Picard's American Fever Dream

How the French imagine "American" food

It’s that time of year again.

Every March, the French frozen food chain Picard runs their Hello America campaign where they feature a selection of American specialties for a limited time.

Picard is a beloved French institution that is everywhere. According to their website, they have 1,174 stores in France, or approximately one for every 6,000 people. For comparison, there is one CVS in the US for every 38,000 people.

Picard sells frozen food and nothing else. When you go into a store, all you see are chest freezers with sliding glass covers, arranged in a maze so that you walk from beginning to end through all of the sections. The variety of items available is truly astounding: fish and a vast selection of other seafood; potatoes in every possible form; vegetables; ready to cook roasts, stir-frys, gratins, and other main dishes; flash frozen small boxes of herbs like parsley, cilantro, and basil; fruits of every kind you can imagine (even lingonberries); desserts ranging from ice creams to intricately decorated cakes and tarts; ready to thaw and bake breads and pastries; and a massive section devoted just to items for the apéro: petits fours (which literally translates to “little ovens”), small one or two bite savory things in puff pastry that you pop into the oven the moment your guests arrive); verrines (tiny plastic glasses with delicate pairings like scallop, leek and avocado); and much more.

The secret of Picard’s success is that their products are actually delicious. They have somehow mastered the art of flash freezing, meaning that their frozen raspberries are honestly 90% as good as fresh ones. I have not personally tried them yet, but I’ve heard from several people that their frozen croissants and pains au chocolat are as good as some you can find in bakeries, plus you have the convenience of not having to get dressed and go out early on a Sunday morning to get them. Just bake 15 minutes in your own oven and enjoy while they are still warm.

There are many stories of people entertaining at home using Picard, carefully hiding the packages in the recycling bin before the guests arrive. Once you’ve finished the apéro, you can also rely on Picard for ready-to-heat and serve first courses, main dishes, bread, and desserts: all you would have to buy elsewhere are the cheeses (for the obligatory cheese course) and your wine selection.

We use Picard for apéro items, frozen fruit, and vegetables like spinach or green beans when they are not in season. We almost certainly use it less than many families, mostly because our freezer is tiny: it’s smaller than most dorm fridges. Freezer space is one of the very few things that Christian and I actually argue about, specifically who has more items in it that they are not eating and just leaving for months, taking up precious space. David Lebovitz just wrote this week on his substack that he purchased a third (!) freezer for his Paris apartment, and I am terribly jealous.

Until I met Christian, I had never been in France in March, so 2021 was my first year of experiencing the Hello America campaign. I was touched by their appreciation for and willingness to try American food, but I have to admit that I was charmed in the way that you are about a child’s art project: with an “Oh, that’s so cute!” feeling that is tinged at the edges with perplexity about their choices and a hint of condescension. They were so clearly trying… with results that were close, but yet so far.

Here is the cover of the 2021 advertising booklet:

Okay, I can see how a chicken burger would seem American. But this one has both cheddar cheese and a “white sauce” made from Greek yogurt, bacon bits, and pickles. There is cabbage (both green and purple) and grated carrots underneath the patty, things that I’ve never seen on any kind of burger in the US – I’ve even known people who remove the single limp piece of lettuce that comes on a fast food burger because they don’t like vegetables. The banana bread in the form of a muffin is weird: banana bread is always in loaf form (hence the “bread”) and it is served with butter, not pecans and caramel sauce.

Things only get stranger inside the catalog. I can imagine the “Macaroni, meatball and tomato smoky sauce” being created by food engineers in the Picard research center: “Okay team, let’s brainstorm the most American foods we can think of and then put them all together in one dish.” The “smoky” sauce is almost certainly a reference to barbecue, which does not exist in France.

Other offerings in 2021 were onion rings; a tex-mex burrito with chicken, “tex-mex vegetables,” fajita sauce, and cheese; and nacho cheddar bites for the apéro, basically battered and deep-fried pieces of cheddar cheese, which also does not exist in France (except as an import or specialty item in some of the largest grocery stores). I convinced Christian that we should try a couple of things, and we chose the barbecue ribs and the chicken wings.

Both were disappointing, but more to me than they were to the rest of my French family. For them, the flavors were interesting, even good, but the main issue was how to eat them: French people do not eat with their hands unless it’s a sandwich. They eat hamburgers, pizza, grilled cheese, and chicken drumsticks with a knife and fork. Christian and his teenaged children stubbornly refused to eat their ribs and wings any other way, and so their main critique of them was that they were too difficult to eat.

We did not try the dessert: the piñata cake.

I have never seen anything like this in the US, but then again, I spend very little time on social networks. Maybe candy filled cakes really were a thing in the early 2020s – if so, let me know in the comments.

I was pleasantly surprised when American week showed up again in March of 2022, though slightly less pleased by the new title: “Crazy America.”

