During my time in France, almost every meal was different than in the United States. While the French have fast food, hamburgers, and many American snack foods, they usually have their own French spin on a classic idea. Kit-Kats are huge in corner stores and candy shops, but they have a huge range of flavors, including hazelnut, caramel, Mont Blanc, black and white (cookies and cream). Due to a lower dependence on franchise businesses, the average French city is filled with countless privately-owned bakeries, coffee shops, and supermarkets. Each store offers its own range of products, usually including specialty coffees and typical desserts. Fast food restaurants are common within large cities, but on average, a small shopping district will house the Americanized businesses, leaving the downtowns open purely for locals. There exist smaller French chain stores, bakeries such as La Mie Caline, shopping centers such as Flunch, Carrefour, U (Hyper U and Super U), and Cultura, the culture store – books, games, arts and crafts, phones, magazines. Many of these retailers will be centralized in a mini mall, which allows for less driving and a simpler experience getting all groceries in one go, therefore using less gas.
Brittany, the region in which I spent the majority of my summer, hosts a unique blended culture from the ocean and the countryside. Fishing, notably in lakes where my host family traveled to, is quite popular, and it is common to eat a dinner consisting purely of the fish that they catch. Freshly caught fish was not something I was used to eating – nor was having to remove the spines and individual bones – but a staple experience of a newcomer to the region. Melon is another Breton summer staple. What the French call melon is cantaloupe, due to watermelon being called pastèque, and the absence of honeydew. Melon is grown in the Charentes region, in southern France, or in Spain, and prevalent between April and August. The apéritif, an appetizer common among dinners and lunches, generally consists of finger foods eaten with toothpicks. During summer, melon is essentially a required element of this, along with nuts, tomatoes, celery, and the saucisson sec, a dry, thinly cut sausage. Depending on the reason for the get-together (which in my host family, there were many), the number of courses generally varied, but the contents of the apéritif remained similar.
Charcuterie is a largely popular dinner option for larger, more informal gatherings – birthday parties, end-of-year celebrations. With a larger number of attendees, passing plates of meat, bread, and pâté means less work putting a meal together.
Dinner parties, proven to be widespread throughout the region and a typical element of French culture, often lasted 5 to 6 hours. They always began with an apéritif, during which time the guests and the hosts chat and catch up, usually lasting long enough to where we would have to refill the plates of food several times over. Sometimes this was followed with bread and pâté, other times the main course was brought out. This was some sort of meat and vegetables, and it lasted about as long as the last course. Soon, but not hurriedly, after the main course dessert was served, consisting of a light ice cream, flan, or even yogurt. After the dessert, cheese and wine are common, and bread is optional on the side. Within my host family, they strongly favored sweet cheeses. The final course of the meal, shockingly, during some early hours of the morning, coffee or tea.
Breakfast is usually light, a baguette with coffee or brioche with Nutella. My host family would drink their coffee from a bowl and dip bread in it. Lunch and dinner are both larger than breakfast and generally consist of similar things. Melon is usually eaten in the summer as a precursor to both, and our meals were generally pretty simple. Sausage, chicken, and fish are the most prolific among what I ate. These were served with a side of potatoes along with sauces – ketchup, ranch, but also burger sauce and Andalouse, primarily eaten with meat.
The stand-out dish during my experience was the gâteau breton, a butter cake with a middle layer of caramel or berry filling. This was my first foray into breton desserts, leading me to try every one I could find at pastry shops. The Kouign Amman is the most famous cake from the region, often called the “fattiest pastry in the world”. The ingredients consist of multiple layers of butter and dough. Of course croissants were eaten commonly, usually with Nutella or jelly, crêpes, the pain au chocolat, and baguettes. The typical breton sandwich consists of a baguette, ham, cheese, salted butter (preferred in the region over unsalted), and mayonnaise, depending on the person. Simplicity was a rule that my host family seemed to wholly abide by, preferring the natural flavors of fresh foods over the complexity of a dish – this is something that I tend to overlook in the US, with our abundance of fast food and mass-produced candy and sweets.
This doctrine was followed by many others in my group – simple dishes such as pâtes au beurre (pasta with butter) and galettes were preferred over more extravagant choices. The high school where we studied served us lunch during the week, and it exposed many new options that the others ate more often afterwards. The cordon bleu avec pâtes et gruyère was served several times in a row, and it was a hit compared to the well-done steak. Orangina and thé à la pêche (peach tea) were extremely popular amongst the members of my group, and many of them would stock up or buy it wherever they found it. The croquembouche was a dessert that I never tried but must have been popular in other families as opposed to traditionally breton desserts. The moules-frites was also mentioned, which is mussels and fries, clearly evident from the huge fishing scene in our area.
