6 ms·

What do you prefer – the French or the Silicon Valley dinner?

48 points by jaoued 10y ago

mahyarm 10y ago
People have these 4 hour dinners in the bay area too, just not in the social groups of the author. I've been to many of them of myself! Not specifically cheese & wine themed, but the same idea.
packetized 10y ago
I can't speak as to others in the bay area, but I quite enjoy the traditional Sunday dinner, wherein I cook for a number of friends in my own home, without expectation. I live in downtown SF, so clearly not an extravagant amount of space, but we make it work (and well). I feel this article is written by someone who doesn't actually know anyone outside of their own echo chamber in SF. edit: if anyone likes meat, potatoes, and whisky, get in touch.
sluggg 10y ago
"While the two cultures might seem very similar, they are actually very much different." In what ways are the cultures similar? The article didn't mention that at all.
jmspring 10y ago
Apples and Oranges. Maybe there are intersections, but "Silicon Valley" and tradition? Just seems a stretch. The Bay Area is mixture of traditions depending on those you mingle with.
beaner 10y ago
My problem is I don't know how to talk to people for 4 hours straight. That only happens if we have very specific interests in common. When that does happen, it might only be with one person, then everybody else gets bored and leaves. I actually like the idea of long, lazy meals with friends. I just don't know how to do it.
- tomcorrigan 10y ago
  The deeper you get in to a bottle of wine the easier the conversation becomes.
  - probably_wrong 10y ago
    Recommending drinking as a solution to a problem is usually not a good idea.
    - smcl 10y ago
      I don't think parent meant it quite like that ...
- _98fj 10y ago
  You just might be more on the introverted side of the personality scale. A good way to see the difference between intro- and extraversion is as follows. Introverts have a lot of inner tension. That starts when they are toddlers. They constantly have something to think about, thus they need more alone-time than others to sort themselves out and work with their inner life. Talking to others is fine and rewarding, but recovery time is needed afterwards, so they choose their communication carefully. Extroverts have way more inner peace. They don't need much time for themselves, they often get bored being alone. So they seek out other people for stimulation. More often than not they seek out introverts, because those are especially interesting. Talking to others is refreshing for them, it refills their batteries. So if you see yourself on the introverted side, don't worry about it. Just accept it and give yourself the peace you need. Invite more or different guests, so they can talk to each other, while you are busy with someone.
  - tbrownaw 10y ago
    No, that's not a good description of the difference. I can prefer reading or watching things quietly over interacting with other humans, without having thoughts stuck chasing rather around in my head.
flukus 10y ago
How about neither? I don't enjoy group meals, I'd much rather eat quickly, quietly and alone. For socialization I'd prefer a bar or to sit around the house chatting.
Animats 10y ago
Silicon Valley has annoyingly few French restaurants. San Carlos has an adequate French provincial fast food place, Cusinette.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  How's Pastis in Cal Ave?
- transitorykris 10y ago
  (because 'Silicon Valley' can be ambiguous for non-locals) San Francisco has an incredible number of French restaurants. A quick search on Google Maps shows 4-5 dozen. Hayes Valley alone has 8.
lorenzfx 10y ago
> We talked even more about food as we had one of the editors of a very popular food mag in France attending the dinner. Sounds like they were talking about work, just not the author's work.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  When I was living in Rome, the main topic of discussion at dinners was always food (with colleagues who were also software engineers). My experience has been that the Italians, French and Spanish love talking about food - which is probably why their cuisines are regarded so highly.
tdumitrescu 10y ago
This is not the Silicon Valley my friends and I know! The differences the author describes between SV and French dinners seem to be more reflective of differences between business meals with acquaintances/partners vs relaxed meals with family/friends. I feel like at the moment you're booking caterers, making up invitations to send out, and printing a time LIMIT like 6-9PM, you're already well into "event" territory rather than "meal" (and fwiw I went to my share of both kinds during my years in central France as well!).
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  Seconded. In New York, even dinner with friends tend to be catered. In the Valley, however, it is common in my experience for friends to cook and for the topic of conversation to be life, the food and the future of humanity. I really enjoy the last topic. It's not specificallt work related, but neither is a food magazine editor talking about food not work related. The difference between Manhattan and Paris is more interesting, to me, given the similar population densities.
  - bambax 10y ago
    > In New York, even dinner with friends tend to be catered In Paris it's kind of rude to not cook yourself. Not "very rude", not "I'll never see this person again rude", but a little désinvolte. If you can't be bothered to buy the food and cook it yourself, why invite people to your place? We can all go to the restaurant and share the bill -- we do that too, of course. But if it's at your place, the expectation is you gave some thought to the menu and the wines, etc. -- including, yes, the seating of the people, who should seat next to whom, etc. Or it's a cocktail and there are 30+ people, then catering is fine. Catering for 6, I can't imagine.
    - ido 10y ago
      Relatively speaking, food is just not as big of a deal in a lot of places compared to France (I see this living in Berlin as well).
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
d--b 10y ago
dont know about the valley but being a Frenchman in New York, I have plenty of dinners that no one calls "seated". And I jave plenty of buffets in Paris as well. This all sounds quite cliché to me...
- karrotwaltz 10y ago
  Talking about clichés, I can confirm that (in my circles at least) we almost always talk about food while eating, and it's usually completely unrelated to what's in our plates.
munchbunny 10y ago
