The food scene in larger American cities like NY, LA and SF is fantastic - and I've spent a lot of time outside of the USA.

What I've noticed about the French/Italian food snobs is that they seem to view American food culture as it was in 1990s suburbia. Back then, good olive oil or artisanal cheese was pretty hard to find outside of small "gourmet" food stores. It's very different today.

Purely outsider anecdotes:

Despite also using a similar (or even less!) amount of spice and largely enjoying the same “beige” palette and textures as the rest of the continent, I found Northern Europe’s cities so delightfully open to the rest of the world’s cuisine in contrast to my experiences in the south, I don’t think the other comment is completely off the mark in how immense “local pride” kind of definitely factors into a very certain way of doing things to the exclusion of others, even locally between eg Barcelona & Valencia.

It probably isn’t a coincidence how curry, and donër kebab are devoured left and right by rich-ish and poor in England and Germany to the point of entering the national identity after rocky starts in the middle of the last century while France and Italy’s right wings are still to this day thriving on specifically culinary othering, to the point of coining things like “kebabization” and trying to ban kebab stands in the city centers of Florence and Marseille.

I would also maybe be careful conflating simply being very French or very Italian, and being a food snob in food circles these days. Interest in French, and recently the Italian cuisines have absolutely plummeted globally and its over the top vocal adherents are often linked to some rather unpopular social attitudes (in food circles, anyways).

eg Indian and Thai are booming, though! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=french%2...