ok before people start to flame me, I must say that I have very little experience with French cuisine. I have been to Paris, and had a lunch in downtown which was thyme grilled lamb chop with fried potato, alone with 6 escargots with basil sauce. It was good, but for some reason I can hardly see how it's "French".

So I did some research on list of French dishes. Apart from pastry (I don't like desserts/pastry) and the fancy study like horse meat, foie gras, escargots, and all those expensive delicacies that's not eaten everyday, I found the "normal", day to day french dishes quite uninteresting... OK I used to cook coq au vin and many times, but still can't get over the poultry+red wine combination which I dislike. Other dishes like boeuf bourguignon, which is very similar to coq au vin and still has the cooked red wine taste that I don't like, fish stew (bouillabaise) is fine, mushy-looking pate and terrine really can't bring up my appetite, not to mention those stewed vegetables and common sausages and pork....

Maybe I'm being ignorant here, but from what I read, there's really nothing exciting about French cuisine. In comparison, every country in Europe other than France have some really well-defined style and signature dishes that are amazing just from the way it sounds like (as in, by reading the description).

What are the common french (savory) dishes we see in America?
Coq au vin
Beouf bourguignon
Bouillabaisse
French onion soup
Steak and fries
Duck confit

Is that it... come on, there got to be more, since French cuisine is always celebrated as the most refined food in the world, but really, what am I missing here?

It sounds to me that you have standard French cuisine often enough it's rather become standard, and given the dominance of the French in this area it doesn't surprise me.

Although for me those dishes you find mundane would stand out, I simply don't eat them often. Instead it's Italian cuisine which tends to strike me as normal. My mother lived in Italy for seven years and growing up pasta dishes were standard fare, as were things like shrimp parmigian. I did recognize that these were Italian derived, but from my perspective they were standard American fare. Pasta and meatballs is hardly uncommon here, but apparently most of my friends view this as an Italian dish, whereas for me it's just dinner.

taking out those americanized "italian" dishes, there are quite a lot of interesting things from Italy that I can clearly see a "style" in it. If you compare a french restaurant's menu to italian restaurant's menu, you can see how italian resturants always have similar set of dishes, while the french menu tend to get all over the place.

If you want everyday interesting cusine, come to China.

I believe it's considered "interested" because there hard to prepare and/or made with a lot of/exotic ingredients.

Flavor wise french food isn't half as interesting as Chinese or Spanish food.

I think the fancy stuff like steak tartare and foie gras is part of the fun of French cuisine; it's stuff you wouldn't normally eat, it's a bit out there and decadent which is what I like about it. I'd also say French cheeses such as a camembert, brie and roquefort are quite unique in both flavour and texture - I'd recommend giving them a try. I would agree that most French food you have outside of France is nowhere near as good, but I suppose it's much easier for us to experience the real thing since all I have to do is hop on the ferry and I'm there. Still, don't write it off too soon. The difference between traditional European cuisine is probably the most varied in the world.

And also just a quick note to those of you across the pond - 'Bouillabaisse' isn't prounounced 'boolybase'.

Come to England and try our "cuisine"...

I love Indian cuisine.

I love boeuf bourguignon and escargots! Apart from that I am sad to say that even though I am French I know next to nothing about French "cuisine". I was raised on pizzas, pasta and junk food. When I go abroad and see the menus of French restaurants I don't recognize many dishes and they seem very overpriced.


I once lived in Victoria, Canada, and I realized that what I missed from France were the little things, like:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saucisson>>>my favorite type of charcuterie. ^_^ Come to think of it, charcuterie as a whole was rather absent in western Canada.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleu_de_bresse >> my favorite cheese, although there are many other types of French cheese that I absolutely love (Camembert, for instance). I like Italian cheese as well, but I find French chesse to be more unique and it reminds me of my childhood. Cheese in Canada was very disappointing, the taste was very bland.

- Also, while I could buy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_au_chocolat and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croissant in Canada, they just couldn't compare with what I can buy in bakeries here in France.

- Additionnally, I did miss French bread and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fougasse_%28bread%29.

-And to finish, some of my favorite desserts were hard to find in Canada, including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89clair_%28pastry%29, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris-brest, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille-feuille, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarte_trop%C3%A9zienne...


All this to say that for me, a Frenchman, the best of French cuisine is not to be found in the expensive dishes but in the little things that you eat everyday here and are very hard to come by outside of France. And btw, all the links include nice pictures so that you can see what they look like

Hope this helps!

here is your issue, normal day to day food isn't meant to be interesting, it's repetitive and made to fill the belly.

I think that French Cuisine may, in fact, be considered "boring" to most of us Americans for the very reason that Italian, Spanish, Asian, etc. cuisines are considered "exciting;" they're actually exotic. French Cuisine has become so dominant in American restaurant culture that it's been fully adopted as "American," too. Hence, it's stuff we see every day, and thus not so much out of the ordinary. Sure, there's a few French things that have never, and likely WILL never, face widespread American adoption, but at the heart, the STYLE of cooking, the whole "meat-and-sauce" type of cooking has become the standard American fare. It's so familiar, and thus, so boring.