There's something about this post that really bothered me. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. Partly it's that he picks a very specific dinner experience in Paris and generalizes it to a French dinner. Idealizes it, even. And then on the Silicon Valley side, he describes a lifestyle. And then he compares the event in Paris to the lifestyle in San Francisco. Intimate hosted dinners for a small group of acquaintances happen all the time in Silicon Valley. Business meals happen all the time in Paris. That alone is more of a weak comparison or flawed cultural commentary, but then this comes out: > Why? Silicon Valley people get bored easily. > They look around and assess who actually came to the dinner. If they do not see enough friends or if they do not see enough people they can do business with they will leave fast. Dinner invites typically say “from 6pm to 9pm” and that means you can arrive anytime in that time frame and leave anytime no-one will be offended. You can stay for 10 minutes and no-one will pay attention. You can either show up at 08h50 and just say hi then leave at 9. Everyone knows the “rule” and no-one shows before 6 and rarely stays after 9. I get the impression from this description that the actual issue is that Parisians and San Franciscans use different language to set expectations, and that the author is actually describing a difference in how the two cultures express expectations around social gatherings. But that in no way implies that people in Silicon Valley get bored easily. It just means the two cultures communicate differently, which should surprise nobody in either location. Why try to make an ambiguous cultural generalization out of it that is neutral at best and insulting at worst? The whole thing feels lazily written and uncharitable to the colorful variety of both Parisian and Silicon Valley culture. It makes me specifically think less of the author's startup that is advertised at the bottom of the post.
- mirimir 10y ago
  It's a classic induction error. N=2 is worthless.
  - tomsmeding 10y ago
    I don't see induction here, honestly.
    - 10y ago
anothercomment 10y ago
The irony is that French food is often not very good. After some stays there, I formed the hypothesis that French like to talk about food all the time for the same reasons that the British like to talk about the weather all the time - because it tends to be bad... (To be sure the "public facing" food in France is great, but the daily, mundane stuff often disappoints).
- peteretep 10y ago
  Arguably Brits talk about the weather because it's so changeable
  - tudorw 10y ago
    it's a fairly universal ice breaker too, if you happen upon a stranger in close proximity whereby it would be impolite not to say something, commenting on how it is hotter/colder/windier/calmer than expected/yesterday/forecast/this time last year is a good start, their response is the key to whether they would like to exchange small talk, 'yes, it is isn't it, well, yesterday I was in Golant and ....' vs 'Yes.'
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Isn't it also because class is very important in England, and the weather is a neutral topic?
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  Often not good? Where? The French do care about food, it's not a stereotype. I live in Germany and most people here don't really mind having a company restaurant that's "good enough", or don't mind not having a hot meal for dinner. The French (and a few other nationalities) really do, and put more effort and money into eating properly.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    Maybe not in the restaurants, but in private life. For example, when I went there as an exchange pupil, I lived with a family that had potato crisps as a side dish. If you come to Paris as a tourist, of course you can also stumble into a lot of bad restaurants that are just looking to rip of tourists. Of course good stuff also exists.
maehwasu 10y ago
Chatting for 40 minutes about cheeses sounds like a specially engineered form of hell.
- cocochanel 10y ago
  Chatting for 40 minutes about programming languages isn't any different. Also, there's no expectation to do so.
  - jhbadger 10y ago
    Well, typically people chatting about programming languages are programmers. I can see cheesemakers chatting about cheese for similar reasons, but mere mortal eaters of cheese?
enibundo 10y ago
I'm slightly disturbed by the fact that this post is on the front page of hn...
- lazugod 10y ago
  Why?
gambiting 10y ago
"Very few people cook for each other. If it’s at home it’s often food delivered from a startup like caviar or for the wealthier hosts a private chef." Really? I'm in the UK and even wealthy people try to put effort into actually cooking for their guests, even if it's something as simple as a roast thrown in the oven for an hour. I definitely always cook for my guests, unless we're in mood for pizza, then it's takeaway. I've definitely noticed that about some American homes though - massive kitchens with huge gas ranges, and they all look completely brand new, unused - is it that people cook less in general?
paganel 10y ago
Truth be told, talking about cheese for 40 long minutes seems kind of boring. What's there to talk about? You just eat it. My East-European grandma has been making her own cheese using milk taken from her own cows for all of her life, and I've never heard her talking about cheese. Must be a bobo thing.
- hultner 10y ago
  If you enjoy cheese as much of everything you'll know that there's a seemingly endless stream of varieties even within a single defined kind of cheese. I would say that having 40 minute discussion about cheese is no more obscure than having one about programming languages, of course context and setting plays a big role in suitability of both discussions.
- reacweb 10y ago
  I think I can talk about 20 minutes about Camembert, but I am not an expert. If you add roquefort, sainte maure, boulette d'avesne, hervé, 40 minutes is not long. Have you heard about the chimay (http://chimay.com/en/fromages/ http://chimay.com/en/fromages/) ? Next time I go to belgium, I want to taste it.
binarysolo 10y ago
The dinner stereotypes are pretty baseless among my communities of friends in SF... seems like the author has more friends at home in France and more business acquaintances in SV.
Grue3 10y ago
A 4 hour dinner where you have to talk to people on non work-related topics sounds like my personal worst nightmare.
JBReefer 10y ago
While this is charming, this seems more like a reflection on how being from a place is different from living in a place. I have the same long meals with friends and family here, despite the commenters saying the "Silicon Valley" style meal is also the standard in NYC. It feels like he is really pointing out that the mechanics of interaction are very different when no one present is rooted in the region, and you don't have shared history.

