This was meant to be a stag fight between the French restaurateur Raymond Blanc and the Italian Antonio Carluccio, wherein they would lock horns and fight to the death over whether French or Italian wines are better. They were each asked to choose three wines from their native lands - one cheap, one middling, one expensive - and make the case for their supremacy. Unfortunately, this proved a bit of a nonstarter because a) they are good friends, b) they are not daft, and c) they both kept complimenting each other on their choice of wine. No matter - it was an excellent excuse for lunch. And what a lunch! Not just historic, as Michael Winner would say, but epic. It was at the Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge where the chef, Eric Chavot, is a protégé of Raymond Blanc's and a genius.

I was a bit alarmed to find Antonio Carluccio drinking malt whisky when I arrived, and saying it is his favourite drink. But we have six bottles of wine to get through! Between three of us! Not a problem, he assures me. He is an extraordinary humpty-dumpty figure with an enormous head and stomach set upon tiny legs, supported by a shepherd's crook. He starts showing me his new book, Italia, on Italian regional cooking and says it is a gift for me. Then Raymond Blanc bounds in, another almost pantomime figure in an outrageously loud pin-striped suit, hurls himself at Carluccio and hugs him for several minutes. Carluccio presents him with the book he has just given me and signs it for him with a loving inscription, while Blanc runs his nose over the pages saying that he can smell all the food.

They both jabber away in fractured English and occasionally stroke each other's cheeks. Carluccio is considerably older than Blanc (68 to his 55) but they have been good friends for a quarter of a century. They met when they were both rising restaurateurs - Carluccio with his Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden, Blanc with Les Quat' Saisons in Oxford. Antonio tells Blanc, 'you were very very small at the time'. 'You too!' says Blanc, patting Carluccio's considerable stomach. 'No, no,' says Carluccio, 'I mean in status.' It's true, says Blanc, Carluccio was better known in those days, whereas he had only 'a very humble little place in Oxford in a shopping parade between ladies' underwear and Oxfam. But then we won all our Michelin stars - everything was won in that humble little place. That was before the Manoir - I didn't want that, I wanted a small place that I could call home sweet home.'

They liked each other from their first meeting, says Carluccio, because they came from similar backgrounds and, 'we were both enthusiastic about what we were doing. But he went further than I did because he cooks and I don't. I create recipes, I write books, and I keep an eye on the chefs but I have an easier task. And we have remained good friends because although he is a big three-star chef he remains very humble.'

Actually, humble is not a word I would use to describe Blanc - he has an extraordinarily grandiose way of talking, as if addressing an audience of thousands just behind your shoulder. He also likes talking about himself at heroic length, as he does now while explaining his friendship with Carluccio: 'There is something so deep connecting us - it is our childhood. A boy of 14 now, he probably knows lots of pornography, he has three mistresses. But at 14 I was still in the trees discovering everything about nature, discovering the secrets of nature, understanding the moods and the cycle of seasons. And of course I was also a gardener for my father, removing the stones, hoeing the rows, watering the earth, planting, harvesting - sometimes it was a nightmare when my friends were kicking footballs - then we had to top and tail all the vegetables and give them to my mother who would preserve them for the winter. And Antonio the same - so that's what connects us.'

Another bond between them is that they are both self-taught - and horrified by the vision of kitchen training portrayed in Hell's Kitchen. 'Thank God,' says Blanc, 'I did not slave under the hand of an autocratic, despotic tyrant who come at me with a knife! To be a chef in Great Britain you have to have a frontal lobotomy and then your whole world is the low ceiling, the white tiles, the strip lights, the aluminium. So you can understand why the violence does happen, because none of these chefs have been trained at all to be a manager. My chef at the Manoir is running a budget of £6.5 million, he has 55 chefs in his cuisine - imagine if you had someone raving round the place killing everyone! At one stage I had seven three-star chefs in my kitchen - I had Marco Pierre White, I had the Burton Race and, believe me, you had to run them like wild horses. But you don't have to scream and kill people, and to me that programme of Hell's Kitchen was a madness.' Is he friends with Marco now? 'You cannot be a friend of Marco's. I want truth. With Carluccio the truth is easy, there is no double talk, triple talk, no movement behind.'

Till now we have been drinking water (me), tomato juice (Blanc) and whisky (Carluccio), but at last we go through to the dining room where the young head sommelier, Azedine Dhaheri, is waiting to pour our first wines. Carluccio's is a Sicilian white called Vigna di Gabri; Blanc's a Jurancon sec, Clos Lapeyre 2004. Both are incredibly good considering that they cost about £10. Carluccio's is heavier, yellower, with almost a touch of retsina; Blanc's is dry, clean, elegant, and in my view obviously better but they both refuse to say so - Blanc says tactfully that Antonio's wine would be great with pasta.

The first course of our menu degustation is seared langoustine with honey-glazed pork belly. I almost threw up when I saw those words on the menu but actually it is fabulous, and Blanc and Carluccio go into lengthy raptures, with Blanc concluding: 'That is a great dish! I must go and kiss Eric in the kitchen!' So off he bounds, while Carluccio carries on raving about the happy combination of honey, pork and langoustine. And, he points out, his Sicilian wine goes perfectly with the sweetness of the dish, whereas the French feels a tad sharp.

