How come most French restaurants abroad are not really French ?I usually eat local but I looked this one up out of curiosity and there are 2 French food items (cassoulet and chateaubriand) that I really recognize.Last I checked was in Thailand and the guy legit just served pasta on half the menu ? In Europe it's fine but outside half the time they just do random stuff or some sort of steakhouse+Italian food combo with 1 actual French dish in the menu. I don't get it.I get that here too restaurants always offer different stuff, but abroad, if you label yourself "French restaurant" and not just "restaurant" you're meant to serve traditional food. Or at least improvise using French ingredients/herbs/flavors/sauces, ie Provençal style of whatever fish you can find in the country. Imagine Italians opening a restaurant and serving steak, then arguing it's Italian because they also eat steak in Italy.I was always confused by what foreigners think is French food but if this is what they get of course this explains a lot.The only food items I see reliably are snails for the exotic factor and duck confit since i suppose that is recognizable.Are the ingredients too expensive to import ? Is it too long and inconvenient to do the slower cooked stews and such ? Are they just adapting to local tastes like Chinese restaurants did in America ? Is it the "we made the cooking technique so anything can be considered French" autism ?Are French chefs allergic to selling their traditional cuisine and just want French branding on non-traditional cuisine ?
>>21947698I wish we did like the Chinese so I could say a secret passphrase in French and they'd get me the actual French food menu
>>21947698I found out that Americans have not one but two French restaurant chains called "La Madeleine" and "Mimi's cafe" with hundreds of locations, and impressively you can't find a single French dish being served in either of those places
In Australia "French" restaurants are illegal, everything here is "French-style" instead. This was because it was part of the arrangement for the French building our submarines, we couldn't call anything French or use the word Chardonnay to describe the type of wine. And now, thanks to the new FTA we just signed, it will be illegal to even use the French names of many of the dishes, "Boeuf Bourguignon" will become "French-style beef stew" in all the remaining restaurants that weren't forced to close.
>>21947752did we really do this ? it's fucking stupid lmaoi can understand for food items so we don't have americans mass producing plastic cheese and putting french names on it but for restaurants this is the most retarded thing i've heard
>>21947758Yes! You can go look it up. You have to see it to believe it.Despite having infinite resources, from gas and coal to rare earth minerals, and the fact that Australia desperately needed cheaper cars and other machines, the entire free trade agreement between us and the EU was entirely held up because the French could not accept the fact that their specific region became the default name for sparkling wine. Hell, they even tanked the submarine deal because of it, forcing us to cancel and buy submarines from America and UK. So, while everyone in Europe has been suffering for the past few years with a lack of cheap and plentiful electricity, this was entirely preventable if only France backed down on Australians using French names as the generic name to describe certain foods and wine.
>>21947698>French restaurants abroad are not really Frenchmy nearby Delifrance is run by indians and a garden variety of muh muslims.... just like real France!
>>21947752>go to google maps, zoom in on Melbourne, type in "French Restaurant">go to the websites of the top three results>they all call themselves "French" on their websitesWhy bother making something up when it's so easily falsifiable?
>>21947780France has nuclear energy and a lot of cheap electricity thougheverbeit
>>21947780And that's a good thingFood is sacred and *nglos don't get to fuck with it
Is that the price or the calories??????
>>21947855Price
>>21947855Why would you pay $3900 for a steak?
>>21947698>How come most French restaurants abroad are not really French ?In Britain we do have a few French Restaurants but apart from a few items, which are classically French (eg.Moules marinière, Escargot,Cassoulet, etc). It's very much like English food (inb4 stupid boring memes) except more garlic. The menu in OPs picrel is heavily Americanised though but I'm sure if you went to a more upmarket restaurant, the menu would be less so.The French also some good casseroles/stews but they might not be very marketable in the USA, the same goes for other items I have eaten in France such as Horse, Sheep Brains, Rabbit, etc. I spent a few years in the South of France, so I am more familiar with that style of cooking and flavours than the North.
