Ah don't want no cuisine, Ah want 'merican food!

Nope, not my words!

I'm here in Nice with four other people from the company for whom I work. Three others are permanents; one's a contractor from deep in the heart of Texas and at least one of my readers will know who I mean (Yes, my Tempe smoking buddy, I'm thinking of you :-) ). He's been here 6 days. Last night (Monday night) we finished up the days work and were debating where to eat.

We're in Nice as aforesaid - a tourist oriented town if ever I saw one and, naturally, there are about a thousand places to go eat even in the off season. We couldn't make up our minds between Thai, Moroccan. Afghan or Provencal, Nicois, Lyon et al. An embarassment of riches! Eventually we decided upon Moroccan. At this point our contractor piped up with the title of this post.

As a stranger in a strange land I can well understand the hankering for one's native food. I'd almost kill for a plain Aussie Sausage smothered in Tomato sauce or for a nice piece of Flake (shark) at a real Victorian fish and chip shop. But that's after 2 years of being away from Australia.

After 6 days? Give me a break!

Now I hasten to add that this isn't a swipe at Americans as such. The example I heard was from an American using precisely those words. I've heard very similar sentiments from Australians; indeed I was myself guilty of just such a thing the very first time I went to a Chinese restaurant way back in 1973; at the time I had so little knowledge of 'foreign' cuisines that I ordered my meal from the 'Australian' section (for the record it was steak and chips). I very much doubt there's a chinese restaurant left in any of the main Australian population centres that even has an 'Australian' section on the menu!