France: Better Bread, Butter, Cocktails & More

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AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers around the perceived superiority of French culture and cuisine compared to that of the United States. Participants argue that France excels in various areas, particularly food, with a consensus that French bread, butter, and pastries are of higher quality than typical American offerings. Some participants suggest that Italian cuisine may surpass French food, particularly in coffee and gelato. The conversation also touches on broader cultural aspects, including the French approach to humor, art, and literature, with references to famous French poets and chefs. Contrasting opinions emerge, with some asserting that American food, particularly Californian wine, can rival French standards. The debate extends to historical military comparisons, with claims about the outcomes of wars and the contributions of various nations during conflicts. Ultimately, the thread oscillates between light-hearted banter and serious cultural critique, reflecting a playful rivalry between the two nations while highlighting the complexities of food, history, and national identity.
Chi Meson
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I was listening to the news this morning. France has better bread, better butter, better cocktails, better everything!

What else does France do better than US?

[avoid the obvious]
 
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They lose wars better (and faster) :biggrin:
 
They have better riots? :)

I think in terms of food, on average, France has better quality almost in all categories. Most americans are used to mediocre or poor-quality food that's cheap and fast. You'll never see a french settling for Wonder bread, for instance.

You could do the same comparison with Italy, which in my opinion, has even better food in general than France (uh-oh, I hear complaints brewing up). They have better coffee and certainly, better ice cream with their geloto.

Zz.
 
Football!
 
ZapperZ said:
They have better riots? :)
Arrgh! Avoid the obvious! I thought we could dance around this one!:rolleyes:

I hope France can prove itself better than US at not taking itself too seriously. Unfortunately, since my last post I learned of the first fatality; this takes away the humor.
 
France has better bread, better butter, better cocktails, better everything!

Says who? The radio? I've had a french bread before and it's as hard as a rock. Just about all french food I've ever had was either mediocre or terrible. Even things france is world renown for, like wine, is argueable not as good as the US's (i.e. Californian wine). Your just comparing french food to places like McDonalds.

You could do the same comparison with Italy, which in my opinion, has even better food in general than France (uh-oh, I hear complaints brewing up). They have better coffee and certainly, better ice cream with their geloto.

Italy has like the best food in the world, way better than crummy french food.
 
Chi, I see you have updated your location to the new region of Easterny. :-p French food is good, they have great pastries also. But I have to agree, Italy's food is better, even their pastries.

France has the Louvre, that's pretty cool. The French Alps are nice. The French Riviera is nice.
 
French Bread, French Toast, French Fries, France has all the awesome food!
 
Entropy said:
Says who? The radio? I've had a french bread before and it's as hard as a rock. Just about all french food I've ever had was either mediocre or terrible. Even things france is world renown for, like wine, is argueable not as good as the US's (i.e. Californian wine). Your just comparing french food to places like McDonalds.

And you could be thinking of french food of a particular type. Have you, for example, tried the french cuisine from the Provence region, or even around the mediterranean? We're talking about rustic, country french food here such as bouillabaisse.

And I don't know what kind of bread you got, but I like crusty, yeasty breads with flavor and texture, as opposed to Wonder bread that tastes like air.

Zz.
 
  • #10
mattmns said:
French Bread, French Toast, French Fries, France has all the awesome food!

I nominate mattmns to Evo for big smack on the head.

:)

Zz.
 
  • #11
I personally am a big fan of their Bike Race!

They have much much better bicycling champions than we do.
 
  • #12
French food, I'm told, is much better than it tastes.

(Sorry Mr. Twain.)

How about French kissing, anyone else like it?
 
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  • #13
Evo said:
I have to agree, Italy's food is better, even their pastries.
Laurence Olivier says Italian pastry chefs are better than French ones in Brideshead Revisited so it must be true.

The French speak French better than the Americans too.
 
  • #14
Although I love the duck rillettes I had when I was in the Jura.
 
  • #15
They're better at the metric system...
 
  • #16
El Hombre Invisible said:
Laurence Olivier says Italian pastry chefs are better than French ones in Brideshead Revisited so it must be true.
Completely untrue.

Actually, I have yet to taste baked goods anywhere that are better than French ones.
 
  • #17
El Hombre Invisible said:
The French speak French better than the Americans too.

I noticed that too! It's like they make it sound so easy, so natural!

I'm not exactly a connesewar, but can anyone compare French whines to American whines?
 
