My husband and I owned and operated an American Grocery Store called Thanksgiving in Paris from 1988 through 2017. Disney and other multinationals were sending over scads of Americans to open and run their French outposts. We began by importing iconic supermarket fare (which is what French friends and others were curious about: the first question I was invariably asked when people discovered I was American was "What do Americans REALLY eat?")  Well, we showed them... We also imported "good" food products, and after a year I began making homemade American recipes from natural French products, opened a very successful catering service, and we finally opened a restaurant. Everything was made from scratch: our cheesecakes were legend. French supermarkets caught on and began stocking staples like Fluff, French's Mustard, etc. American food and cuisine boomed in Paris, and then things became commercial, competitive and tiresome. But those first 10 years when all we American Food Pioneers stayed up all night experimenting with making French flour rise into proper cookies, begging butchers to cut poitrine de porc into American-style ribs, and smuggling in pumpkin seeds and creme of tartar were exhilarating. Now, most of the US foods seen in supermarkets here are licensed  and manufactured in Europe. And that's why the packaginging is so, well, un-American...

My husband and I owned and operated an American Grocery Store called Thanksgiving in Paris from 1988 through 2017. Disney and other multinationals were sending over scads of Americans to open and run their French outposts. We began by importing iconic supermarket fare (which is what French friends and others were curious about: the first question I was invariably asked when people discovered I was American was "What do Americans REALLY eat?")  Well, we showed them... We also imported "good" food products, and after a year I began making homemade American recipes from natural French products, opened a very successful catering service, and we finally opened a restaurant. Everything was made from scratch: our cheesecakes were legend. French supermarkets caught on and began stocking staples like Fluff, French's Mustard, etc. American food and cuisine boomed in Paris, and then things became commercial, competitive and tiresome. But those first 10 years when all we American Food Pioneers stayed up all night experimenting with making French flour rise into proper cookies, begging butchers to cut poitrine de porc into American-style ribs, and smuggling in pumpkin seeds and creme of tartar were exhilarating. Now, most of the US foods seen in supermarkets here are licensed  and manufactured in Europe. And that's why the packaginging is so, well, un-American...

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