Inside the ‘Americanization’ of French dining

Over the past year, an all-American-style diner serving Italian-American dishes became one of the most viral dining destinations in Paris.

Inside Red Sauce , red velvet banquettes, neon signs, rotating ceiling fans, Formica tables topped with vintage salt and pepper shakers and bottles of Tabasco sauce recreate the look and feel of a diner that would fit right in on “The Sopranos.”

Racks of Detroit-style pepperoni pizza topped with jalapeños and hot honey, and plates groaning with giant meatballs and eggplant parmigiana are passed out by young servers with faint Italian accents to tables of chattering French diners.

Red Sauce is one of dozens of American-inspired dining experiences that have popped up around the French capital in recent years. Alongside New York-style pizzas sold by the slice, smash burgers and donuts, Parisians have also been introduced to regional American cuisines like Texas barbecue, Southern-style fried chicken and waffles and seafood boils, complete with plastic gloves and paper bibs.

But while American specialties have found legitimacy in France through the power of social media and savvy marketing, the cross-Atlantic arrival of other elements of North American dining culture is being met with a mix of curiosity, reluctance — and resistance.

There’s the earlier dinner hour, which aligns with North American (and also Asian and Scandinavian) culture, a trend that has French newspaper Le Figaro wondering if it’s just “ a passing fad or the start of a shift in habits? ”

There’s also the shortened, takeout lunch break replacing leisurely, multi-course restaurant lunches, as glamorized by the Netflix series “Emily in Paris.”

Perhaps most controversial and, some say, the most insidious of all, is the growing adoption of digital tipping and tipping culture in general across France. It’s a shift that some deplore as the “Americanization” of French restaurant culture, which has become the subject of mainstream news and talk shows in recent years.

“It’s a form of Americanization of French society,” said philosopher Jean-Loup Bonnamy, on a 2024 episode of the French talk show “ Les Grandes Gueules ” (“Big Mouths”) dedicated to the topic. “It’s the culture of ‘tipping’ and it’s a servile and misunderstood form of Americanization.”

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Unlike the US, tipping in France has never been considered an obligation, as servers are paid minimum wage. A 15% service charge, or service compris, is added to restaurant bills, which is used to pay staff salaries. If diners are feeling generous or had a particularly good experience, they may round up the bill and leave the change for their coffee, or a few euros at a cafe or bistro.

As Elisabeth Debourse, editor-in-chief of the influential restaurant guide Le Fooding for France and Belgium, points out, the French word for a tip, pourboire , is a compound word and literally means “to drink.”

“In France, tip is traditionally the change you have in your pocket and that you leave on the table for staff to buy themselves a drink later,” she says.

Kiran Ridley/AFP/Getty Images

But since the arrival of digital tipping options on card machines and QR codes over the last few years, tipping culture has shifted in France. Tipping prompts are now everywhere. Along with tip jars placed beside cash registers, customers are prompted to leave a 5% to 20% gratuity on their restaurant bills, but also on their fast-food takeout and coffees to-go when paying via card machines.

In a recent column for Radio France , French journalist Frédéric Martel describes digital tipping as abusive, misleading and even “theft,” given that service is already included. He also called for a 5% cap on French tipping.

“In the age of digital payments, it is high time to regulate abusive restaurant practices to reassure customers and remain faithful to the French spirit of service being included,” Martel writes.

On social media and online forums, some French users call the emergence of digital tipping a scam that benefits restaurants and commission-earning payment platforms more than servers. Some resent the feeling of being pressured into tipping while servers hover over them with the payment machines.

Courtesy Rose Camara

“When I get the tipping system on the digital app, I systematically refuse it because I’m afraid that it will lead back to the same system as in the US,” Rose Camara, a French woman in Lyon who dines out regularly, tells CNN.

For Camara, it’s a matter of principle: servers should be paid a fair wage by their employer and the burden shouldn’t fall to customers, she said.

The English teacher has no qualms about tipping for good service, but said she resents the digital tipping system because it feels forced, with tips dictated by a machine with predetermined percentages. Likewise, tipping can make settling up uncomfortable when dining out with friends.

“It’s a heavy toll for some people,” she said. “I know some of my friends have to be really careful about how much they spend so asking them to give 10 or even 5% extra can be a lot for them and they don’t feel at ease.”

