Ceci n'est pas une blog.

England (yes, really) knocks the socks off France for delicious - though unhealthy - fried foods, baked foods, curries, and general embracing of various world cuisines.

Holland too, while half of its own "cuisine" consists of mashed vegetables and milky desserts, has a flourishing fast-food industry and wide variety of cooking styles available in restaurants and supermarkets.

Then we have food-mad Singapore and Malaysia - both overrun by thousands of food stalls and outlets that sell a wide variety of South-East Asian, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Japanese, as well as western (American, French, Italian, etc.) all day, every day, on every street corner, for next to nothing.


Compare that with France, where you get the same five dishes in every French restaurant - which you can only visit in restricted hours. There's never any innovation or experimentation in cooking styles. They've hardly heard of real Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Greek, etc. etc. The only food you can get outside lunch and dinnertime is a burger or one of the same five standard types of sandwich from the millions of sandwich outlets. The only other fast-food (and even then only during lunch or evening) is pizza, kebab or Vietnamese fried rolls.

And it's only just starting to become possible for us to get ingredients to do anything more adventurous ourselves - mostly because we've had to look around a lot and eventually discovered where you can get anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

Honestly, France has proven to be the worst place I've ever been when it comes to getting any variety of food or getting anything ready-to-eat outside lunch/dinner hours. French cuisine is VASTLY overrated!

http://www.expatica.com/fr/articles/news/Slow-Food-guru-rubbishes-French-cuisine_s-heritage-bid.html


(Reposted and slightly modified from a comment on the World's Longest Blog...)