My son in law in Texas is in chilli and spice heaven over there along with smoky BBQ type meals. I worry he may end up with stomach trouble if he keeps stuffing it down every day especially the extremely hot chilli dishes. Even the dogs have destroyed his pepper plants!
My early experiences of eating in France. Pity we can’t get somewhere between the British speed eating and the French lentitude.
For older French people chilli is a no-no.
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Not only French people 
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XXX million Mexicans seem to get along OK, as do even more people ‘east of Aden’.
A friend once tried a phall curry. It made vindaloo seem like biriani. The sweat poured off him. He was in chili extremis. Being the sort of person who would turn this ordeal by gastronomic fire into a spiritual test, he persisted until he’d eaten the lot. He could not speak for some hours.
Phall … you have been warned.
My French family love very hot, very spicy food but they were all born in Vietnam or China going back 4 generations so maybe not representative. Obviously they eat European food too.
I thought everyone liked heat and spice until I moved to France profonde where a pinch of cinnamon is considered as strong as a Carolina reaper pepper 
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We offered the locksmith who fixed ours door the other day a coffee, and a piece of cake. I forgot it was my spiced pumpkin cake. His expression was priceless! But by splitting a teeny, tiny piece of cake into about 6 even teenier pieces he managed it. Brave man. A bit mean of me but couldn’t quite work out how to snatch the cake from his hand and replace it with a dry biscuit.
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True, French are not as adventurous as Brits in terms of cuisine, well at least in my family😁
Merci Vero!
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Our French friends are very conservative eaters. We have been on holiday to Spain with them and they scoured the supermarket shelves for French food. In restaurants they are nervous about trying new food, and often then say it is “ spéciale”, like a child saying they really like it but don’t want any more.
I made a meal for some French friends, they wanted to sample some Scottish traditional food so I gave them mince, tatties and dumplings, a clootie dumpling and haggis, neeps and tatties, the look on their faces was priceless 
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The pic’s are in different order, like the look of the first one, my kind of food on a winter’s evening.
Deleted from other tread to make better sense.
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Haggis is the best 
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I’ve not had dumplings since I was a kid… I kinda want some now
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Can’t get suet here unless you get the real stuff from a butcher and don’t fancy that to be honest. I used vegetable suet mostly.
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I use Atora beef suet, either when I put in an order from British corner shop or from Amazon Fr.
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I was about to say Atora - my local magasin anglais usually has it.
3pm is on the late side, that’s not a typical time for eating in the UK. I find the French (at least outside of the city), drop tools and are straight at the table for midday. Dinners are later in the evening than I’m used to.
I’ve had a good lecturing on the correct way to cut cheese, apparently we English haven’t got a clue how to cut it correctly! 
I’d never had artichoke and didn’t know how to eat that until I arrived.
The first meal I had at my parent-in-laws, I was called ‘gourmand’ by my mother-in-law, and I wasn’t sure whether I was being greedy and eating too much, or if it was an observation of me enjoying my food! By the time we got to desert there were tears of laughter at my attempted pronunciation of ‘yoghurt’.
I like the French way of eating, but sometimes I prefer to finish the meal sooner when I have things to do.
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Wao, Gareth, I did not know there was a way of cutting cheese either😁 and there are lots of English words that sound the same to me like colour and collar or ball and bowl and I have problems saying them correctly, so I feel your pain at your first meal with your in-laws😁 as for the artichokes, I like them but as a French comedian used to say, it is the only dish where when you finished eating them, there is more on your plate than when you started.
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But there isn’t just one way. Each cheese type has a different way……
I have had my cheese cutting skills laughed at on many occasions , also a lecture on returning to the cheese board for another slice, and using the cow cheese knife for the goat cheese.
But we do live in a very artisan cheese area. In cities where cheese comes from supermarket perhaps not so fussy.