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Christophe Souques is a restaurateur with seven cafes and pubs across the south of France in cities like Toulouse, Cannes and Nice, where he’s best known for Ma Nolan’s Irish pubs. He says he started to notice generous North American-style tipping in his restaurants in the 1990s, when an uptick in direct international flights brought planeloads of wealthy American and Canadian tourists to the French Riviera.

“Anglophone culture brought tipping to France. That’s very clear,” Souques tells CNN.

As Souques explains, digital gratuities on card readers were widely adopted after the French government announced that card-based tipping — which until then was taxed as part of a restaurant’s revenue — would become tax-exempt as of 2022.

According to a June report from payment platform provider Lightspeed , the percentage of digital transactions that involved an added customer gratuity rose from 4% in 2023, to nearly 10% in 2025. For the report, Lightspeed looked at tipping trends across 1,500 restaurants in France that use the company’s payment platforms from June 2023 to August 2025.

Kathleen Finlay/Image Source/Getty Images

But it’s a trend that some restaurateurs, like Souques, can’t get behind. Though both digital and cash tips are tax-free until the end of 2028, Souques, who is also the president of the Union of Hospitality Trades and Industries for the local Nice-area chapter, worries that digitized gratuities will make it easier for a government tax grab in the future.

Furthermore, it’s just plain tacky, he says. He has eliminated the option at all his restaurants.

“Tipping is supposed to be at the customer’s discretion. But forcing customers to choose from amounts displayed on a card machine violates their privacy and their right to decide,” he says. “It feels aggressive. and it’s shocking … It breaks the rapport between the server and customer.”

That’s because restaurant service culture in France is less transactional than in North America, where servers work mostly for tips, and where the average service style — personal introductions, frequent check-ins, product upsells — can be viewed as over-the-top for Europeans.

Souques describes French service culture as efficient, professional and discreet. So when a rapport is established between servers and customers, the connection is genuine, he says. Throw in “rude” request for a gratuity, and the connection is shattered.

“It stops being about friendliness or a human connection. It becomes purely about money and becomes a financial transaction between the server and the customer,” Souques says.

By the same token, French-style discretion can be interpreted by American visitors as inattentive and rude.

After having traveled to Canada, Camara found North American-style service “overwhelming” compared to the more reserved service culture she was used to in France. But after a recent dining experience in Paris with a particularly playful and bubbly server, she realized that’s changing too.

“Ten to 15 years ago, waiters here were really discreet and wouldn’t engage. Now, we see younger servers coming, introducing themselves and engaging in small talk.”

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Priscilla Quang has the added perspective of a chef and restaurateur who lived in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong before moving back to Paris, where she runs two acclaimed restaurants.

In 2024, she opened Trâm 130 , a French- and Asian-influenced neo-bistro, and in July, Trâmette, a smaller, casual “deli counter” space inspired by the delis she used to frequent while living in the US. (Trâm is Quang’s first name in Vietnamese and is pronounced Tiam).

But while the design of Trâmette was inspired by an American concept, Quang hasn’t been fully converted to American-style tipping: she has banned it outright at Trâm 130, and reluctantly installed the payment option at Trâmette.

“I flatly refused to implement that at my first restaurant. I don’t think it’s elegant to have a ‘tip’ button right under your nose when paying the bill, especially since the average check at that first place is a bit higher,” Quang says.

At Trâmette, Quang decided to test out the gratuity payment option — but only for guests with whom the staff may have struck a particularly good rapport. Otherwise, two out of three times, waitstaff will manually pass over the tipping prompt themselves before presenting the card reader to guests, she said. Quang estimates that about 20% of her customers tip and mostly for dinner service.

“It’s not an automatic reflex at all for the French,” she says. “And when they do tip, they leave usually €2 to €5 ($2.30 to $5.80). We still don’t have that ingrained habit of tipping at all.”

Le Fooding editor Debourse, who lives in Belgium but works half the week in Paris and eats out on average three times a week, agrees and points out that the proliferation of card readers hasn’t translated into widespread tipping. This is especially true in the current economy where purchasing power has diminished.

But it’s not just tipping culture that is making its way across the Atlantic.

Dinner hour, which traditionally starts around 7:30 p.m. and peaks around 8 p.m. in France, is also seeing a small shift in the French capital. A new generation of restaurants including both Trâm addresses, Red Sauce and Bittikesu , another critically acclaimed newcomer this year, are opening as early as 6:30 p.m., aligning more with North American dinner times.

