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Yes, absolutely. I live in France, I'm 40, and I don't think I've ever met anyone since I was born, who doesn't know how to do basic cooking.

Over here people invite their friends for dinner all the time, and it would be beyond unacceptable to serve anything not prepared by the host/hostess.

Reading the great Tony Bourdain I learned that what happened in the US happened after WWII; before that time the US was a pretty "normal" country, food-wise.

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Interesting data point - discussing this over dinner made us arrive at France as the only suspected exception in Europe, but apparently it's not.

Did Tony indicate what initiated the change?

Exception in which way? The Germans seem to do a lot of cooking too, from what I know, as well as Spaniards or Italians.

Exception in the way that we suspected that if there would be a european country where eating outdoors would be more common than a home cooked meal, it would be France.

But that was mostly based on observations during business trips to France - which most likely skewed our arguments quite a bit.

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