# Why isn’t French food more popular? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [October 12, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904 "2025-10-12T22:22:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/141 "2025-10-23T21:25:46Z")
Translation attempt, not authorized or confirmed by @Wendell_Wagner : “The USA has the most McDonald’s franchise locations of any country, both in absolute numbers and per capita. The country with the next largest number of McDonald’s restaurants is not France. Moreover, the country with the next largest number of McDonald’s restaurants per capita is not France.” Verification: According to [this website](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-mcdonalds-by-country), the four countries with the most McDonald’s restaurants are the US (15,000), Japan (5000), China (4500) and France (2200). That’s about one McDonald’s for every 22,700 Americans, one for every 24,800 Japanese, one for every 31,300 Chinese, and one for every 31,150 French people. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/142 "2025-10-23T21:31:03Z")
I have not verified this, but I believe the statistic is _annual sales_ not number of restaurants. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/143 "2025-10-23T21:38:51Z")
I’m willing to look at evidence supporting that claim, but on its face it doesn’t seem plausible. I’m guessing that Americans are still the top McDonald’s consumers, both in total sales revenue and sales revenue per capita. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/144 "2025-10-23T21:39:47Z")
I said, “I read someplace that it’s the biggest market for Mcdonald’s restaurants after the US.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/145 "2025-10-23T21:43:15Z")
I know, but I still don’t understand exactly what that claim means. It’s clearly not true that France has the most McDonald’s restaurants after the US, either in total or per capita, and so it seems unlikely that the French are spending the most money on McDonald’s after the US, either in total or per capita. I could be wrong, natch. ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/146 "2025-10-23T21:54:48Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I said, “I read someplace that it’s the biggest market for Mcdonald’s restaurants after the US.” [_Pulp Fiction_](https://m.youtube.com/shorts/fsExlQQxbQE)? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/147 "2025-10-23T22:02:27Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > So, how often does your typical Frenchman eat escargot or frog legs? I would guess it’s not on the menu for whatever the French equivalent of Denny’s is. The French don’t have an equivalent of Denny’s. At least Paris doesn’t . (Breakfast is really not a thing, there). Frog legs and snails were on the menu at, maybe, a third of the cafes and brasseries I ate at in Paris over two weeks. They, along with onion soup are appetizers as common as Brussel sprouts or Caesar salad in the US. I suspect that ratio goes way up in the touristy areas. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/148 "2025-10-23T23:02:22Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Spanish is the most common language in American high schools. French is the second most common language. Some schools have Latin. Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, and American Sign Language aren’t very common. 55 years ago my high school offered one year of Russian and four years each of French, Spanish and German. (I think a year of Latin was also a possibility, but I’m not sure.) No idea what the actual numbers of students taking each language were, but the German Club was bigger than all the others combined. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/149 "2025-10-23T23:17:33Z")
Note that in post #46 I give a more precise list from Wikipedia about the commonness of languages in schools. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/150 "2025-10-23T23:23:35Z")
> [@fedman1](#): > > and the menus are in French (how many customers can speak it?), I don’t speak French or Italian, but somehow I became the translator whenever we went out to dinner in those countries. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/151 "2025-10-24T00:48:30Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > > [@fedman1](#): > > > > and the menus are in French (how many customers can speak it?), > > I don’t speak French or Italian, but somehow I became the translator whenever we went out to dinner in those countries Google translate should be on everybody’s phone. Just take a picture of the menu and the app does the rest. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/152 "2025-10-24T02:59:20Z")
Not with my phone. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904/153 "2025-10-27T16:36:25Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > The top-rated (according to TripAdvisor) French restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky is called “Distilled Restaurant & Bourbon Bar” 😆 (there are actually two other, more French-sounding places, one of which supposedly offers French and Creole food). Distilled is definitely not French, at least not explicitly so. The only French restaurant in Lexington is Le Deauville, which does all the classics but I’ve only ever been on All You Can Eat Mussel Night. (The French/Creole place you mention, Lady Remoulade, is sadly gone.) Distilled is what we call “New American”, and I’d argue that we could just as easily call it “French-American”. If you go to an Italian restaurant in America, it’s probably going to be “Italian-American”; same with Chinese or Mexican. Most of them probably aren’t going to look like what you’d find in Italy or China or Mexico. It’s only been in the last decade or two that those hybridized cuisines have been recognized by foodies as legit cuisines of their own worthy of study and admiration, and not just corruptions. If you go to an explicitly French restaurant in America, it will look a lot like something you’d find in France. But what we call “New American” is pretty much Americanized versions of French cooking. It might reach a little more broadly than other hybrid cuisines but it still has French techniques and forms at heart. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isn-t-french-food-more-popular/1023904.md?page=7)