For Canadian chef Jules St-Cyr, who opened his gastronomic counter restaurant Bittikesu in April, offering a 6:30 p.m. seating was about logistics, as the 15-course tasting menu lasts about 2.5 hours. The second seating is at 9 p.m. and each seating has a maximum of 10 guests.

But the move was also about striking a work-life balance. “I don’t want our staff and our team to finish very late. It’s not worth it in the long term.”

The first time slot might be a mix of tourists who are used to earlier dinner times and a few French guests, St-Cyr says. But there’s still quite a few French people who balk at the idea of eating that early and “don’t even want to hear it,” he adds.

The fabled French, wine-fueled, two-hour lunch is also looking more like the North American lunch hour, with the demands of modern life shortening breaks, and fast food replacing restaurant meals. It’s also a big reason Quang decided against opening her gastronomic restaurant for lunch: the French are drinking less at lunch (alcohol is the most profitable part of a restaurant business), and overall budgets are shrinking.

“The business lunch is disappearing,” Quang says.

As to whether the current geopolitical climate and anti-American sentiment could affect the French appetite for all things American, Debourse, whose 2023 book “American appétit ” explores American food culture, says that the French are able to keep politics and American pop culture — including American food culture — separate.

“For the French, there’s no connection between enjoying things that stem from … American soft power and current American politics.”

过去一年，一家供应意式美式菜肴的美式餐厅成为巴黎最热门的餐饮场所之一。

在 Red Sauce 餐厅内，红色天鹅绒长椅、霓虹灯招牌、旋转的吊扇、福米卡桌面上摆放着复古的盐瓶和胡椒瓶以及塔巴斯科辣椒酱瓶，营造出一种仿佛置身于《黑道家族》中的餐馆的氛围。

一排排底特律风味的意大利辣香肠披萨，上面放着墨西哥辣椒和热蜂蜜；还有满满一盘的巨型肉丸和茄子帕尔马干酪，年轻的服务员带着淡淡的意大利口音，将食物分发给正在聊天的法国食客。

Red Sauce是近年来在法国首都巴黎涌现的数十家美式餐厅之一。除了按片出售的纽约式披萨、汉堡和甜甜圈之外，巴黎人还接触到了德州烧烤、南方炸鸡华夫饼和海鲜大杂烩等美国地方特色菜肴，用餐时还会提供塑料手套和纸围兜。

虽然美国特色菜通过社交媒体和精明的营销在法国获得了认可，但北美餐饮文化的其他元素跨越大西洋的到来却引发了好奇、不情愿和抵制等情绪。

晚餐时间提前了，这与北美（以及亚洲和斯堪的纳维亚）文化相符，这一趋势让法国报纸《费加罗报》不禁思考，这究竟是“一时的风潮，还是习惯转变的开始？”

此外，还有缩短的外卖午餐时间，取代了悠闲的多道菜餐厅午餐，就像 Netflix 剧集《艾米丽在巴黎》所展现的那样。

或许最具争议性，甚至有人认为最具隐蔽性的，是法国日益普及的电子小费制度和小费文化。这种转变被一些人斥为法国餐饮文化的“美国化”，近年来已成为主流新闻和脱口秀节目的热门话题。

“这是法国社会的一种美国化形式，”哲学家让-卢·博纳米在2024年法国脱口秀节目“Les Grandes Gueules”（《大嘴巴》）的一期专门讨论此话题的节目中说道。“这是‘给小费’的文化，是一种奴性且被误解的美国化形式。”

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与美国不同，在法国，给小费从来都不是强制性的，因为服务员的工资是最低工资。餐厅账单会加收15%的服务费（或称“服务费总额”），这笔钱用于支付员工工资。如果顾客心情好或者用餐体验特别好，他们可能会把账单凑整，把零钱留给自己买咖啡，或者在咖啡馆或小酒馆留下几欧元。

正如法国和比利时颇具影响力的餐厅指南《Le Fooding》的主编伊丽莎白·德布尔斯所指出的那样，法语中表示小费的词 pourboire 是一个复合词，字面意思是“喝”。

