Roger,
I find it amazing that you actually enjoy eating in Arles. Of all of the meals, in all of France that I ate, I never encountered anything so disgusting as the garbage served in the various restaurants in the central square of Arles.
Never before did I encounter grey-colored Harticot Verts that made the Green Giant's canned variety look gourmet. I desparately hope to never again encounter such garbage.
Now I could discuss the fine cuisine I first eyed on my initial visit to London where on a Sunday afternoon one is left to the mercy of particularly nasty pub food. It was the first time I ever saw pizza with tunafish and pineapple topping. I dearly hope it is the last.
As to your 8 cross-country journeys in the US, it is clear that they were taken with blinders on and all pre-conceived prejudices intact.
Dear George,
You have taken an aside about tapas and built a tottering edifice on it.
It is indeed hard to find good food in Arles but there is an excellent tapas bar in a side-street on the right as you go out towards the Espace van Gogh. Then again, I do not recall praising Arlesien food in general: you are putting words in my mouth, for the purpose of disagreeing with them.
Likewise, you will note that there is no praise of London food other than that tapas bar in my previous posts -- though I will make a further exception for Indian cuisine, which is superbly done in a number of small restaurants, including many in Brick Lane. These are also exempt from my stated observation earlier that most English restaurants are overpriced. I would however fully agree with your comments about the disgusting nature of some English (and indeed British) pizza toppings. For the worst pizzas in the world, I'd recommend Delhi and Malta.
In other words, the fact that I have had excellent tapas in London and Arles is no guide to anything else about the general state of restaurants in either place. You are not reading what I wrote: you are reading what you want to read, for the purpose of scoring points.
Finally, your point about blinders (I believe this is American for 'blinkers') and prejudices is simple nonsense. When I first drove across the country I had no preconceptions, because I hadn't done it before. I noticed a number of things such as very early closing of restaurants in some areas (seconded by another post in this thread); a failure to serve wine with meals in many places (you can hardly accuse me of making that one up), a severe shortage of good places to eat once you are away from the coasts and the big cities (a fact attested to by, among others, the American Bill Bryson in his book 'The Lost Continent'). and the depressing fact that if a motel described itself as 'American Owned and Run' it was normally a dump owned by xenophobic rednecks.
A moment's thought on your part might have led to the deduction that I stayed in countless American owned and run motels that were anything from satisfactory to excellent, but that these were not the ones with big signs outside saying 'American Owned and Run'. Why would any reasonable person do this, after all? The only reason to advertise a motel as 'American Owned and Run' is to appeal to those Americans who are as unpleasant as the owners and take 'American Owned and Run' as an automatic endorsement of quality, when of course it is no such thing. I would even go further, and throw this back in your face: 'American Owned and Run' is essentially racist code for 'You don't gotta deal with no stinkin' foreigners here'. If you find that attractive, I feel sorry for you.
As for my assertion that food in the South is lamentably often deep-fried in salty batter, I think that most of the world would agree with me, beginning with my wife and in-laws who are of course all American.
You are incredibly thin-skinned about your country, and take ANY criticism as anti-Americanism. In fact, it doesn't even need to be criticism: plain statements of fact whip you into the same fury. You have demonstrated this countless times. I suggest that this argues that you are the one who is blinkered and prejudiced: you have decided that I am anti-American, and therefore read everything I write in the light of your preconceptions.
It is true that I believe there are a number of things that are wrong with the United States. Two of the most obvious are its current choice of government and the fact that the richest and most powerful nation on earth cares so little about its citizens that there is no National Health service. If holding these views makes me anti-American, than about half the population of the United States is also anti-American.
There are other things that are wrong with the rich world in general, such as lunatic materialism, and yet other things that are wrong with far too much of the world, rich or not, such as a tendency to religious fundamentalism. Again, the United States is a long way from exempt from either of these criticisms -- yet I would bet that you will take even this statement as anti-American.
Why do I continue to reply to you? Because I do not care to be mis-labelled as a bigot and a fool. Even if (as seems likely on past performance) I cannot persuade you that honest comment is not anti-Americanism, yet I may hope to persuade others of it.
Cheers,
Roger