Exactly how much better is French food over ours? I need a recipe!

[EachandEveryone]

I have a university student coming to stay for five months from Paris. A vegetarian. She has already joked that shes heard the food in London is rubbish and i guess she will find out soon enough that we have a huge variety of restaurants even in my rough neighbourhood. Very Turkish so she will have enough fresh vegetables and flat bread shops so she wont go hungry. I really wanted to have lunch for her when she arrived. Im not the most imaginative cook and im not veggy. Is there a straightforward recipe i can follow?

To top it all i met my new vet this week also from Paris who told me the food is crap here and who eats beans out of a tin!😆 so, i wont be servong beans on toast!

I don’t get particularly excited about french menus but as another poster said the quality of ingredients is better. We really do settle in the uk when it comes to food. She’s and I both felt that when we we’ve eaten in France and Italy which is our largest experience of European cooking.

I am fairly good cook and could and have cooked the same thing abroad as I have here and it doesn’t taste quite as good here. I think we have a better choice in the uk when it comes to food that I just don’t see abroad but we really are pretty short changed in terms of ingredients. Probably because we don’t have the same growing climate as they do.

I've had some of the worst food ever in France. Truly bad.

I would just buy lots of lovely salad and hummus and flatbread from the Turkish shops

In my experience the French don’t understand veggie, me & my friend go to Paris in a “girls weekend” a few times a year my friend is veggie and even the veggie pizza in 3 different restaurants was Lardon & potatoe So being a veggie living in France must be fun!

I’ve been all over France many times and French food is the most simple food, nothing to write home about 🤷🏻‍♀️ So I’d do your bean chilli or halloumi skewers with a nice fresh salad & bread

What about a M and S pizza?

i just have very little patience now for the french jokes about how terrible everything is in england and how bad the food is. Its about as hilarious as when english people make constant jokes about the french retreating or being cowards. its so fucking dull. Can you imagine an english student going to stay in paris and joking to the host about some ridiculous french cliché and them taking it well? Probably not, so dont start stressing about the food. If she doesnt like it, she could always fuck off

this is why i could never be a student host ;)

Husband is French and we get quite regular comments about how food is better in France. Tbf MIL is an amazing cook and she also takes us sometimes to some really good restaurants and I would say its better. Having said that vegetarian options are poor, DD is vegetarian and has been shouted at by restaurant waitresses for this and MIL and veg meal often means they just miss out the meat.

I think its quite rude of her to say this though - a bit like saying to a French host, all French people smell that's why they invented perfume, and expecting them not to take offence. So I wouldn't try too hard. One thing they aren't so good at is the variety of international cuisine.

I am also sick of the French banging on about how excellent French food is and how they're all fabulous cooks and gastronomic genii purely by dint of heritage.. so bloody boring, arrogant and rude, and actually Very far from the truth - I lived and worked in Framingham in the hospitality industry for several years and the standard of cooking was not only dull and monotonous but their recipes and menus haven't changed in decades; they are IME also one of the the most regressive Western countries wrt culinary progression as they always think they're amazing and who thinks need to improve perfection?!

Where the fuck did Framingham come from?! France, obviously....

French food IS NOT better than British food. There may be a few exceptional dishes but by no means all are better.

I would be telling your visitor to find some manners.

Food in France IS better. If you go to a French supermarket and buy tomatoes, lettuce, fruit etc it tastes a million times better than the tasteless crap we get here. Go into a motorway service station for lunch, something simple like a cheese and ham baguette will be really nice! A coffee from a French coffee machine is actually nice! It's the basics that France does really well.

I agree however that restaurants in France are unadventurous and all serving up the same stuff, and it is particularly crap for vegetarians.

And yeah, I think telling your host that you are expecting shit food is rude.

The food in France has really gone downhill. The service station baguettes were stale, tasteless and over priced. We ate out a month ago, the steak smelled old and the potatoes were those packet powder mouselline ones. The only thing they seem to do well is pizza!

Oh and the service station coffee was fucking disgusting! Couldn't wait to get out of France and get to Germany!!

But the supermarket veg is nicer than here, I agree

Why don't you do veggie versions of British classics - Toad in the Hole (veggie sausages, onion gravy), Shepherd's pie but made with lentils, Fish and chips but with battered halloumi...

Fresh fruit and veg in the supermarkets in France this spring/summer was pretty bad - there was very little available and what there was was not great quality. I saw a man photographing some lettuces that were so far gone they were gooey, presumably to have a pop on social media. Their bread was grim too.

However when we bought at the markets and smaller shops the quality was excellent, as usual. Also, lots of restaurants making fusion food and different cuisines - Thai and other Asian foods are very popular. Also getting easier to find real vegetarian food, although vegan not yet a 'thing'. You can't judge french food by their supermarkets, it seems.

I don’t think French food is better, recently holidayed south of Paris and the options for vegetarian and vegan food were almost non-existent. Even trying to get a vegetarian pizza in an Italian/French restaurant was difficult. We lived on bread and salad and I couldn’t wait to get home...

I think part of the problem is the heavy emphasis on regional cuisine, so you keep getting served the same four dishes. Round here one of those is Tripes à la mode de Caen. 🤮
I agree that ingredients are good but the cooking is boring, especially vegetables.

I love French food
but I love the fact that London and other British cities have EVERYBODY'S food.

Go spicy - classic veggie curry - chickpea and aubergine with a side order of dahl and a naan bread

go oriental - tempura and dim sum and pad thai

go south american - refried beach tacos served with guacamole and a belting salsa

there is a lot of food OUTSIDE the land of olive oil

get her used to it

bean, not beach !

Try getting just a bloody cheese baguette though, without the ham!

I tried to get a ham and cheese toastie, without the ham in a cafe in Northern France - that was a toil. I had to do my best eye rolls to get one.

Ursula
You need to ask for "Le Welsh, fromage simple" then you'll get what you want.
DO NOT ask me why they describe as "Le Welsh" the same thing the English call "Crocque Monsieur"

I was going to say the same as ta1kinpeace That maybe because French food has traditionally been of good quality, they haven't really wanted to or had to diversify or change so its the same limited Ingredients, whereas British food has traditionally not been great so people have embraced different cultures and flavours more. When I lived in North London my favourite easy dinner was a Turkish meze with halloumi, pitta bread, stuffed vine leaves, dips etc. Veggie curry and dhal are easy. There is a huge variety of nice veggie products you use to change meat dishes to veggie. She'll go home mini g about French veggie foods