48 points by jaoued 10y ago

People have these 4 hour dinners in the bay area too, just not in the social groups of the author. I've been to many of them of myself! Not specifically cheese & wine themed, but the same idea.

packetized 10y ago

I can't speak as to others in the bay area, but I quite enjoy the traditional Sunday dinner, wherein I cook for a number of friends in my own home, without expectation. I live in downtown SF, so clearly not an extravagant amount of space, but we make it work (and well). I feel this article is written by someone who doesn't actually know anyone outside of their own echo chamber in SF. edit: if anyone likes meat, potatoes, and whisky, get in touch.

sluggg 10y ago

"While the two cultures might seem very similar, they are actually very much different." In what ways are the cultures similar? The article didn't mention that at all.

jmspring 10y ago

Apples and Oranges. Maybe there are intersections, but "Silicon Valley" and tradition? Just seems a stretch. The Bay Area is mixture of traditions depending on those you mingle with.

beaner 10y ago

My problem is I don't know how to talk to people for 4 hours straight. That only happens if we have very specific interests in common. When that does happen, it might only be with one person, then everybody else gets bored and leaves. I actually like the idea of long, lazy meals with friends. I just don't know how to do it.

tomcorrigan 10y ago
The deeper you get in to a bottle of wine the easier the conversation becomes.
- probably_wrong 10y ago
  Recommending drinking as a solution to a problem is usually not a good idea.
  - smcl 10y ago
    I don't think parent meant it quite like that ...
_98fj 10y ago
You just might be more on the introverted side of the personality scale. A good way to see the difference between intro- and extraversion is as follows. Introverts have a lot of inner tension. That starts when they are toddlers. They constantly have something to think about, thus they need more alone-time than others to sort themselves out and work with their inner life. Talking to others is fine and rewarding, but recovery time is needed afterwards, so they choose their communication carefully. Extroverts have way more inner peace. They don't need much time for themselves, they often get bored being alone. So they seek out other people for stimulation. More often than not they seek out introverts, because those are especially interesting. Talking to others is refreshing for them, it refills their batteries. So if you see yourself on the introverted side, don't worry about it. Just accept it and give yourself the peace you need. Invite more or different guests, so they can talk to each other, while you are busy with someone.
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  No, that's not a good description of the difference. I can prefer reading or watching things quietly over interacting with other humans, without having thoughts stuck chasing rather around in my head.

flukus 10y ago

How about neither? I don't enjoy group meals, I'd much rather eat quickly, quietly and alone. For socialization I'd prefer a bar or to sit around the house chatting.