  • #18
ZapperZ said:
They have better riots? :)
Actually this is one thing that the US is probably better at than every single other western country. The only one that even seems to compare is China.
You could do the same comparison with Italy, which in my opinion, has even better food in general than France
Yeah... well, I'll give italy pasta and pizza (which is sooo good).
 
  • #19
Chi Meson said:
I'm not exactly a connesewar, but can anyone compare French whines to American whines?
Yeah, French make good "wine". Americans spell it "whine" and make it accordingly.
 
  • #20
Smurf said:
Yeah, French make good "wine". Americans spell it "whine" and make it accordingly.
Wha-ho! Two-shay!
 
  • #21
Chi Meson said:
Wha-ho! Two-shay!
:smile: Yeah.. I couldn't resist.
 
  • #22
Smurf said:
:smile: Yeah.. I couldn't resist.

Well, veeve lu resistance, eh?
 
  • #23
My mother made home made french bread twice a week when I was growing up. :!) Now, I buy the Italian bread from La Brea Bakery, it's heavenly.

I've also stopped being a wine snob and I now prefer some California wines.
 
  • #24
Things I like about France:

The food. Especially around Provence, finding a small restaurant with one chef and a few simple ingredients is soooooo good. You can't get anything quite like it elsewhere.

The wine. It's not necessarily my favourite to drink, I much prefer South American, Australian and South African wines for flavour, but I love the way that they're so passionate about it, and that you don't have to buy a bottle, you can go to a vineyard village at any time of year and get a massive plastic 'milk tub' of wine for about 20 centimes. And it doesn't give you a headache.

The skiing. Who loves the Alps? We love the Alps!

The never-ending brotherly feud between the French and the English.


I'd mention the things I don't like about France too, but some wouldn't take enough salt with it so I'll bite my tongue...
 
  • #25
El Hombre said:
The French speak French better than the Americans too.

The French speak English better than the Americans, too!

:-p
 
  • #26
I had french food once. I went into a little bakery, and everything they sold was ham & cheese themed. Everything!
 
  • #27
ZapperZ said:
They have better riots? :)
The riots are so much better because no body makes you stop! W00t! RIoT!
 
  • #28
what about math? lagrange, fourier, galois, monge, laplace, de vallee-poussin, hadamard, bourbaki (that's a greek name actually), descartes, legendre, cauchy, carnot, coriolis, chasles, picard, hermite, navier, baire, sturm, liouville, ampere, poisson, pascal, frechet, goursat, poncelet, dieudonnet, borel x 2, cartan, d'alembert, germain, laurent, mersenne, parseval, fatou, lebesgue, vandermonde, argand, chevallay, de moivre, de morgan, deligne, dirichlet, mandelbrot, darboux, rouche, julia, denjoy, thom, serre ... since england cut themselves off from the mainland for so long because of the Newton/leibniz thing, the only other country that could match france is germany, imo
 
  • #29
How bout everything Antartican that is better then France.

I'll start

1) Better ice
2) Better fish
3) We have never lost a war
4) We never surrender
5) No riots
6) The animals are beautiful and far less snobby
7) No jobs yet better unemployment rates
 
  • #30
what about music? you got lully, marais, du pre, tortelier, navarra, kantorow, messaien, rameau, des prez, leonin, perotin, machaut, dufay, gombert, de rore, lassus (aka orlando di lasso), couperin, berlioz, saint-saens, bizet, faure, dukas ... but i guess a lot of the good music might have disappeared after the revolution since there was no king to write/perform for, & the role of the church was greatly diminished. there were still composers but none like marais or rameau


& i'll add french onion soup too! :biggrin:
 
  • #31
I prefer American pancakes to French crepes, but American pancakes are Scottish anyway, so I guess that doesn't count.

Uh... post-structuralist architecture?
 
  • #32
El Hombre Invisible said:
I prefer American pancakes to French crepes

Holy crap i had these crepes a few times... omg it was like heaven x 100.
 
  • #33
French food is great, Italian can be better, (French meat is better, actually Belgium meat is very very good, less fussy than French dishes) although Greek is the best...

Says who? The radio? I've had a french bread before and it's as hard as a rock. Just about all french food I've ever had was either mediocre or terrible. Even things france is world renown for, like wine, is argueable not as good as the US's (i.e. Californian wine). Your just comparing french food to places like McDonalds.

Says me.. whos been in both places :-)

Cali wine can be good, some is very good, but in general new world wines arent as good as old world.. Italian wine is better than French anyway... And IMO Greek Wine (the people who introduced it to Italy and then France) especially rezina is the best...