Blanc comes back from kissing Chavot and remarks that his wine tastes better now it is a little warmer: 'There is a great tendency to over-ice the wine. It was too cold before but now the bouquet is starting to come through and you can taste all the different aromas.' So which wine is better? They each defer to the other, while I nag them to argue. 'OK, if that is what you want,' Blanc concedes, 'I will say the French is better. Because in a white wine I really want dryness and with the Italian there is always an undertone of sweetness.' Carluccio: 'We have many white wines called amabile, which means lovable because they are not completely dry, and this is a representative of those. But I like this [French] taste as well: this is very cleansing.'

We stick with the same wines for the next course - a salad of Parma ham and pickled mushrooms - with Carluccio, the great mushroom expert, identifying all the different mushrooms and asking for second and third helpings. He says one of the many crimes of British cooking is the way we murder mushrooms - 'those little grey corpses, served in water, without any flavour whatsoever - they are massacred!' This sends Blanc into a long riff about the mushrooms of his native Jura. 'We have about 20 varieties of mushroom, and from the age of seven, I would have all the maps that my father gave me and would wake up at three or four in the morning, so as not to be followed, and go out finding mushrooms. It was a serious business. I was a hunter-gatherer - frogs, snails, mushrooms, berries - everything was food and I had my calendar and my own secret maps; I knew where the morels would be, the girolles, or the petit gris. Do you know petit gris, Antonio? They grow underneath the pine tree but you cannot see them, you find them by their scent. It has to be the greatest mushroom on earth.'

He says that he would like to take Antonio mushroom-hunting in France - they talk vaguely about doing a television programme together - but they are both busy men. Carluccio now has 22 delicatessens, with new ones opening almost every month; Blanc is in the throes of redecorating and redesigning the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons from top to bottom - later this afternoon, he says, he is going to choose new china. He is also weeding out the wine list discarding any wine with a hint of oak - nowadays he finds it vulgar.

When he opened the Manoir in 1984, he was the first French restaurateur to insist on having New World wines on his list - even now, he says, you rarely find New World wines in France (or Italy, says Carluccio). But he believes they served a useful purpose in converting the British from beer to wine, especially since the French at that time were exporting really dreadful wines to Britain. 'They started to put sub-quality into their bottles. So the New World say "we can do as well as the French". And also they understood branding, they understood marketing, and the wines were perfect for the English to start with - lots of alcohol, big flavour - but of course not very much delicacy, no terroir whatsoever, and the whites are buttery and eugh. But they were well priced so the British liked them. But now the market has changed - now the British want better things.'

In fact, he says, the British are becoming more knowledgeable than the French. 'You take any Frenchman in the street, give him a Merlot, a Cabernet Sauvignon, half of them will not be able to tell the difference. They are very parochial - they know the best wine of their region but nothing else.' His family, he says, would normally drink the local Jura wine but for special occasions they would buy a good Burgundy from 30 miles away - but that was the limit of their exploration. The Italians, says Carluccio, are the same.

With the fish course (roasted fillet of monkfish with pistou, which Blanc pronounces, 'not exceptional, but good') we switch wines. Carluccio's choice is a homely £8 Piedmont red called Barbera d'Asti while Blanc's is a white Chateauneuf-du-Pape Grand Veneur 2003 costing three times as much. Both wines seem odd choices to me - the Piedmont is perfectly nice but thin; the Chateauneuf du Pape is richer but not noticeably nicer. Blanc says he finds the red a bit overpowering, and thinks the white wine goes better with fish. Carluccio explains that this is the wine of the common man in Piedmont and they drink it with everything. Blanc says sweetly: 'You must take me to Italy, Antonio - I would treasure that, you know.'

They both go into a long jeremiad about British ignorance of food. Blanc: 'Ninety per cent of British consumers believe that supermarket food is the best in the world. And 80 per cent of British consumers buy a £2.80 chicken and still think it the best in the world!' Carluccio: 'They go into the supermarket, they load their trolley, but they are not critical, they are not looking, they do not compare. In Italy, the importance of food is such that one goes to any lengths to get very good food.'

All the evils of British society, they believe, stem from our failure to take food seriously and to eat together as a family. Carluccio: 'I see a connection here in Britain between the hooligans and the missing of the love. In Italy the family is still a family when the children are grown up. You know we say that Christ must have been Italian because he lives with his Mama till he is 30 and believes she is a virgin.' Blanc: 'The girls here, they don't learn cooking, they think it is not important!' Carluccio: 'Not every day, but once a week, you should gather all the family together and share a special moment round the table. I remember, my Papa he couldn't cook but he was a wonderful critic and we learned a lot.'

They both maunder on for what feels like several hours about this wonderful patriarchal peasant society where the men spend all their time talking about food, and the women spend all their time preparing it. I point out rather sharply that nobody these days wants to be a peasant and that girls have better things to do than pluck chickens. Anyway, despite their nostalgia for their native lands, they have both chosen to live here for all their adult lives.