I really don’t know how to interpret this cover image. Is the man supposed to be crazy, or is he just an ageing hippy who thinks that America is crazy? Why is the dog looking directly at the camera while the man is not? Why are they wearing the same shirt? Is this a play on the classic “dogs look like their owners” saying? Does that saying also exist in French?

I decided to ask Christian for an interpretation. He said it seems a bit crazy from a French perspective that the man and the dog are wearing the same shirt, and that they both have frizzy white hair. But he didn’t understand why Picard was calling its 2022 promotion Crazy America until I showed him this image, of the banner outside the store in our neighborhood:

Then it was immediately clear: it’s crazy, he said, because no one would actually eat that. I showed him a more detailed picture of this year’s featured dessert, the confetti cake, and he was horrified. He said it is horrible, inedible; it looks like someone took a dessert that was already too sweet and then poured candy all over it.

It’s true that the French have much less of a sweet tooth than Americans do. I suddenly remember that no one in my extended French family would eat the Christmas cookies I made one year - they all said they were too sweet. There is no sugar in their bread, their soups, their jars of pasta sauce, their salad dressings (which are almost always homemade), and so on. They don’t have the constant, low level sugar consumption (and addiction) that most Americans do. In France, 95% of the time, dessert is a piece of fruit and/or a small plain yogurt (1/2 cup) with a spoonful of jam. Desserts, things like cakes or tartes or ice cream, are only served when you have guests or on a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary. And even then, those desserts are much less sweet than similar desserts in the US.

Christian was equally horrified by the next item I showed him in the 2022 series: two waffles as the bread of a sandwich with pastrami, spinach leaves, cream cheese, pickles, mustard, and cheddar cheese. His exact word was “disgusting.”

A blurb in the catalog stats that, “This year, we wished to take you on a journey to the other side of the ocean by creating new and innovative products inspired by current trends in the United States and on social networks.” I did a little research and in fact there were a lot of recipes with waffle buns on the internet in 2021, with some sites describing them as trendy. It makes sense that Picard would be about a year behind with the time needed to develop, source, and package the products. Remember that fact for later.

Another very odd option in 2022 was barbeque potato donuts: once again, this seems like Picard scientists randomly choosing things that are very American (donuts, barbecue) and putting them together.

The only thing that seemed edible to Christian from the 2022 catalogue was the Mac and Cheese. Okay, the choice of penne for the pasta is a bit strange, but otherwise it looks okay. But notice the size of the fork: this is a small portion, a box not even the length of a fork, and it is listed as two servings.

In addition to the Confetti Cake, there were two other new desserts in 2022: a cinnamon roll and a “brookie.” I had never heard of a brookie and thought that Picard made it up, but no – it was indeed a thing in 2022; I don’t know whether it still is.

On to 2023. This time the theme is “L’Amerique en V.O.” V.O. stands for version originale, the designation used to specify films shown in movie theaters in English rather than dubbed. Although the French watch staggering amounts of American tv shows and movies, they are almost always dubbed into French – I’ll have to write a post about that soon. If you want to see the non-dubbed version of a film, you look at the listings for each theater and pick a showing that has V.O. listed next to it. From the cover image, you can see that the French still think of Westerns as representative of America.

The signature featured item was the Black brisket burger: smoked beef brisket, cheddar, pickled red onions and what looks like coleslaw (thin slices of carrot and red and green cabbage).

The bun is black from the addition of squid ink: I don’t know whether this was ever trendy in the US, but it definitely was in France. We had a sandwich with a bun like this in 2021, during our bizarre pandemic honeymoon.

Other items included a questionably authentic New York hot dog with mustard, relish, cheddar cheese and a slice of Emmental (which is made in Switzerland and is the original version of what we call Swiss cheese in the US); and homestyle fries with “ranch” dressing and crispy onions. Since “ranch” doesn’t exist in France, the sauce is made with cream and chives.

There was also a veggie burger (mushroom patty with cheddar and spinach), and corn dogs, which were described as a “sausage wrapped in a corn donut.”

The strangest item of 2023 in my opinion was the “croque pancake.” The croque monsieur is the French version of a grilled cheese sandwich, but it also includes ham. For the American version, the bread has been replaced with pancakes – another food that is definitely American in the French mind and rarely seen in France.

This year, we decided to try the American Box Party. My stepchildren were eager to taste the onion rings, mozzarella sticks, and bacon cheese balls.

They really enjoyed all three, but for me the flavors were kind of bland. Maybe I was missing all the additives and preservatives. For comparison, here are the ingredients of Picard’s mozzarella sticks compared with the brand that I found rated highest on several US websites, TGI Fridays:

Picard : mozzarella 41%, wheat flour, water, green pepper 4.1%, green chile, potato starch, corn flour, salt, yeast, powdered whole egg from free range chickens, turmeric, sodium caseinate, baking powder, garlic extract, onion extract, spice extract, white vinegar, garlic. Fried in canola oil.