>>21947880Nothing against English food, I like the breakfast a lot but I don't see it.I've been to the UK and tried getting English food, mostly in pubs not restaurants though. I would say something I found that is similar is the meat pies. Generally all the meals that involve bread/meat/cheese and sometimes sauce. Can't find that in many places in the world.Besides that maybe I haven't tried enough of English food to find much that is similar. The brown gravy everywhere I was definitely not used to at all. None of the herbs and flavors I am used to.Also, southern French food ? I don't really see the herbs or olive oil or anything. Northern France has the pies and stews. Similar ausages too. In fact it's far away but British food reminds me the most of either north-eastern French food or Parisian food.
>>21947920I see what you are saying. I spent most of the time in the Hérault department which is pretty much Provençal and a bit mediterranean and you are correct, the same herbs and olive oil dishes are NOT what is used in British cookery, perhaps I should have made that clearer. And again you are correct in saying that British cooking (again minus the garlic) is more similar to a Mid/Northern France cuisine. British pub meals can be hit and miss (just like anywhere really) and it's a little unfair to take them as a benchmark because they cater for allsorts at a reasonable price. ie You don't go to pubs for haute cuisine. I admit the British restaurants are few and far between - We all know what it tastes like, so why pay for it? It just doesn't have the appeal to Brits, nothing to do with quality of food, it's the question - Why? Restaurants serving British food tend to better than the average Brit meal at home but the same applies in France (I have been invited back to French homes for a meal and that's not restaurant quality either).Another thing which I will mention is that I spent most of the time 'down south' and that style of cooking does not always translate too well in Britain, it's nice for a meal of two but it just doesn't work long term - neither would it work in Germany, Eastern Europe or Scandinavia! I hope you get the gist of what I am saying?Thanks for reading my blog. kek.
>>21947951Yeah I understand what you mean, I'd have gone to a proper British restaurant if I found one. I mean I found restaurants but it wasn't "traditional British" ones.
>>21947698In my local grocery store (west eu) a chateaubriand is just a specific cut of beef. I don't really have a lot of fine dining experience at least not like Michelin star level or whatever. But scalloped potatoes (Assuming these are pommes fondants) are very French. I actually made some myself yesterday and I recommend anyone that wants to get in to classic French style cooking to try their hand at them. >ingredients too expensive to import? I don't think so necessarily, French cooking is more about technique than it is about ingredients, at least that's what I always heard. The last thing I think of when I think of French cuisine is hard to get exotic ingredients.
>>21947992There's actually both. Chateaubriand the cut of beef and chateaubriand the dish/sauce. In the OP it must just be the cut because normally there are no mushrooms in the sauce. The cut is often eaten with Béarnaise.>The last thing I think of when I think of French cuisine is hard to get exotic ingredients.Well some stuff you just don't find abroad even in French restaurants, notably the cheese. Not sure foreigners even like the niche cheeses so they wouldn't bother in a restaurant.Some charcuterie I also don't think you can find or it's going to be trash, rosette abroad for example they sometimes have but you can tell it's low quality. Saucisson in a supermarket is often bad also. Never found any rillettes.Some herbs in places are rare and you can't have them freshLardons are also rareSome alcohols or they're expensiveSome types of offals (like sweetbread)Mustard that isn't genericI'm not from the south but bouillabaisse without specific mediterranean fish is not quite the same afaikAnd since I'm from the NW for me by far the most annoying thing to find abroad is crême fraiche. You find all sorts of whipped cream, sour cream, just "cream", but thick fresh cream with high %fat is nowhere to be found in many places and making stuff from Brittany or Normandy without that just isn't the sameThat being said this applies mostly to outside of Europe you usually find some of those here
>>21947698its the we made the technique autism
>>21947992>a chateaubriand is just a specific cut of beefSame in Britain.>scalloped potatoes (Assuming these are scalloped potatoes (Assuming these are pommes fondants))NoScalloped potatoes are sliced much thinner than pommes fondants and are pretty much French . . . .sorry if I am pedantic but I will explain why. I get stroppy when (particularly Americans) try to tell me that British chips (French Fries) were invented in France (or Belgium)?In Britain we were eating chips long before American GI's got confused as to which country they were in.French fries are julienne potatoes, whereas British chips are more chunky and even us Brits recognise that. >>21948005I'm going to say that we can find all of these in the UK but there are some caveats.Lardons aren't easy to find and slices of pork belly are usually used. Bouillabaisse - there are tubs but it's not the same.Some alcohols . . . .interesting.Ricard is almost impossible to get here, we can get Pernod but making a Pastis isn't same in Britain, it just doesn't seem to work, I think it's a climate thing.
