This writer is a prime example of a new writing genre, the American that sees the best in other countries but the worst in his own. It’s irritatingly present ev

This writer is a prime example of a new writing genre, the American that sees the best in other countries but the worst in his own. It’s irritatingly present everywhere, especially by people (like the author) that have admittedly spent a couple months in France but feel justified in saying things about the food culture. Here’s my experience, having lived in Europe and traveled around for about a decade. - French coffee is terrible. American coffee options are dramatically better and the vision of American coffee as watery and overroasted is about two decades out of date. In fact, the entire third wave modern coffee industry is an American food phenomenon. Italian espresso and Turkish coffee, the “predecessors” of contemporary coffee culture, are actually not that appealing to most people in real life. - America is significantly more comfortable with experimentation that just about anywhere. Sometimes this has bad results. Other times it has world-changing ones. A fairly significant amount of “food innovation” in Old World countries is actually traceable to American experiments. Edit: just wanted to also add that this meme of all European meals as being “I’ll pick up some ingredients from the local grocer, then spend two hours preparing the meal, which itself is an hours-long social gathering” is just that - a meme. It happens sometimes, maybe more than in America. But Europeans eat fast food, they buy prepackaged meals at big box grocery stores, they get lazy, like anyone else on planet earth.