After the better part of year in the Paris area, I have a few thoughts on non-french food here. First off and following up the post on Mexican food, I had a terrible meal recently at a supposedly mexian place at la Defense and can affirm the conclusion that Paris is not a great place for Mexican food. It's probably a little trite, but I think the French are pretty insular and for the most part are not that interested in fine cuisines beyond their own (this is clearly a generalization - I know many French people who are interested in other cuisines, but when looking at a 'culture' as a whole generalizations are assumed). To this point, in from "Paris to the Moon", Adam Gopnik has a quote from Peter Hoffman (Savoy) about a visit to L'Ambrose in Paris where Mr. Hoffman was talked into ordering the chef's mille-feuille with langoustines and curry. The quote continues with Mr. Hoffman expressing exasperation because of the chef's improper use of curry and that is was evident that the chef had not taken the time to learn the way spices are used in other cuisines (pp 159). I think this quote is worth noting because it reaffirms this idea that exists here that French cuisine is the best in the world and that maybe we'll take a few things from the rest of the world, but in no way will those things (spices, different ingredients, etc) change the identity of French cuisine. Hardly scientific, but taking a quick look at the restaurants Zagats lists as the 50 most popular in Paris, only one of the ones I recognized was non-french. I'm sure a significant number of the people submitting the reviews for Zagats are American, so the popularity list is probably somewhat skewed, but the fact that most of Paris' most popular restaurants are French, points to either a lack of non-French restaurants or a lack of interest in non-french restaurants (or both). It would be interesting to have a an anthropoligist's perspective, but it seems like one of two criteria must be met for a particicular type of food to flouirsh in an area: Either an interest in that type of food or a significant number of people from the region. Regarding the latter criteria, it seems like the non-French cuisines that are successful here are cuisines from the countries that France formerly occupied. The large number of people either from these countries or with roots to the countries seem to provide a built-in customer-base for the restaurants and help acclimate others to the cuisine. To this point, north-African food is quite popular here (at least in Paris) and is well represented in the grocery stores here (prepared cous cous dinners appear quite popular). It seems as well that the sizable population from the Middle-East has fed an interest in the Kebabs that are ubiquitous in Paris (and I might add can be quite good). All of that said, I think the conclusion is that other cuisines tend not to flourish here because the French are really not that interested in them and because there aren't significant enough populations of people from different regions to give the cuisines the critical-mass to break into the mainstream. What do other people think? I just took a look at some of the other posts that people made when I was writing this. Sorry if its'a little redundant.