>>21947698Why can't you people make up your mind, is slavish adherence to "authenticity" more important, or is flouting the rules and letting white people make mexican food more important? You can't have it both ways, bitches. Now leave.
>>21948027Well our alcohol from the NW isn't hard to find at all in the UK, you produce apples yourself so cider, pommeau and calvados are all easy to get and great quality.For example we very often put cider in sauces and as a consumer you don't get cider everywhere. Sometimes we put it in the crêpes.In my family I've very often used calvados to flame stuff, like scallops, or crêpes. Good luck finding calvados in most of the world.I think ingredients for French cuisine you can probably find but any niche regional cuisine it will probably be harder, try finding chestnut flour for corsican food or raw foie gras for some SW food, etc
>>21948027I'm actually Flemish and I went down the rabbit hole once of "who actually invented the french fry" and fwiw there seems to be no historical consencus. To be fair, I think local fry shop fries, they're not bad I like them but Belgian friet supremacy or whatever is a complete joke and I wish our shops would serve fish n' chips alongside fries with frikandel or whatever garbage meats you usually get in those places.>scalloped potatoesOh lol I looked up the dish, I know what they are but didn't know the english term I assumed it meant fondant potatoes because well they sort of look like scallops. >>21948005>Never found any rillettesMan that's sad, I love me a nice fish rillettes on toast.
>>21947698>How come most French restaurants abroad are not really French ?To me, the FRENCH experience is course after course, maybe even prix fixe. I want to be beginning to end presented with plates of delights and even wine pairings throughout. You should need a driver home, a show or play, or a good walk afterwards.Menus that have a lot of what appears non-french to you might just be keep a regular clientele happy to visit no matter their mood.
>>21948040>, you produce apples yourself so cider,I live in Somerset, South West England . . .. it is prime cider country, I know a thing or two about cider.
>>21948052What are your thoughts on Somersby vs Strongbow? Those are really the only ones I'll find in my local grocery/bar. I prefer Somersby.
>>21948029Inside France, do whatever we want. Outside France if you want to open a fusion bullshit experimental something you do you but then you don't call it "French restaurant" because it just gets confusing for everyone.I've seen people on the internet say stuff like "I don't even really know what French cuisine is" well, no shit.
>>21947732> La Madeleine, 86 Locations> Founded by Patrick Esquerré, a Frenchman, owned by Groupe Le Duff, a French restaurant chain company owned by Louis Le Duff, a French billionaire. Current CEO is Philippe Jean, also French.> Mimi's Cafe, 44 Locations> A wholly owned subsidiary of LeDuff America, the US division of Groupe Le Duff .The frogs only have themselves to blame.
>>21948142To be fair it's mostly about selling coffees and croissants. Then it's a bunch of club sandwiches and salads or something.I imagine the target audience is boomer women so obviously we are not going to try to sell them mustard rabbit or blood sausage, we are not that retarded.
>>21948151The success we do have abroad seems to be mostly due to cute pastries and instagrammable cafes honestly. You find those everywhere.A lot of the real stuff is rustic fatty peasant food that won't reach the niche we already have of women and gays. And the kind of people who could actually like this type of food would rather eat burgers and won't touch French food with a 10 foot pole.This leaves fine dining but it's dying in general as the economic elites becomes less interested in this type of thing than their parents, just like they stopped reading books or going to stage plays they don't care for fine dining either. And it's not like we are even selling gold plated Dubai max $$$ bullshit so that type audience doesn't care for upper-middle price food either.One niche that we probably aren't trying hard enough in is delicatessen, groceries and such, in my opinion. But in the meantime we'll just have to keep selling pastries.
