Lament for the French restaurants in NYC

cavfancier- Agree. I can see boycotting imported French products, but French restaurants in the US are another story. The restaurant/tourism industry needs all the help that it can get. I would not book a trip to Paris now though!

Food is culture.
Culture nourishes humans.
(therefore)
Food nourishes humans.

Heh heh, bacteria is also culture....but I have to agree with satt's logic, no better way to build bridges than by breaking bread.

Satt, stop me if you've heard this one: Why did Bach have so many children? Because his organ didn't have any stops

I love Bach, btw, especially the solo harpsichord compositions, as performed by Igor Kipnis....there is an old record in my collection, fabulous performance.

Phoenix, I agree, a trip overseas anywhere right now is not on the agenda for me either.

cavfancier..
I would postpone a topic on Bach until next time.

cav, All boycotts are foolish and hurts the wrong people most of the time. Show me any boycott that has done any good (maybe with the exception of UFW and South Africa), and I have a bridge for sale in San Francisco. c.i.

I agree with Cicerone. It doesn't make any sense to me at all and I think it's very childish.

I'm not as mad at the French as everybody else seems to be. Actually I am not mad at them at all. Though they wouldn't like me much if I went there, even before all this recent bruhaha, as I don't know the language and would massacre any phrases I would try, which I would do, thus alienating all around at the Poulenc bakery, or wherever I would zone in on first.

Some of my most fun experiences in life have been going into ethnic restaurants of all sorts and getting acclimated, sometimes getting to be friends with the cook/chef/owner/waiter. Well, in one favorite restaurant in my life, that was all the same person. That one happened to be owned by a Vietnamese person who cooked Chinois before Wolfgang Puck did.

Anyway, yes, silly.

osso, Unlike you, I can be mad at the French. When I tried to get service at a tourist office in Paris many years ago, the woman behind the desk treated me with disrespect and ignorance. I could have killed/strangled her - literally. c.i.

I might not be so pleasant about the french if I had ever been there. I'm well aware they are famed to be rude to visitors, i.e., non french. I have no clue if they are better or worse to japanese or other asians, or japanese americans, or very chubby angloamericans.

I spoke two days ago to my urban design teacher of years ago, and he, from New Delhi, was complaining to me about his treatment in Venice, Italy.
I adore italy, but italians aren't saints, usually. I cannot guess if the rudeness was because he is indian or if it was because he was a tourist...or was obnoxious himself (possible, though unlikely in that situation).

One day I will take my niece, who is black american, to Italy. We'll see how that goes. She has enough grief visiting me here in north north California. They think she is a hooker. (And that was when she was fourteen.)

But how are we americans to visitors? I shudder to think. I lived ten blocks from the ocean in Venice, California for a couple of decades, and that beachfront is a mecca for millions in the summer. Think thousands, at least for tourists. Who cared, who was nice to them? zip, I think.

Well, back to food. I hate to see a restaurant shunned for the cuisine's country of origin.

Cicerone
That's terrible! I can't understand why anyone would treat anyone differently because they are from another country or culture. It just makes no sense to me at all. People are people!!!!!!!!

well, gezzy, the french aren't known for their hospitality, no matter where you come from, but they love to hate the germans!

I don't like the idea of boycotting a frenchfood restaurant either, but the french have been known to boycott, or more, really thrash a couple of McDonald's in the early nineties.

As I understand it, the French are rude to all English speaking people. However, on balance, I have met some French strangers on the streets of Paris that have assisted me to find my destination. It's just too bad that they find rude people to provide service to non-French speaking people in the tourism industry. c.i.

Amen to that, c.i.!

All I know is that in junior high school, our French teacher recalled a tale that she found highly amusing, regarding an American tourist in Paris who was looking for the Champs Elysees, and mispronounced it. She pretended to not speak English, and found this incredibly funny. None of us did at the time.

Despite all that, I don't think the restaurants should suffer. I wonder if the anti-war protesters are going to boycott Denny's and support felafel instead? I know the loud-mouth Hollywood types won't...felafel ain't allowed on the Zone diet

Incidentally, the French also notoriously hate both Arabs and Jews, which makes their current political stance very interesting....

cav, Sounds like a lot of contradiction to this reader. c.i.

Heh heh, well, I suppose I just get confused by a people that apply arbitrary pronunciation and grammatical rules to a language they have set up a government body to codify

Boycotting french restaurants is like cutting off one's nose to spite one's tongue.
(Yes, I mangled that adage to make what I consider a valid point.)