It’s amazing to me how fixed French opinion is about food in other countries. A case in point occurred this summer in Figaro Madame when Francois Simon, an otherwise pretty savvy hombre, fell back on all the old stereotypes about what constitutes American cuisine.
No mention of Alice Waters, Dan Barber, Danny Meyer, Grant Achatz, David Chang, David Kinch, Suzanne Goin, Thomas Keller or our own Daniel Rose whose resto Spring was listed as one of “the” restaurants of 2010 by none other than Figaro’s Emmanuel Rubin, who characterized it as the most “talked-about” place in town.
No, instead, in his July 30th piece he mentions:
ice cream
pizza
sandwiches
BBQ
hamburgers
catsup and
chewing gum.
And that’s the best we have to offer; outside the big cities he excoriates the:
interchangeable chlorinated salads
spiritless fries and
weak sodas.
He finishes the article with a photo of an immensely obese lady on a scale.
Now I suppose there are plenty of Americans who think French food consists only of snails in butter, frogs’ legs, tripes, steak and spiritless frites but certainly not our premier food critics. It’s surprising that this article got past the fact checkers at Figaro or Simon’s American pal Joe Ray.
No, instead, in his July 30th piece he mentions:
ice cream
pizza
sandwiches
BBQ
hamburgers
catsup and
chewing gum.
And that’s the best we have to offer; outside the big cities he excoriates the:
interchangeable chlorinated salads
spiritless fries and
weak sodas.
He finishes the article with a photo of an immensely obese lady on a scale.
Now I suppose there are plenty of Americans who think French food consists only of snails in butter, frogs’ legs, tripes, steak and spiritless frites but certainly not our premier food critics. It’s surprising that this article got past the fact checkers at Figaro or Simon’s American pal Joe Ray.
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