Does America or France have better food?
Philippe Lemoine tweeted:
Americans *genuinely* believe they have better food than France. They really believe it. It’s truly extraordinary.
Twitter is full of opinions, I will give you mine. First, I am pretty close to Nate Silver:
A person in the 90th percentile of giving a shit about food will generally eat better in the US than France. Median close, may lean France. 20th percentile more strongly France.
But I have a few more points to add:
1. It is important to distinguish between supermarket food and restaurant food. If you are content with a limited number of quality supermarket items, France clearly has better food.
2. If you go to a French food market (“Marché”), and are willing to spend 25-30 euros, you can get something much better than what is available in the United States, given the kind of meal you are assembling, with bread, cheese, strawberries, sausage, etc. And you all should do this if you are visiting France. That said, America has been gaining in this department, and French quality is static (at a very high level).
3. If you prefer to eat Asian and Latino cuisines in restaurants, the American options are radically superior. It is not even close. France does have better North African options.
4. Too many French restaurants have limited hours, limited seating options, low quality service, and so on, relative to their American peers. I am not sure if those variables count in this debate, but they do for me. So often eating in France is a pain in the neck.
5. While Paris may have the best restaurants in France, the best actual dining options — price and availability taken into account — are very much outside of Paris. I would rather spend five days dining in Toulouse, and furthermore many of your best individual meals will come in small towns that have single specialties, such as “roast chicken,” etc. Parts of Texas and Louisiana and New Mexico excepted, America does not really have anything comparable to this phenomenon.
6. France has better desserts, though I do not count that for much, others might.
If you are wondering, I’ve spent maybe eight months of my life living in France, total?