Ian Hoare > wrote:

>
> I believe you, Michael, but can't speak with the same authority for other
> countries. Actually, I don't think it's _quite_ as true in the UK which
> doesn't have the "bbq culture" to anything like the same extent.
>
Unfortunately the BBQ culture (despite the legendary weather) has taken
hold in the UK big time, at least in the areas just outside London,
where supermarkets are filled to the brim with dodgy BBQ-type "food
products". The acrid smoke and the smell of meths and burning meat are
all too common around where I live.

> Actually, if many in France didn't set France up as being the example of
> good taste and excellence in everything, denigrating most other countries,
> I'd be less scathing. But they do, especially in matters of food and wine,
> so often without having tasted the food and wine they feel so free to
> criticise, while at the same time debasing their own taste more and more. It
> breaks my heart sometimes, Michael.

I suppose that the silent majority of people who don't really appreciate
good food or good wine, follow fashionable food-fads and the path of
least resistance as far as filling their stomachs is concerned is pretty
much the same throughout the western world.

On the other hand the amount of people who do care about what they eat
and drink and who have an eclectic, but equally international taste
seems to rise as well. What does sadly seem to be squeezed out recently
between the junk food addicts and the international food-afficionado
crowd is the people who appreciate the "gut bürgerliche Küche" of the
area they live in, leading to a rather unfortunate uniformity of eating
habits all over the place.

* German phrase meaning good unassuming local fare.