Animats 10y ago

Silicon Valley has annoyingly few French restaurants. San Carlos has an adequate French provincial fast food place, Cusinette.

hkmurakami 10y ago
How's Pastis in Cal Ave?
transitorykris 10y ago
(because 'Silicon Valley' can be ambiguous for non-locals) San Francisco has an incredible number of French restaurants. A quick search on Google Maps shows 4-5 dozen. Hayes Valley alone has 8.

lorenzfx 10y ago

> We talked even more about food as we had one of the editors of a very popular food mag in France attending the dinner. Sounds like they were talking about work, just not the author's work.

lucaspiller 10y ago
When I was living in Rome, the main topic of discussion at dinners was always food (with colleagues who were also software engineers). My experience has been that the Italians, French and Spanish love talking about food - which is probably why their cuisines are regarded so highly.

tdumitrescu 10y ago

This is not the Silicon Valley my friends and I know! The differences the author describes between SV and French dinners seem to be more reflective of differences between business meals with acquaintances/partners vs relaxed meals with family/friends. I feel like at the moment you're booking caterers, making up invitations to send out, and printing a time LIMIT like 6-9PM, you're already well into "event" territory rather than "meal" (and fwiw I went to my share of both kinds during my years in central France as well!).

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Seconded. In New York, even dinner with friends tend to be catered. In the Valley, however, it is common in my experience for friends to cook and for the topic of conversation to be life, the food and the future of humanity. I really enjoy the last topic. It's not specificallt work related, but neither is a food magazine editor talking about food not work related. The difference between Manhattan and Paris is more interesting, to me, given the similar population densities.
- bambax 10y ago
  > In New York, even dinner with friends tend to be catered In Paris it's kind of rude to not cook yourself. Not "very rude", not "I'll never see this person again rude", but a little désinvolte. If you can't be bothered to buy the food and cook it yourself, why invite people to your place? We can all go to the restaurant and share the bill -- we do that too, of course. But if it's at your place, the expectation is you gave some thought to the menu and the wines, etc. -- including, yes, the seating of the people, who should seat next to whom, etc. Or it's a cocktail and there are 30+ people, then catering is fine. Catering for 6, I can't imagine.
  - ido 10y ago
    Relatively speaking, food is just not as big of a deal in a lot of places compared to France (I see this living in Berlin as well).
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

d--b 10y ago

dont know about the valley but being a Frenchman in New York, I have plenty of dinners that no one calls "seated". And I jave plenty of buffets in Paris as well. This all sounds quite cliché to me...

karrotwaltz 10y ago
Talking about clichés, I can confirm that (in my circles at least) we almost always talk about food while eating, and it's usually completely unrelated to what's in our plates.

munchbunny 10y ago

There's something about this post that really bothered me. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. Partly it's that he picks a very specific dinner experience in Paris and generalizes it to a French dinner. Idealizes it, even. And then on the Silicon Valley side, he describes a lifestyle. And then he compares the event in Paris to the lifestyle in San Francisco. Intimate hosted dinners for a small group of acquaintances happen all the time in Silicon Valley. Business meals happen all the time in Paris. That alone is more of a weak comparison or flawed cultural commentary, but then this comes out: > Why? Silicon Valley people get bored easily. > They look around and assess who actually came to the dinner. If they do not see enough friends or if they do not see enough people they can do business with they will leave fast. Dinner invites typically say “from 6pm to 9pm” and that means you can arrive anytime in that time frame and leave anytime no-one will be offended. You can stay for 10 minutes and no-one will pay attention. You can either show up at 08h50 and just say hi then leave at 9. Everyone knows the “rule” and no-one shows before 6 and rarely stays after 9. I get the impression from this description that the actual issue is that Parisians and San Franciscans use different language to set expectations, and that the author is actually describing a difference in how the two cultures express expectations around social gatherings. But that in no way implies that people in Silicon Valley get bored easily. It just means the two cultures communicate differently, which should surprise nobody in either location. Why try to make an ambiguous cultural generalization out of it that is neutral at best and insulting at worst? The whole thing feels lazily written and uncharitable to the colorful variety of both Parisian and Silicon Valley culture. It makes me specifically think less of the author's startup that is advertised at the bottom of the post.