TGI Fridays: part-skim mozzarella cheese (pasteurized milk, cultures, salt, enzymes), wheat flour, water, enriched bleached wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soybean oil, modified food starch, contains less than 2% of salt, egg whites, dried garlic, dextrose, methylcellulose, spices, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), nonfat milk, onion powder, caramel (color), paprika extract, sugar, yeast, yellow corn flour, sodium alginate.

The featured dessert of 2023 was the cookie bomb. I think the picture is very clear and needs no translation. Picard allows people to leave reviews on their website, and this item has the best overall reviews that I’ve seen.

This image shows another dessert and offers us another glimpse into what French people imagine when they think of America:

Cheerleading has not traditionally been a thing in France, so much so that the word for “cheerleader” in French is pom-pom girl. The French are both fascinated by and uncomfortable with it, as evidenced in the title of this French documentary (one of many) on cheerleaders in America: Cheerleaders: the dark side of the American dream. (Link to the website here.) Nevertheless, very recently cheerleading clubs have arrived in France - and so has American football.

The text in the image above says “It’s not just gossip about Brian that you will be sharing.” This is a shout out to French people in their 50s and 60s, who all used exactly the same textbook for learning English in the 6th grade: French education prides itself on having a single curriculum everywhere in the country for the lower grades. The two sentences that everyone in this age group can say in excellent English are from the first dialogue: “Where is Brian? Brian is in the kitchen.” There are “Where is Brian?” jokes sprinkled everywhere in French movies, plays, and television.

The 2024 promotion was titled Hey USA, and the signature burger (it turns out that there is always a burger, perhaps the most American food of all) comes with a beef patty, barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, onion, and red pepper on a pretzel bun.

We can tell that both of these people are American because they are eating with their hands. Oh, the horror!

Inside the brochure Picard suggests the Texas Rancher meal: just accompany the burger above with the “ranch” fries from last year. There is also a contest you can enter to win a trip for two to California, the place that is first on almost every French person’s list of places they want to visit in the USA.

New offerings included a Chicago style pizza that looks (to me at least) uniquely unappetizing, but I don’t think I’ve ever had authentic Chicago style pizza. Does it usually have so much cheese?

And of course, more barbecue. Here is a particularly odd mix of pulled pork in barbecue with a layer of sweet potato on top, baked in the oven. “Parmentier” is the French term for shepherd’s or cottage pie.

The store also sold boxes of the same pork with a recipe for a pulled pork sandwich. Oddly, it includes a hash brown patty:

The featured dessert was red velvet cheesecake. Once again, this is something that I’ve never seen or tried, but maybe it’s me: I did not grow up eating a typical American diet and I am definitely lacking in experience.

I missed the 2025 “Hello America” season. I had to travel to France at the last minute in February and missed my Spring Break trip as a result. But I was still able to find information about it online.

For the first time, “America” is not mentioned. And yet there are some new products with Hello America packaging, like the egg muffin and hash browns (which will definitely be pronounced “ash browns” in France).

It seems pretty clear to me that a Hello America campaign was prepared, probably beginning almost a year in advance, but changed at the last minute after the inauguration and Trump’s turning of the US away from our longtime European allies.

The iconography of the campaign, renamed Street Food Lovers, is too American for any other explanation. To start, there are the cowboy boots: cowboy = American, and having them in that bright fuchsia color = lack of taste/fashion sense, which to the French is also American.

Here we have the egg muffin (with hash brown patty, fried egg, cheese sauce, and confit onions) being served in a 1950s style American diner by a waitress named Betty.

Here are two young Americans in the same diner, eating the three signature items from this year’s campaign: the cheesy burger, hash browns (with cheese and crispy onion), and the “American style ice cream.”

The varsity letter jacket is a very strong signifier of “American” for the French, who do not have sports at all as part of middle school or high school. I was very confused by the shiny shoe at table level between them until I saw another view of it in the ice cream promo – it’s a roller skate, another thing that is coded as American in the French psyche.

The ice cream itself is vanilla, in two colors: white and blue. The red strawberry coulis swirled in “will definitely remind you of the American flag” – though of course the French flag is also blue, white and red.

In studying the Hello America campaign, I think we can discern the three most important things that make food seem “American” to the French: barbecue sauce, excessive sugar/sweetness (in the desserts, but also using pancakes or waffles instead of bread or burger buns), and eating with your hands.

I want to repeat again that I really do like and appreciate Picard: they do frozen food at its best, and sometimes we all need a little convenience. What the Hello America campaign shows us is less about the food itself, and more about how American food is represented in the French imagination.

We have our own stereotypes of French food, and almost certainly our ideas would trend toward thing that French people don’t eat every day. As an exercise, please try to put yourself in the position of those Picard food engineers: if you had to name the most Frenchy French appetizers, main dishes, desserts, and/or snacks, what would you come up with? I would love to see your ideas in the comments.