Luckily, just as I am getting ratty, the main course arrives - veal paillard, balsamic jus and pommes paille - and the main wines. Carluccio has chosen the most expensive Tuscan red, Solaia (£120 in the shops though it can cost £200 in a restaurant) while Blanc has chosen a burgundy, Clos Vougeot Grand Cru 2000 Louis Jadot, costing about £50. I am so disappointed it is not a claret, I could cry. As for the Solaia, it seems almost Australian to me, though Blanc says politely, 'this is what I love about Italian wines - its bigness and spiciness and richness. But of course the Vougeot is better because it does not overpower the food, it complements it. Here you have something seriously, beautifully, delicately layered which is brilliantly made. Clos Vougeot is only 87 acres - nothing, only six times bigger than the Manoir - and owned by 85 small proprietors - but I love it very very much. I could have chosen a wonderful Bordeaux, but I didn't because this wine reminds me of so many memories. If I close my eyes, I can feast on it.'

Suddenly Eric Chavot, the chef, appears in his whites and says 'shut up and eat!' It is almost four o'clock and we have still not had pudding - vanilla pannacotta with red fruits or caramelised banana with passion fruit sorbet. Chavot is an absolute dish - tall, shaven-headed, witty - I am tempted to ask for a doggy bag and put him in it. 'So?' he asks, when we have scooped our last spoonfuls of pudding. 'That was seriously good,' Blanc tells him. 'It is exactly what true gastronomy is all about - the fantastic oomph, the delicious flavours, the tingly little flavours that keep coming afterwards.' Chavot in turn tells him: 'Today was the most fun I had since I left the Manoir; the most fun since I've been here in six years! The kitchen really worked for it, because they were saying "Oh Raymond Blanc is coming!"'

So, on a cloud of mutual compliments and back-slapping, we drift out into the Knightsbridge afternoon. I'm not sure what this exercise proved - we all know that French wines are better than Italian. But anyway it was fun, and my God the food was delicious. Conversationally, I must say I've known better, but gastronomically it was a meal in a million.

Sex or food?

Antonio Carluccio: They are both very pleasant occupations.

Raymond Blanc: If you are a protestant driven by denial and guilt, then say no to both. But I am not, so I will have both but selectively. The first (sex) can only be with my loved one and the second (food) eaten at Le Manoir with her would be just fine.

Eric Chavot is head chef of the two Michelin-starred Capital Restaurant, Capital Hotel, Basil Street, SW3 (020 7589 5171). Set menus start at £29.50. One of OFM's favourite chefs, Eric Chavot will be hosting master classes next year on 13 March, 26 June, 2 October and 27 November.

The package costs £259, including a night's stay at the hotel. Without accommodation the master classes cost £185 per person. A wine tasting is followed by lunch. Eric will teach his innovative style of French cuisine and guests recreate the lunch menu. Call Daniela Longhin on 020 7591 1212 or email dlonghin@capitalhotel.co.uk.

Italy v France
Antonio Carluccio's and Raymond Blanc's favourite wines

Barbera D'Asti La Tranquilla 2001
£7.99, available from Passione Vino, London, 020 7720 1600
'A homely Piedmont red, perfectly nice.'

Solaia Antinori 2001
£120, available from Valvona and Crolla, Edinburgh, 0131 556 6066
'Big spicy and rich.'

Vigna di Gabri Donnafugata 2004
£10.16 + VAT available from Vinum, London, 020 8847 4699, www.vinum.co.uk
'Heavy, yellow, and there is a touch of retsina - great with pasta.'

Chateauneuf-du-Pape Grand Veneur 2003
£22.25, available from Friarwood, London, 020 7736 2628, www.friarwood.com
'Rich, and goes very well with fish.'

Burgundy Clos Vougeot Grand Cru, Louis Latour 2002
£499 for 12, available from www.wills-burgundy.com
'Seriously, beautifully, delicately layered - is brilliantly made.'

Lapeyre Jurançon Sec 2004
£9.99, Philglas and Swiggot, London, 020 7924 4494, www.philglas-swiggot.co.uk
'Dry, clean and elegant.'

Carluccio's perfect mushroom dish

Vellutata di funghi cardoncelli (mushrooms, cannellini puree and rice)

Serves 4

200g dried cannellini beans, soaked
8 tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves
100g thick parma ham or pancetta
1 onion, finely sliced
200g cardoncelli (oyster mushrooms)
cleaned and sliced if large
200g risotto rice
80g mature pecorino cheese, grated

Heat half the oil in a pan and fry the garlic and ham for a few minutes. Add the beans and water to cover and cook for a couple of hours until soft. Remove ham and purée beans with a little liquor. Chop ham and add to purée; keep warm. Heat rest of the oil and gently fry onions until soft, then add mushrooms and fry for 5-10 mins. At the same time cook rice in salted water until al dente. Combine the three mixtures - bean purée, mushrooms and rice. You should have a soupy rice, almost a wet risotto. Check seasoning. Sprinkle pecorino.

From Italia by Antonio Carluccio.

· To order a copy of Italia by Antonio Carluccio (Quadrille, £25) for £23, or Simple French Cookery by Raymond Blanc (BBC Books) for £9.99 go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885