Mary Berry - looking 'dope' in floral bomber jacket - Telegraph A recent visit to a restaurant chain left a bad taste in my mouth. It started when I spotted English asparagus on the menu. Home-grown asparagus in September - really? There are a few farms growing an autumn crop, so I asked the sweet waitress, who assured me that the spears were indeed home-grown. But (call me the Mary Whitehouse of food) something didn't feel right. Might I see the packaging, I asked? I'd be so interested to know which farm it came from. Of course, she replied, bustling off to the kitchen. A minute later she came back looking sheepish. In season we do have English asparagus, but right now it comes from Peru. It might seem like a quibble, but this matters. Six years ago a London restaurant was fined £7,500 for selling non-organic meat as organic. The local-and-seasonal mantra is just as emotive these days, and like organic the products command a premium. Now, if this was a little independent café, I might be less cross. Mistakes happen. But chains have teams dedicated to getting this right, and who know full well whether a summer menu will outlast the brief British asparagus season. Imagine the row if the supermarkets sold Peruvian asparagus as British - there are no excuses. There was a different sort of furore in the food world yesterday as the Michelin star ratings for some British restaurants appeared on the company's website a week before the official announcement. They were taken down within minutes, leaving everyone who cared wondering if it was a mistake or a publicity stunt. The restaurants named as earning stars, which include London's Trishna, Alyn Williams at the Westbury and Medlar on the King's Road, can only sit and wait, because Michelin won't confirm that the information that appeared so fleetingly is correct. What if the results were only provisional, and turn out to be different next week? What a cruel joke that would be.