“在法国，小费传统上是指你口袋里的零钱，你把它留在桌子上，让服务员之后可以给自己买杯饮料，”她说。

Kiran Ridley/AFP/Getty Images

但自从过去几年刷卡机和二维码引入电子小费选项以来，法国的小费文化发生了转变。如今，小费提示随处可见。除了收银台旁摆放的小费罐，顾客在餐厅用餐时会被提示支付5%到20%的小费，在快餐外卖和外带咖啡使用刷卡机付款时也会被提示支付小费。

法国记者弗雷德里克·马特尔 (Frédéric Martel) 最近在法国广播电台发表专栏文章，称电子小费是一种滥用、误导甚至“盗窃”的行为，因为服务费中已经包含了小费。他还呼吁将法国的小费上限设定为5%。

“在数字支付时代，现在是时候规范餐厅的不正当行为了，以安抚顾客，并保持法国服务精神的完整性，”马特尔写道。

在社交媒体和网络论坛上，一些法国用户称电子小费的出现是一种骗局，餐厅和赚取佣金的支付平台比服务员获益更多。一些人反感服务员拿着支付机在他们身边徘徊，强迫他们给小费。

罗斯·卡马拉供图

“当我在数字应用程序上看到小费系统时，我总是拒绝它，因为我担心它会让我回到美国那种系统，”经常外出就餐的法国里昂女子罗斯·卡马拉告诉 CNN。

卡马拉认为，这是一个原则问题：服务员应该从雇主那里获得公平的工资，而负担不应该落在顾客身上，她说。

这位英语老师对给优质服务小费毫不犹豫，但她表示反感电子小费系统，因为它让人感觉很强迫，小费金额是由机器按照预设的百分比决定的。同样，和朋友外出就餐时，给小费也会让结账变得尴尬。

“这对一些人来说负担很重，”她说。“我知道我的一些朋友必须非常谨慎地控制开支，所以让他们额外捐出10%甚至5%对他们来说都是一笔不小的数目，他们会感到不自在。”

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克里斯托夫·苏克是一位餐饮业者，在法国南部图卢兹、戛纳和尼斯等城市拥有七家咖啡馆和酒吧，其中以“玛·诺兰”爱尔兰酒吧最为知名。他表示，上世纪90年代，随着国际直飞航班的增多，大批富有的美国和加拿大游客涌入法国里维埃拉，他开始注意到自己餐厅里出现了北美式的慷慨小费现象。

“英语文化把小费带到了法国。这一点非常清楚，”苏克斯告诉CNN。

正如苏克斯解释的那样，在法国政府宣布从 2022 年起，基于银行卡的消费小费（此前一直作为餐厅收入的一部分征税）将免税之后，刷卡机上的数字小费得到了广泛采用。

根据支付平台提供商 Lightspeed 6 月份发布的一份报告，涉及额外顾客小费的数字交易比例将从 2023 年的 4% 上升到 2025 年的近 10%。为了撰写这份报告，Lightspeed 研究了 2023 年 6 月至 2025 年 8 月期间，法国 1500 家使用该公司支付平台的餐厅的小费趋势。

Kathleen Finlay/图片来源/Getty Images

但像苏克斯这样的部分餐馆老板并不认同这种趋势。尽管电子小费和现金小费在2028年底之前都免税，但苏克斯（他同时也是尼斯地区餐饮业工会的会长）担心，小费数字化会让政府未来更容易从中牟利。

此外，他还说，这简直俗不可耐。他已经取消了所有餐厅的这项服务。

“给小费应该是顾客的自由。但强迫顾客从刷卡机显示的金额中选择，侵犯了他们的隐私和决定权，”他说。“这让人感觉很咄咄逼人，令人震惊……这会破坏服务员和顾客之间的良好关系。”

这是因为法国的餐饮服务文化不像北美那样注重交易，北美的服务员主要靠小费为生，而北美常见的服务方式——亲自介绍、频繁询问顾客需求、推销产品——对欧洲人来说可能显得过分。

苏克斯将法国的服务文化描述为高效、专业和谨慎。他说，因此，当服务员和顾客之间建立起融洽的关系时，这种联系是真诚的。但如果服务员“无礼”地索要小费，这种联系就会立刻破裂。

