nourriture
beaucoup de fromage et de viande et de baguettes
The quality of French restaurant food gets talked about a lot, but we hardly ever eat out anyway, and what is the food in supermarkets like you ask? Well, there is a lot more of some things, and a lot less of others compared to UK supermarkets. Not in the sense of shortages like the UK has had on and off since Brexit, but more in terms of the preferences of the French for what they like to eat.
Once I started this one, I realised there is a lot to talk about, so will likely do another one on drinks, confectionery and other things I’ve skipped here.
du fromage
You’ll not be surprised to learn that there is an enormous amount of cheese on offer - The French eat nearly 3 times the amount of cheese that UK folks eat after all. Which cheeses they particularly like can be surprising though (In all cases here I can only talk about my local area of north-west of The Dordogne, near the Charante border in the South West of France).
Locally, there is an enormous amount of camembert on offer, but strangely not that much brie. I am not a massive cheese fan, but my partner isn’t overly impressed with the brie on sale round these parts at all.
Emmental is a big favorite, to the extent that it is the default cheese on pizzas - sacrilege I know. On that point, although our favoured large Carrefour has an entire aisle devoted to cheese, you do find that some things which you’d easily find in the UK are harder to get hold of here. You can buy cheddar but only one or two types and seldom see other UK cheeses - Brexit I know, but also you don’t see a lot of other EU produced non French cheeses, e.g. Halloumi which is available, but not in every place and only one type usually. Likewise other Italian cheeses than the more common ones, like mozzarella or mascarpone or parmigiano are hard to get, for example Taleggio we have only seen once in Grand Frais.
The other thing that is super popular around here is raclette - if you don’t know it, it’s thick slices of cheese that melts easily, and is eaten on top of things like potatoes, pickled gherkins and onions and such. It is hugely popular and you can easily buy lots of different types as well as apparatus specifically designed for preparing it.
We have a small two person set like those shown here: https://www.cdiscount.com/electromenager/r-raclette+2+personnes.html#_his_
The most impressive thing about raclette is that it has seen me eating stinky cheese, which I never did before as I don’t like things like brie or blue cheese at all.
du pain
(The best croissants locally come from this boulangerie in Ribérac)
Of course there are baguettes in huge numbers all over the place and sold in large quantities - I am never sure quite what people do with 6 baguettes in one go, but then French eating is very often a large family and friends affair and more akin to a dinner party in the UK, but more casual. Likewise, croissants and viennoiseries (Other pastries like pain au chocolat, or Chocolatine they are called here in the south west) and various ways of preparing an almond croissant - viennoiserie aux amanades - which the helpful lady in the Ribérac bakery always helps me with my pronunciation of; Just about cracked it finally.
Whether you are impressed by the bakery products depends a lot on the baker. The pinnacle is the artisan boulanger, and things tend to be nicer from such bakeries, but some supermarket efforts are very good too, some however not so much!
Since my Crohn’s decided it doesn’t like gluten any more I am not able to enjoy much of this though. Supermarkets do always sell gluten free bread, Schar, a German make seems best to me, so I don’t go totally without thankfully.
A general point applies here to our local supermarkets in that the ranges sold are really static compared to the UK and seldom seem to offer much new, but also things can appear and then just disappear shortly after without trace. e.g. Carrefour sold great gluten free brioche for about 2 months and then stopped, they also sold a very good pizza range called Treo and that disappeared quickly too. Frustrating!
des biscuits
French biscuits, well, you might enjoy the novelty of them in the UK but, believe me, not long after living here you will be gagging for a chocolate biscuit if you like them at all, especially if you favour milk chocolate over plain/dark. French chocolate covered biscuits are barely a thing at all. I assume the generally warmer weather made them less appealing here. Every supermarket here sells some UK imported ones, like McVities Gingeer Nuts and Chocolate Digestives, and domestically produced McVities Digestives are available too. So French biscuits are usually lacking in chocolate covering and pretty hard and dry, just different really but most likely not your preference.
les chips
As usual, crisps are a different story from the UK, as in just about any other place than the UK. They tend to be sold always in large family packs - The French and their communal eating and sharing. They must also not be as greedy as UK folks. You can generally only buy multipacks of small single packets in ready salted, or next to no salt at all versions. The flavours can be very different from what UK folks are used to. The nicest ones are made by a Brets - https://boutique.brets.fr/nos-chips-aromatisees-c102x3961066 and the favorite in our house is Fromage du Jura - yes, cheese makes an appearance in crisps flavours too! They are dangerously moreish.
plats cuisinés
Ready meals exist here but they are way down the list of priorities and the quality of them doesn’t approach what you can buy in an M&S or a Waitrose in the UK. For example, the large E. Leclerc we frequent only has about 4-5m of shelving space, or half of one side of an aisle of chilled ready meals. What they offer is also quite different, nothing terribly exotic and much more meat and two veg type plain meals. Of course this reveals an important aspect of pre-prepared French food - it never is remotely spicy, no curries and even Old El Paso products here are super bland compared to spicier ones you can buy in the UK.
les fruits et les legumes
Fruit and veg is decent but much more local and more seasonal in what is offered in terms of vegetables, there is way less emphasis on things looking perfect here than in the UK. One thing I recently noted, and this was also true of some salmon fillets I bought - a packet of baby corn had nothing written on it in terms of cooking instructions. It seems more assumed you know how to cook here and don’t need telling! The corn also had no best before date - common sense is more assumed there.
poisson
The French definitely like their fish and also consume it in products less familiar to UK folks, like fish lasagne made with salmon, or gratins and cannelloni. Around Christmas lots of oysters are consumed. Each year a plywood stall appears outside E. Leclerc in the run up to Christmas and persists throughout the season until New Year, selling lots of different oysters and in large baskets. Every decent sized supermarché has a fish counter in it too. There is a huge selection of tinned fish, much of which is for l'apéro, aperitif use. Lots of products revolve around this small portion buffet style eating which seems to go hand in hand with any family meal as a starter.
Smoked salmon is an odd omission, in that slices of it are freely available but fillets of salmon that are smoked are rarely if ever seen which is weird. It was also noticeable there was a lot more Scottish salmon on sale before Brexit, now it’s more likely to be from Norway.
des viandes
I’ve not really eaten much meat at all since 2019 now, but do cook it here and it’s different to the UK also, mainly in the amounts sold - goes back to that communal eating. If you are cooking for one or two it can be quite hard to buy small amounts of quality butcher meat other than at the counter, which presents it’s own language challenges obviously, not the least of which is the fact that cuts of meat have totally different names of course.
la volaille
Poultry is a little different in that prepared chicken breast fillets don’t seem to be much of a thing, you can easily buy them, but more commonly available packages are of lots of chicken thighs or legs in catering size packets at times. Turkey seems more popular too. In terms of prepared things, Cordon Bleu is king - chicken or turkey, in various states of processing from very processed to decent filet meat, wrapped around cheese with ham and covered in breadcrumbs. These are good to buy for a quick dinner and the Gaulois brand comes with magnets of French departments, which make a nice map on your fridge door :)
One final difference is that such products in France tend to instruct you to cook them at a much higher temperature but for less time. From what I remember, a product like this in the UK would be cooked at 180 deg C in a fan oven for about 20-25 minutes, here it is 210 deg C for 12 minutes. Pizzas tend to go on at 210 or even 240 also.