At least from what I understand of the culinary arts, it's a different reason that explains things if your focusing more specifically on taste, on how other cuisines seem to strive toward bolder flavors with more spices; that seems to stem from a different philosophy, wherein with French Cuisine the idea is to emphasis the natural flavor of the "core" ingredient, (typically the meat) as opposed to using a larger number of spices and other added flavoring agents to concoct an entirely new flavor in concert with the base ingredients.

to me, french cooking is..

snails

long skinny loafs of bread that are useless to anyone not eating soup

paté -usually made from the weirdest things..

e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g simmered in red wine..

those little sparrow birds they stuff, fry and eat whole..

too much garlic, in all the wrong places

really big plates with crappy little servings

they don't like it when you ask for the ketchup.



and this, is civilized dining? :shrug:

Sounds like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_cuisine you eat in French restaurants, not like french cooking as a whole :shrug: As I said, there is huge difference between what you eat in so called French restaurants and what most French people would consider French cuisine.

It's the cooking you get in France


As of the southern Belgium border, I watch where I stab my fork :ninja:

It's not what I get when I go out or when I get invited by someone I never saw stuffed sparrows in my entire life...

This is what i believe to be your problem OP. French cuisine is indeed what most of traditional American cuisine is based off of, in fact, the vast majority or culinary schools in America teach French cuisine as the gold-standard of cooking. It is "uninteresting" to you because it is not seen as exotic, it is seen as everyday.

There is 2 type of french cooking: the cuisine bourgeoise, which is the one you do in-house or in small restaurant on road side. This cuisine requires correct ingredients (du terroir: from the countryside). It requires time and it is relatively simple although some dishes are tough. I went to numerous "french" restaurant in the US and only 2 of them (one in San Diego and one in Houston) were truly french. The rest was a parody, a lampoon of french cuisine, a Disneyland of food, overspiced, overcooked, overportion. Ok, it might sound boring to you.
Then, there is the Haute Cuisine which is coming in various flavours but is always interesting. You have the classic haute cuisine and the nouvelle cuisine, lighter with new flavours and new way of cooking.

Apart from that, Mandamus says it all. To me, I find the food in the USA most time an approximation of abomination: too fat, too sugary, ingredients not fresh or industrial, lack of originality, too many spices. Even the so called italian restaurant are very far from what I ate in Venezia, Torino, Trieste or Firenze. Very very far.

Because it's peasant food, like Spanish cuisine. Most of that stuff was made to fill up the bellies of poor villagers in the mountains. They can dress it up, but it's peasant fare at heart.

Nothing wrong with English cuisine, in spite of the popular misconception. It's actually very varied and often excellent; problem is, people come here expecting to find bad food so they do find it, hence the perennial "English food lol". Their loss. That's not to say that there isn't bad food to be found, but the same is true of everywhere; in fact I'd go as far as to say that it's rather easier to find uninspiring and unpleasant food in some of the locales that are particularly noteworthy for their criticism of ours.

Without entering in detail, french history is the reflect of its cuisine.

As I said, there is the bourgeoise cuisine which is partially coming from the farmer cooking and was refined by the people arriving in town. The farmer food is totally derived from the celtic and roman tradition. It is not really different from the traditional german, english, belgium, roumanian etc... cooking. However, the cooks working for rich people, during the 19th century, in town, were often poor peasant girls coming from Burgundy, Auvergne (the center) or Britanny. They adapted their own traditional food to town people. The bourgeoise cuisine starts to really be different.

And then, before that, during the 18th century, there was the noble people, the aristocrats, the very rich who developed a very refined and complex cuisine, rather distinct from the bourgeoise, more popular, cooking. This is the ancestor of the Haute Cuisine.
During the revolution, from 1789 to 1800, a lot of the professional cook working for these nobles have to find another job. They open restaurants which were very popular especially during the Empire and the Restauration beginning of 19th century, that was the start of the Haute Cuisine.

English cuisine from country side is EXCELLENT. But in town... That's another thing.

Insofar there is nothing extraordinary about French cooking, I would agree. The term "cuisine", in all its posh snobbishness, tells everything about how it's oversold. Literally : even here, in France, you should see the price in some of the flashiest restaurants. *rolleyes* No one I know would go there, that's just asking for eating a salad priced half your wages - "experience" my ass.

French cooking, however, is very good. You'd kill a puppy for my mum's mousse au chocolat (no mooses are harmed), I know that. It's like every other nation - get some real meal cooked by a local, that's where you find the real deal. That's just it : the same way I realized that I never actually ate an icecream before I went to Italy, I suspect actual French cooking is hard to come by outside the borders.*shrug* Question of having the right ingredients, I suppose, mostly.

Don't like anything cooked in wine, myself. Maybe it's a question of region, but it's not at all common round here. Man I'd have a truffade (aka 10 pounds gained in one meal ) over that any day. And snails are basically uninteresting pieces of rubber macerated in garlic and butter (*burp*). Looking forward to Christmas, though. My mother makes her own foie gras. With onion jam.

From a friend who currently lives in America, he says what he really misses is the french desserts - ?le flottante and galette des rois and suchlikes. *shrug* Perhaps you should try that instead of meals.