“这不再关乎友善或人与人之间的联系，而是完全关乎金钱，变成了服务员和顾客之间的金钱交易，”苏克斯说道。

同样地，法式的谨慎可能会被美国游客解读为粗心大意和无礼。

卡马拉去过加拿大之后，发现北美式的服务与她在法国习惯的较为含蓄的服务文化相比，显得“令人难以招架”。但最近在巴黎的一次用餐经历，让她遇到了一位特别活泼开朗的服务员，她意识到这种情况也在发生改变。

“十到十五年前，这里的服务员都很低调，不会主动和客人搭讪。现在，我们看到年轻的服务员过来，会自我介绍，也会和客人闲聊。”

厨师大卫·张说，吃下那份“可疑的三明治”。

Priscilla Quang 拥有厨师和餐馆老板的独特视角，她曾在纽约、旧金山和香港生活，之后搬回巴黎，在那里经营着两家备受赞誉的餐厅。

2024年，她开设了Trâm 130，一家受法国和亚洲风味影响的新式小酒馆；同年7月，她又开设了Trâmette，一家规模较小、氛围轻松的“熟食柜台”空间，其灵感来源于她在美国生活时经常光顾的熟食店。（Trâm是Quang的越南语名字，发音为Tiam）。

虽然 Trâmette 的设计灵感来自美国的概念，但 Quang 并没有完全接受美式小费制度：她在 Trâm 130 完全禁止了小费，并且很不情愿地在 Trâmette 安装了小费支付选项。

“我断然拒绝在我的第一家餐厅实施这种做法。我觉得在结账时把‘小费’按钮放在顾客眼皮底下很不雅观，尤其是我第一家餐厅的平均消费额还比较高，”Quang说道。

在Trâmette餐厅，Quang决定试行小费支付方式——但仅限于那些与服务员建立了特别良好关系的客人。她说，否则，三分之二的情况下，服务员会在把刷卡机递给客人之前，先手动提示客人支付小费。Quang估计，大约20%的顾客会给小费，而且大多是晚餐服务的小费。

“对法国人来说，给小费完全不是一种习惯，”她说。“即使他们给小费，通常也只给2到5欧元（2.30到5.80美元）。我们至今仍然没有给小费这种根深蒂固的习惯。”

《美食评论》（Le Fooding）的编辑德布尔斯（Debourse）住在比利时，但每周有一半时间在巴黎工作，平均每周外出就餐三次。他对此表示赞同，并指出刷卡机的普及并没有带来小费的普遍现象。在当前经济形势下，购买力下降，这种情况尤为突出。

但不仅仅是给小费的文化正在跨越大西洋传播。

在法国，传统的晚餐时间通常在晚上7:30左右开始，8点左右达到高峰。如今，巴黎的晚餐时间也出现了一些变化。包括Trâm街上的两家餐厅、Red Sauce以及今年备受好评的新晋餐厅Bittikesu在内的一批新一代餐厅，最早在晚上6:30就开始营业，更加贴近北美地区的晚餐时间。

对于今年四月开设美食吧台餐厅Bittikesu的加拿大主厨Jules St-Cyr来说，提供下午6:30的用餐时段主要是为了方便安排，因为包含15道菜的品尝菜单大约需要2.5小时。第二场用餐时段在晚上9点，每场最多接待10位客人。

但此举也是为了平衡工作与生活。“我不希望我们的员工和团队经常下班很晚。从长远来看，这样做得不偿失。”

圣西尔说，第一个用餐时段的客人可能既有习惯早点吃饭的游客，也有一些法国客人。但他补充说，仍然有不少法国人对这么早吃饭的想法感到抵触，“甚至都不想听”。

传说中法式两小时午餐，佐以美酒，如今也越来越像北美式的午餐时间。现代生活节奏加快，休息时间缩短，快餐取代了餐厅用餐。这也是Quang决定不开放午餐时段的重要原因：法国人午餐时饮酒量减少（酒水是餐饮业利润最高的部分），而且整体预算也在缩减。

“商务午餐正在消失，”Quang说道。

至于当前的地缘政治气候和反美情绪是否会影响法国人对美国事物的喜爱，德布尔斯（Debourse）在其 2023 年出版的《美国胃口》（American appétit）一书中探讨了美国饮食文化，他表示，法国人能够将政治和美国流行文化（包括美国饮食文化）分开。

“对法国人来说，享受源于……美国软实力和当前美国政治的事物之间没有任何联系。”