I don't think that can be attributed solely to ingredients, or to skill of the chefs, after all, a Chinese cuisine can have ridiculously expensive ingredients, and expensive, better versions of the same basic ingredient (for example, cheap beef cuts vs. grass-fed, organic beef). Customer perception and market mentality must, IMHO, play into the fact that the marketplace seems to support continental / French cuisine as the top echelon of dining experiences.

Thanks for your comment!

French food came from the aristocracy, and was something people could "aspire" to. A lot of Mexican food, Chinese food, etc. came from immigrant populations who didn't usually have a ton of money when they first established themselves (Chinese workers and the Canadian Railway come to mind).

Due to living/spending restrictions (Whites only restaurants, "Yellow" washrooms, etc.), those restaurants catered to a certain population. Chinese food couldn't really be expensive, because the people eating it couldn't usually afford it. While it gradually gained a following, `it still hasn't shaken that notion of being "poor food".

My hunch is that immigrant groups that came later on, with more financial resources, have had better luck in pricing their traditional foods higher, Japanese + sushi for instance.

Italians are the exception to this theory though.

I also think that the US has a certain fascination with everything French. The food, the culture, the women. How come US women view French women as sophisticated and thin? Not all of them are like that.

Also, the majority of Chinese dishes have been Americanized. Where can you find good shark fin soup or sea cucumber here? I don't think the majority of Americans would want to eat that, let alone pay the big bucks to eat it. They'd rather go for escargot instead of sea cucumber.

Thai is incredibly hard to make too. Lots of spices, curries.. things to grind up.

You know, even Malaysian or Indian cuisine is time consuming. It takes at least 3 hours to grind that stuff, and then mix it, and then make a sauce, then cook the meat….

Savoury OR sweet!

But for me, it is fast French cuisine, and perhaps not what Well-Heeled is referring to as what is served in restaurants where you sit down and pay through the nose.

Boeuf Bourguignon, Coq au Vin (also a long, tedious dish), etc.

I think they actually eat more, or just as much pizza as Americans.

But they eat gourmet pizza, with good cuts of meat and cheeses.. it's incredible the variety you get on the street.

It is on 3 levels higher than Pizza Hut or those crap pizza chains.

Rick Bayless does Mexican cuisine and apparently he's the king of it now

As for French food I think the high cost comes from:
- Actual skill to make the sauces

I watched BF once for 2 hours, make a slow sauce that took so much straining and draining.. And if he burnt the sauce he had to start over… gosh it was hard.

And you had to make sure the sauce didn't break.. etc etc.

- Cuts of the meat that tend to be better, are what cost more money.

- Cost of other ingredients: Boeuf Bourguignon also requires alcohol, and wine, or whatever needs to be added to the dish, tends to be pretty expensive.

BF makes a Poulet Marengo, and the stuff he adds for the sauce is $40! And then the prawns (not shrimps) on top of that are $25/lb, etc etc..

- The time it takes is the worst.

French food is not really (for me) on the same level as Italian or Chinese food in terms of the time it takes to make it

For Chinese food, I chop up things, I throw it in a pan and I stir. Done.

For Italian food, I guess if you don't make the pasta from scratch (which we don't, we buy the good expensive pasta)… everything is pretty simple to make in an hour or less.

And the taste is fabulous, on par with French cuisine in my books, considering the time it takes to make it vs. French food.

Phew!