Everywhere around the world, France is known for its gastronomy. For instance, French cuisine is so popular that there are movies about it (for example “Ratatouille”) and the famous French “baguette” is now part of the UNESCO world heritage. In fact, French restaurants can be found all over the world and are usually pretty expensive and fancy. A lot of different French foods and dishes are famous such as “croissants,” snails, and frog legs. However, a lot of different French dishes are less famous than these but taste even better!
Cultural dishes in France usually depend a lot on the region. For example, the city of Marseille has a soup called “Bouillabaisse,” which is a soup made with fish and seafood. The Lorraine region has its famous quiche (called “quiche Lorraine”) made with cheese and ham, and a part of the southwest of France (called “les Landes”) has its famous “Salade Landaise,” which is a duck salad with asparagus and potatoes. France also has many cultural desserts and the most famous of them is probably the “crêpe Suzette.” This dessert is made by pouring a sauce onto crêpes. This sauce is made with butter, sugar, orange juice, and a little bit of Grand Marnier (an orange liquor).
A big part of the cultural food in France is cheese. Each cheese comes from a specific part of the country and a lot of cheeses have the name of the region they're from: for example, Cantal cheese, Comté cheese, or Sainte-Maure de Tourenne cheese (that comes from the city with the same name).
France has a pretty classic timing of meals. We eat three meals per day: breakfast (around 7:00 am), lunch (around 12:00 pm), and dinner (around 7:00 pm), and usually children eat a snack around 4:00 pm. The length of meals really depend on each person or family but usually dinner lasts longer than breakfast or lunch.
Some special occasions are related to certain foods. For example, on Christmas people usually eat a lot of seafood as well as turkey and, for dessert, exotic fruits and a cake called “bûche de Noël” (translated to “log of Christmas” due to the resemblance of the cake to a log). This cake is usually chocolate-flavored, but it can also be strawberry-flavored or coffee-flavored.
As a conclusion, France is a country that is very diverse concerning cultural foods and dishes. Although French gastronomy is very popular, a lot of French cuisine is not very well-known internationally despite being quite famous in the country. French people usually eat three times a day and, on special occasions, eat types of food that are almost exclusively reserved for that specific occasion.
- Ines Latrille - France (near Paris)