with seaweed, which, along with a scattering of tiny green leaves, almost qualifies it as a salad in this part of the world. It’s light, elegant and very tasty indeed: modern French cooking at its finest.

Light is all very well, of course, but being in Normandy, we can’t bypass the cheese trolley – and what a feast of softly stinking delights glides over the plush in our direction, crowned by … it isn’t, could it be …? ‘Oui, c’est CheDDAR!’ our waiter announces proudly. I express surprise at finding this black-waxed interloper in one of France’s great cheese-producing reasons. ‘Ah, mais monsieur le chef, il est anglais!’ he explains.

Certainly, the Cheddar has been hacked away at energetically for other diners this evening, but nevertheless, I stick to local boys Livarot, a sticky, spicy washed-rind cheese, creamy salty Neufchâtel and an exceptionally powerful Camembert (my general tactic with a cheese trolley is to keep going until the curator starts to look anxious), all of which come in squidgy slabs, rather than slices. Not that I’m complaining.