Anyway what is the "American" kitchen? Most of it is related to another countries first... (Not an insult, I am curious what you would say is the "american" kitchen...
 
  • #34
3) We have never lost a war

Comparing Apples and pears, I can guarantee that France has WON more wars than America…

Anyway did you not have a civil war? Thus could you not argue you have (at least a portion of your citizans have) lost a war?...

Ok before you come down on me like a 100KG of bricks (like the use of metric system there :-) ) I didnt read Pengwuino post proper and thought it said America ;)
 
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  • #35
fourier jr said:
what about music? you got lully, marais, du pre, tortelier, navarra, kantorow, messaien, rameau, des prez, leonin, perotin, machaut, dufay, gombert, de rore, lassus (aka orlando di lasso), couperin, berlioz, saint-saens, bizet, faure, dukas ... but i guess a lot of the good music might have disappeared after the revolution since there was no king to write/perform for, & the role of the church was greatly diminished. there were still composers but none like marais or rameau
& i'll add french onion soup too! :biggrin:
'In the Depths of the Temple' is bliss! You forgot Delibes and Offenbach, although the US marines have stolen 'Les Deux Gendarmes'!
A french friend had us to dinner last night - french cooking followed by crepes, downed with an Aussie wine he provided (a St Henri shiraz)-more bliss!:smile:
I'm very fond of scottish pancakes too!
 
  • #36
what is a Scottish pancake? I think you mean Pikelets, right?
 
  • #37
Anttech, I've got a feeling I've discussed this here somewhere before. You're correct, Pikelets is what I call them, they are also called Scottish Pancakes and Drop Scones, I've discovered. Yum!
 
  • #38
Well I was brought up in Glasgow, and we never called 'em "scottish pancakes" Just Pikelets.. or those yummy sweet things you have with breakfast :-) hehe
 
  • #39
Anttech said:
what is a Scottish pancake? I think you mean Pikelets, right?
Drop scones.
 
  • #40
Thanks Anttech, my ancestors were Scottish, so I must have them to thank for passing down the correct terminology!:smile:
 
  • #41
Anttech said:
Ok before you come down on me like a 100KG of bricks (like the use of metric system there :-) ) I didnt read Pengwuino post proper and thought it said America ;)
Why would we come down on you like a tenth of a tonne of bricks? Anyway, I think its clear that America is MUCH better at losing wars than anyone. Such style and denial! The writer/monologist Sarah Vowell points out that one week after the fall of Saigon, she was learning how US has never lost a war. Who was it that said "We didn't lose Vietnam, it was a tie!"

And on the subject of "drop scones": my mum (a true Glaswegian) calls them just "scones", but pronounces them "sconns." They are not really pancakes, nor what we call scones. They were made with potato (but that could be a WWII thing) and eaten cold, and with butter but no syrup. Sounds like a crumpet to me.
 
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  • #42
Anttech said:
Comparing Apples and pears, I can guarantee that France has WON more wars than America…

Anyway did you not have a civil war? Thus could you not argue you have (at least a portion of your citizans have) lost a war?...

Ok before you come down on me like a 100KG of bricks (like the use of metric system there :-) ) I didnt read Pengwuino post proper and thought it said America ;)

I'm still coming down on you!

*grabs a 100kg of bricks and looks for a crane to hire...*
 
  • #43
And on the subject of "drop scones": my mum (a true Glaswegian) calls them just "scones", but pronounces them "sconns."...snip...They were made with potato

ahh you mean tattie sconnes :)

I LOVE those things, everytime I am home I buy as many as poss :)

sah yeh ken scots, seen as yer ma is fa thear.. :)
 
  • #44
Aye, ah dinnae ken wha' ye said, but.

"Tis a braw bricht moonlicht nicht, the nicht,"
 
  • #45
how about architecture? there were le corbusier... & i don't know who else, but the pompidou centre is still pretty cool after all these yrs
 
  • #46
you dinnae ken but ye ken ma spreaken...

aye tis braw :)
 
  • #47
I really like French kissing, but I'm an American and do it pretty damn well.
 
  • #48
fourier jr said:
how about architecture? there were le corbusier... & i don't know who else, but the pompidou centre is still pretty cool after all these yrs


Didn't Norman Foster design the Pompidou?
 
  • #49
like Elvis's hair?
 
  • #50
America has conan, nothing else matters.
 

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