I’m visiting Paris right now, and the only things here that I can’t find in a restaurant in my smallish town in coastal California are those with uncommon protein ingredients like rabbit or snails. Pretty much every other ingredient can be found in Whole Foods. As noted above, much of what we just call high end restaurant food is some form of French or Italian cuisine. They are not called French restaurants, they are just called restaurants. Casual French cuisine is everywhere in the US in the form of bakeries, sweet shops, coffeehouses, creperies, etc.
Another thing to keep in mind is that America’s most famous popular home cooking educator was literal called “The French Chef”.
IMHO, one reason is that French cuisine doesn’t have one or a few instantly stand-out, recognizable foods that scream “French” to the world.
Italian food, for instance, is immediately recognizable - even if stereotyped. Pizza is Italian. Spaghetti and most pastas are thought of as Italian. etc. Even if Italians hate their cuisine being condensed down to that simplified image, the world at least has a clear concept of it.
Japan has sushi - instantly recognizable. Britain has fish and chips. Mexico is thought of as tacos, tortillas, enchiladas, etc. The USA is thought of as burger + hot dog land. But if you did a random quiz of many passersby in many nations around the world and said, “Here, name 1, 2 or 3 French foods,” what could they quickly name off of the top of their heads? They’d struggle.
When I click that link, I see that the “popular dishes” shown are Chicken Marsala, Cajun Chicken Sandwich, French Onion Soup, and Spinach Ravioli. Is that typical French cuisine?
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).
An easy explanation for relative dearth of French restaurants is that most Americans prefer “native” eats like barbecue, along with Mexican/Tex-Mex, Chinese and Italian food. Even Middle Eastern and Polish-style restaurants seem to be rival or be more popular than restaurants identified as “French”.
I remember one upscale French joint in Sioux Falls, SD called Lafayette, which was pretty good.
There’s a limited role for places like that. Lafayette ultimately closed, and its owner went on to manage restaurants for a casino.
Rather, they have a variety. Which is why I said I wasn’t going to gatekeep. If I do online searches for “French” for many places, outside the “classy” places, it’s they have several “traditional” dishes (almost always French Onion Soup included), a lot of pastries and hopefully fresh bread options, and some combination of other dishes.
Heck, remember the Mimi’s chain used to bill themselves (at least in part) as a French-style bistro.
And this, I think, is closest to the truth. Most high end dining - worldwide - is derived from or heavily influenced by classic French cooking. A standard breakfast omelette is more French than Italian or Spanish in style. Many restaurant cooking techniques such as sauces (hollondaise? Mayonaise? A meat jus? Note the linguistics here) are based on French cuisine. Classically trained chefs around the world are basically trained in French cooking. They just give it a spin and call it ‘Modern British’ or whatever.
Anyone fancy a croissant? Maybe a baguette for lunch? A croque madame? I could go on!
I haven’t lived in the US in about 15 years, but kind of remember a bunch of places in strip malls with names like “Vie de France” which weren’t fancy, but weren’t exactly fast food either, kind of midway between. I grew up in the DC area and there were a lot of French restaurants there, like Sans Souci, Lautrec’s, Pied au Cochon, a bunch of places in Georgetown and Adams-Morgan. They tended to be a bit pricey for my meat-and-potatoes sensibilities.
I live in Korea now, and bakery cafes like Paris Baguette and Tous les Jours are pretty ubiquitous. They’re not exactly authentic, skewing heavily to local tastes, but I’m never more than a few blocks from a place that sells some kind of latté, baguette and croissant. (A certain monstrously large department store chain here is missing out by not opening a bunch of cafes called Lotte Latté!)
I wasn’t familiar with Vie de France, so I looked it up: turns out it’s actually a Japanese company, though obviously they focus on French-style food. I used to enjoy going to a similar chain, Au Bon Pain, but that one seems to have contracted a lot, and it looks like most of their remaining locations are in hospitals, colleges, or at Miami International Airport.
I’m seeing an upswing in French restaurants locally, mostly because three is greater than one. All are bistro style, moderately upscale but not fancy. French onion soup is appearing on more non-French menus and so is steak frites. Chicken french is everywhere, only because it’s an Italian dish.
A quick check shows only around a dozen French restaurants in all of western New York from Syracuse to Buffalo. The same Google page has an Open Table site for “100 Best French Restaurants in Midtown [NYC] West.” No comparison.
I was shocked to discover that my son’s high school (he’s in 10th grade) no longer has French as a foreign language option. Their one French teacher retired last year and they didn’t replace her. The languages they do offer are:
ASL, Spanish, Mandarin, Punjabi (!), and Tagalog (!!).
I suspect the assortment of languages offered has a lot to do with where in the country we’re talking about. Not much Punjabi or Tagalog heard around here, but Brazilian Portuguese and Haitian Kreyòl are routinely spoken in public and are good candidates for teaching.
There are people who were born, raised until age 18, joined the military, completed their hitch, and are now attending college on the G.I. Bill, who were not alive for the “Freedom Fries” thing. So unless there are “corners of America” where it is still 2003 I don’t think this is a great example.
The new viral way to make french toast is to let a half gallon of vanilla ice cream melt, then use tongs to dip your bread into it, and put the bread right on to the skillet.
Given that selection, I’d guess that your area has a fair number of Pakistani, Filipino, and Chinese immigrants.
As far as French…I took three years of it in high school, but that was 40+ years ago, when French was still seen as a prestigious second language to learn, as well as still being seen as the language of diplomacy.
I might guess that college students who are intending to teach languages in high school are more likely to be learning languages which are more relevant today and of interest to students, which means Spanish and Asian languages; it may well be difficult to even find a newer French teacher for a high school.
(there are actually two other, more French-sounding places, one of which supposedly offers French and Creole food).