The restaurant filled with people like Mrs Traynor: well-dressed, well-spoken, people for whom turbot quenelles was a standard lunch and not a conversational minefield.
Anelka said the salute known as the quenelle which he made after the scoring in a premier league on Saturday was an anti-system but had nothing to do with religion.
And eventually he agreed to cut the hotdog up into four perfect pieces, adding a little swish of ketchup and a swish of mustard onto each plate and finishing them with a quenelle of sauerkraut and a quenelle of relish.