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...
I'm french and therefore a bit food snob. I live in Hong Kong, a place where the local food is 3 USD a meal, and the meat dicey while most nationalities, French especially, are represented at all price levels. It's still going to be skewed toward Asian taste (where are the Camembert sushi, a staple of parisian cheap sushi restaurant!?)
I dont know american food scene but it's probably horrendous: a memory of a 2 week stay in NYC when I was 16 scarred me: people in the US call "fat" "food", they cant actually comprehend taste. Just like my indian friends are so burned by spice they cant see the difference between different types of steaks (and tbh, like I find all type of spice just tasteless fire and cant distinguish them).
It's not bias you have, it's complete ignorance, I humbly assert :D I hope at least you're not the kind of american who think fortune cookies are traditional chinese culinary culture (it s an american invention)...
But if you speak of ultra luxury chefs and their distribution vs Tokyo or Barcelona you may be right, but it hardly matters: that's not real food either.