why do the French eat more and more spicy foods?

The French are the third largest consumers of spices in Europe, behind the Germans and the Belgians. Among these aromatics, pepper is becoming more and more popular. In supermarkets, Buldak 3X Spicy Korean instant noodles sit alongside “Hot & Spicy” chips and other Martin bottles from “the French hot sauce factory”.

Even the traditional Hénaff pâté so dear to the Bretons even exists in a spicy version, swapping its historic blue for a bright red dress for the occasion. Finally, the success of the show Hot Oneshosted by Kyan Khojandi who test celebrity chili resistance, is such that McDonald’s has just released three of these sauces.

Lee Cheng is the founder of the Parisian restaurants Deux fois and Trois fois plus de chilli, which offer the most explosive cuisine from the Chinese province of Sichuan. So much so that customers must choose between 0 and 5 for the strength of their dishes.

“We don’t want to make you cry,” laughs the man who in 2008 opened his first restaurant in the 11th arrondissement of Paris without really knowing if French customers would play the game. “At the beginning, it was only Asians who came, but from 2011, I almost only had people from the neighborhood.” Like Frédéric, a 63-year-old business manager who comes very often and for whom chili pepper is as important as salt or pepper: “I use it for salads, guacamole, fish or pasta. I find everything too bland otherwise.”

Myssan, 29 years old, of Vietnamese origin, has been training since she was little “eat peppers like chips” ever since she saw her uncle do it. She is also a regular customer of the restaurant and likes to come and test her limits. “The last times, I took power 3 or 4 and I suffered a lot. Now, I will remain humble and take 2 as strength.” Testing your resistance to chili pepper has become a real trend on social networks. “We cannot do these challenges with other flavors like salty”, continues Lee Cheng. “After the pain, we have a feeling of pleasure. As a result, people have the impression of having an adventure with pepper. But be careful, in moderation…”

“In France, you lack peppers”, analyzes Lee Cheng for whom this new French craze for chili perhaps fills a gap in French gastronomy. Finally, only part of our cuisine, since in the West Indies or Reunion Island, chili pepper has long been an integral part of the list of essential ingredients. The Scoville scale measures the potency of a pepper. For example, classic mustard goes up to 300 units on this scale. The Espelette pepper, for its part, climbs with difficulty to 2000. We are far from the 200,000 that the habanero pepper, the one used in the overseas departments, can reach.