>>21947708>secret passphraseThere's is no secret passphrase. You know the name of a Chinese dish that's reasonably quick, they have the ingredients for and that they know how to cook and they'll cook it. Simple as. I saw a lady at an American Chinese takeout joint prepping greens, presumably for family dinner, and I asked if I could have some with oyster sauce. I've they got past the idea that some white-looking guy spoke shit Mandarin and shitter Cantonese, they cooked me up a huge portion of yu choy with oyster sauce and charged me $5.You don't even have to speak Chinese, really. It helps but it's not necessary.>>21947698We used to have several properly French restaurants where I live and two proper French bistrots but they've gone. They've all gone. It's been at least fifteen years now since I last went out to an actual French restaurant with actual French food. One of my favourite was this simple, tiny coffee place in Newark, Delaware owned, funny enough, by a Belgian, but he served typical, simple French cafe fare. It was cheap and good.
>>21948029>>21948165Inside France there's already been a clear shift in the last 10 years, back to "authenticity" and hating on experimental cuisine and going back to the peasant dishes. Famous chefs with videos all going on about how they've actually always hated molecular cuisine and the people want the boeuf bourguignon and being trad and they hate vegans, you get the idea, iirc Bocuses' son himself went on about that.The thing is this is probably impossible to export. Here sure but abroad, how the fuck are we going to do a rebranding and start selling raclettes to foreigners ?
>>21948129>I've seen people on the internet say stuff like "I don't even really know what French cuisine is" well, no shit.People will answer that way if they sense that it is a loaded question designed for a "gotcha", like "what is a woman". No shit I'm going to instantly be suspicious and answer in a vague hedging way if I think you're just asking me because I'm a prop in your main character disorder
>>21948195It's not like I asked anyone "what is French food", just skimming comments about videos related to French food that sometimes pop up.Like this one for example. Obviously the chicken would actually be tasty but this one retarded video did damage to French food that will take 10 years to repair. To adapt to the 21st century French cooking is fine taste wise but it needs some serious PR lessons .
>>21948202What's the problem with the chicken? Looks fine to me. Kind of unexpected how it has an extra set of legs under its skin but I'm not kink shaming
>>21948251The problem is it does 15 million views on every single social network and all the comment are "it looks like shit"
>>21948202If someone put me in charge of French cuisine marketing I'm not sure what I would do to salvage it. Poulet Basquaise with a lot of seasoning ? This is probably our most modern-adapted dish. In this day and age you have to be performative about putting a ton of bullshit in your dish. You also have to do chicken because everyone in the world is a nigger and they only like chicken. So I guess I would take a whole bag of Provence herbs and empty it with a catchy tiktok music and a little dance on a fat chicken. Then I would find black women with fat asses and they would twerk on my chicken ? Besides this I am frankly out of ideas to save French cuisine.
>>21948184>hey got past the idea that some white-looking guy spoke shit Mandarin and shitter CantoneseHeh this reminds me of an old friend of mine, German-Chinese hapa girl who looked 100% white most of the time (though she could suddenly turn blatantly Asian with the right makeup) but spoke fluent Cantonese with a native-sounding HK accent. It was always fun watching waiters' brains short circuit at Chinese restaurants. Actually that also reminds me of a flipside one, I lived in Japan for a while and dated a Japanese-passing Korean girl who only knew a few words of Japanese and it was hilarious seeing the looks on people's faces when I was the one who had to do all of the ordering etc.
>>21947708>secret passphrase"Enculés de parisiens"Use at your own risks
>>21947698Nobody eats or even knows anythiing about French cuisine. What Anglophones think is French cuisine has nothing to do with French culture or what French people eat, but what one or two French chefs cooked for English people in English hotels and restaurants. In reality French cuisine is thoroughly Anglo-tier.
>>21947698"French" is the default "classic" trained cook, so any not strongly typed but clearly "western" food is "French"
>>21948867Is that gonna be bread dunked in urinals or whatever those sick fucks get up to lel
