'orrible stuff.
Rick Stein, in his many programmes lauding French life and cuisine, makes a point of having a great bowl of the slippery stuff at least once, maybe more, in each series. His rhapsodies have tempted me to try it - surely I must be missing something? But every time I try, I deeply regret it.
Perhaps I should have been more specific. I’m not after ‘English-style ethnic’ restaurants.
In Philadelphia there were Vietnamese, Thai, Moroccan, actual Mexican restaurants(think barbacoa, tacos pastor, carnitas), Korean barbecue, Sichuan, Ethiopian, Japanese, along with a variety of ‘American’ restaurants, and the usual suspects of French style, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and Italian food.
Almost all the ethnic restaurants around me here are disappointing.
@Sam_Gish, maybe another thread somewhere, but do your pro’s out weigh your con’s of likes in France?
The trouble with this sort of thread , on any forum, is they start out light hearted and then they change
America is a different matter - it is a country almost entirely of immigrants of different ethnicities - though personally I would not eat out there at all these days, knowing what I now know from the brexit debate about American food standards and labeling.
Here in Europe though the strongest ethnic food traditions are generally linked with empire (although as I said often not that close to real native cuisines). I don’t know the Marseille area so can’t comment, but certainly here in Brittany we have great North African, South-East Asian and various European restaurants and takeaways.
I confess I do not generally come back from France feeling that the general driving ability is awful - though as has been pointed out regions differ.
But it is certainly true that the number of fatalities on French roads is higher - 3300 in 2018 compared with 1770 in the UK in the same year. The number of vehicles and population being broadly comparable in both countries.
If you want properly scary, try Italy (especially Naples).
Or really properly scary, try India. Cows and elephants have no road sense, just like most of the locals😲
I agree about Naples, was once walking on the sidewalk and a speeding car came up behind me (on the sidewalk), screeched to a halt and parked.
You’re absolutely right Eddie! I find it’s the same with the sun.
It’s there in the day, and just when I’m getting comfortably warm, it starts retreating below the horizon and cold and dark sets in. I can’t understand it, nothing can be relied on to be reliably constant in these troubling times! 
more grass and poo?
Oh absolutely.
We bought our flat in 2017, intending to go back and forth, then had an offer on our house in Philadelphia, sold it spring 2018 and are now here.
At this point, the thought of returning to the US basically causes us to break out in hives, and drink heavily.
People who whinge about things because they are ‘not like home’ (i.e.UK) in their adopted country. 
I think we need some balance here
Can never have too much grass or poo
Never (unless it’s poo on your shoe)!
we have the same pedestrian crossing problem around the Lannion area in Brittany where we live ! The standard of driving is generally good not stressful like it is in uk…particuarly in home counties
Yes - we run a gite complex, and at least half our guests (in a normal year!) come from the south of England by car ferry - on arrival we usually ask whether they had a good journey, and almost invariably one of the first things they remark on is the contrast between the pleasure of driving here in comparison to the hastle and stress of the UK.
But is that merely because of lower traffic levels? At first sight half empty roads are wonderful. But I have had far more near misses of having to react to avoid someone else’s insane driving here than I ever did driving up and down the M1.
Accident statistics show the reality. Km for km it is more dangerous here.
Where do you live Jane?
In the Haut Jura. Empty roads and mad drivers.