mike geary: I realize that this question really does not belong in France Travel, but I have asked in other places and have never received anything close to a satisfactory answer. This is Central Florida, USA. Has become an area well known for theme parks and now has more than 2 million inhabitants. There are several restaurant guides. One is Urban Spoon. They list 450 Italian restaurants in the area; 715 pizza places; 606 hamburger joints; 359 Mexican and Tex mex: 177 for sushi; 56 Thai; and 44 from Vietnam. I know of maybe two or three first class French restaurants; one excellent French cafe and the two French restaurants at Epcot (Disney World) The two at Disney are strictly for the tourists and in order to visit either, you must pay the park admission of $90 per person. Therefore, my question is - WHY? Where are the French .restaurants? Is it the type of food - the preparation - the size of portions. I do not know. I believe you will find similar situations in just about every USA city, possibly with the exception of New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. Any ideas?|||This is such a good question. I have pondered your very question for years. Americans want cheap and abundant. The French pride themselves on using only the highest-quality, freshest ingredients, and this will not be cheap, and if you want heaps of food flopping over the plate, sorry, this is not how it's done in French restaurants. The French want their food to taste as good as possible, and they're willing to pay for it. This means hormone-free meat, unpasteurized dairy products, local produce, and most importantly, ingredients like butter and chocolate made by true "artistes", not by big soulless factories. To get the highest quality in a restaurant in America, Americans will have to pay for it, and they don't want to do that, especially if they don't see a huge amount of food on the plate. In one of his books, Bill Bryson tells the story of a local Mexican restaurant that was always full, and very popular. A branch of a big chain of Tex Mex restaurants opened nearby, selling cheaper meals. Within months the local restaurant closed, and this fact was lamented by most in town, as most agreed the quality of the food was better, but they had mostly decided where to eat based on cost.|||there are not many french immigrants, and the ones that do come do so as professionals.however there are many many italian immigrants. also unlike french, asian immigrants tend to stay together. they meet thorugh things like thai temples (wats) or korean baptist churches. however french people dont really associate themselves in that way.I think most french immigrants move to Quebec not the US so they can be with other people who share their language and even culture to an extent.|||To Amelia's answer, I would add that France has a serious image problem in this country. Though there are of course Francophiles here - you're presumably one of them - as well as people who are neutral about France and all things French, I find that there are also many people here who view France with suspicion and disdain at best, outright contempt bordering on hatred at worst. I won't attempt to quantify this phenomenon by venturing a percentage of the population or anything; suffice it to say I find it to be depressingly common. I'm sure you've heard and/or personally witnessed France-bashing yourself: "the French are rude, pretentious, unkempt, anti-American, antisemitic, effeminate cowards with delusions of grandeur", yadayadayada. This is of course based on a highly politicized and skewed view of history, combined with caricatures that seem to take on a life of their own. I find that such, um, "thinking" is chiefly perpetrated by people who've neither set foot in France nor met anyone from there. Then of course there are people who don't necessarily harbor any ill-will, but who falsely assume that French food is inherently pricey; French culture inherently intimidating and inaccessible. While I'm certainly not suggesting that this fully explains the dearth of French restaurants in your area (and elsewhere), I'd say it's a significant mitigating factor.