Immigrant population of cities around the world

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

And yeah, most people around the world make easy meals at home.

I don't agree. Some people/countries have a much more varied diet and cuisine than others. The reason why the French cuisine is renowned is not because of stuffy and expensive high-end "French" restaurants the way North Americans imagine it, the real reason is the EVERYDAY food cooked by most people.

In this respect, the best way to know what sort of food people cook, and whether or not they like elaborate food, is to step into a supermarket, and look around. Having lived in the three countries: French supermarkets beat easily the US and Mexican supermarkets in terms of food offering, variety and quality. This is because the French are much more into cooking elaborate stuff than the Americans, and I presume also the Mexicans if we judge them by their supermarkets.

The only area where Mexican supermarkets are superior to the French ones is for the fruits and vegetables, especially the tropical fruits. But for most everything else, there is simply no comparison.

Note: if the only place in France you have ever visited is the City of Paris proper, you cannot realize what I'm saying, because in the City of Paris the supermarkets are small (due to the high price of land), and their selection of food is much more limited than in the rest of France (which is the thing I find the most frustrating about Paris). In the rest of France, supermarkets are enormous, like in the picture below, and they always have an extravagant display of food. Outside of the Paris Region, they always have selections of regional products that you cannot find elsewhere (which is the highlight of all French supermarkets in the provinces), for example Brittany specialties in the supermarkets of Brittany, etc.




Even the smaller cities have enormous supermarkets. My parents' hometown in the south of France has only 150,000 inhabitants in its metro area, and they have no less than 4 super large supermarkets (each one about half the size of the one in the picture above), plus a couple more smaller supermarkets. This is on top of various traditional independent food stores in the city center and across the city, like butchers, fishmongers, fruit and vegetable stores, bakeries, patisseries, charcuteries (for cold meat, delicatessen, duck specialties), confiseries (for chocolates and sweets), olive and spice stores, and I'm probably forgetting some.

And this is just a small metro area of 150,000 people!! In Mexico that would be a metro area like Tecomán in the state of Colima:



I can never imagine a small city like Tecomán with the gargantuan food offering and variety (+ top quality) that a place like my parents' hometown can offer with its 4 enormous supermarkets and all the other stores I've mentioned. And this is not a particular case, it's like that everywhere in France. That's why the country is food paradise.

So, yes, when I lived in Mexico, I found the food rather limited and not very sophisticated in comparison to what I'm used to. And I also found it more limited than what one can find in the US (at least in the big metro areas). The French have lots of misconceptions about the US, they imagine that the food is appalling in the US and that it's very limited, but in reality in the big US metro areas you can find some variety and good quality in terms of food, although not as much as in France, but much more than in Mexico.