mirimir 10y ago
It's a classic induction error. N=2 is worthless.
- tomsmeding 10y ago
  I don't see induction here, honestly.
  - 10y ago

anothercomment 10y ago

The irony is that French food is often not very good. After some stays there, I formed the hypothesis that French like to talk about food all the time for the same reasons that the British like to talk about the weather all the time - because it tends to be bad... (To be sure the "public facing" food in France is great, but the daily, mundane stuff often disappoints).

peteretep 10y ago
Arguably Brits talk about the weather because it's so changeable
- tudorw 10y ago
  it's a fairly universal ice breaker too, if you happen upon a stranger in close proximity whereby it would be impolite not to say something, commenting on how it is hotter/colder/windier/calmer than expected/yesterday/forecast/this time last year is a good start, their response is the key to whether they would like to exchange small talk, 'yes, it is isn't it, well, yesterday I was in Golant and ....' vs 'Yes.'
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Isn't it also because class is very important in England, and the weather is a neutral topic?
hocuspocus 10y ago
Often not good? Where? The French do care about food, it's not a stereotype. I live in Germany and most people here don't really mind having a company restaurant that's "good enough", or don't mind not having a hot meal for dinner. The French (and a few other nationalities) really do, and put more effort and money into eating properly.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  Maybe not in the restaurants, but in private life. For example, when I went there as an exchange pupil, I lived with a family that had potato crisps as a side dish. If you come to Paris as a tourist, of course you can also stumble into a lot of bad restaurants that are just looking to rip of tourists. Of course good stuff also exists.

maehwasu 10y ago

Chatting for 40 minutes about cheeses sounds like a specially engineered form of hell.

cocochanel 10y ago
Chatting for 40 minutes about programming languages isn't any different. Also, there's no expectation to do so.
- jhbadger 10y ago
  Well, typically people chatting about programming languages are programmers. I can see cheesemakers chatting about cheese for similar reasons, but mere mortal eaters of cheese?

enibundo 10y ago

I'm slightly disturbed by the fact that this post is on the front page of hn...

lazugod 10y ago
Why?

gambiting 10y ago

"Very few people cook for each other. If it’s at home it’s often food delivered from a startup like caviar or for the wealthier hosts a private chef." Really? I'm in the UK and even wealthy people try to put effort into actually cooking for their guests, even if it's something as simple as a roast thrown in the oven for an hour. I definitely always cook for my guests, unless we're in mood for pizza, then it's takeaway. I've definitely noticed that about some American homes though - massive kitchens with huge gas ranges, and they all look completely brand new, unused - is it that people cook less in general?

paganel 10y ago

Truth be told, talking about cheese for 40 long minutes seems kind of boring. What's there to talk about? You just eat it. My East-European grandma has been making her own cheese using milk taken from her own cows for all of her life, and I've never heard her talking about cheese. Must be a bobo thing.

hultner 10y ago
If you enjoy cheese as much of everything you'll know that there's a seemingly endless stream of varieties even within a single defined kind of cheese. I would say that having 40 minute discussion about cheese is no more obscure than having one about programming languages, of course context and setting plays a big role in suitability of both discussions.
reacweb 10y ago
I think I can talk about 20 minutes about Camembert, but I am not an expert. If you add roquefort, sainte maure, boulette d'avesne, hervé, 40 minutes is not long. Have you heard about the chimay (http://chimay.com/en/fromages/ http://chimay.com/en/fromages/) ? Next time I go to belgium, I want to taste it.

binarysolo 10y ago

The dinner stereotypes are pretty baseless among my communities of friends in SF... seems like the author has more friends at home in France and more business acquaintances in SV.

Grue3 10y ago

A 4 hour dinner where you have to talk to people on non work-related topics sounds like my personal worst nightmare.

JBReefer 10y ago

While this is charming, this seems more like a reflection on how being from a place is different from living in a place. I have the same long meals with friends and family here, despite the commenters saying the "Silicon Valley" style meal is also the standard in NYC. It feels like he is really pointing out that the mechanics of interaction are very different when no one present is rooted in the region, and you don't have shared history.