Europe's American Tastes

It was a food sale calculated to bring nervous heartburn to France's gastronomic nationalists. Below posters of cowboys and astronauts, shoppers at the Inno department store in Paris' chic Passy district snatched up U.S. imports: Bachman's Hanky Panky cocktail corn-puffs, Uncle Ben's rice, Florigold grapefruit, Tropicana orange juice.

All over Europe, consumers are developing a taste--and paying premium prices--for American food products. Despite stiff trade barriers erected by the Common Market, shipments of American fresh fruit to Europe were worth $32 million in 1970, up almost 40% from 1968. The demand is at its peak right now, when much of the produce grown in California, Florida and Texas is out of season on the Continent.

The rising popularity of U.S. strawberries, until recently a rarity in Europe, symbolizes the gustatory trend. Cargo jets normally fly whole planeloads of American berries twice a week to Sweden, where they sell for at least $1.30 a pint. Swiss customers get their deliveries the day they arrive from a trucking service that meets the flights at the airport in Geneva. Robert Flatoe, an American living in Frankfurt, who has become the leading European importer of strawberries, plans to charter about 20 Boeing 707s this spring to carry 1,600,000 Ibs. from California to the Continent. There is a growing demand among dessert-loving West Germans for U.S. strawberries: Hamburg's Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten prefers serving them because, says Chef Oskar Behrmann, "they have the best aroma." Between March 1 and May 10, the big season for imported strawberries in Germany, the U.S. berries virtually eclipse the scrawnier varieties from Mexico and Israel.

Foie de U.S. Another favorite item is American orange juice, which is sweeter and less acidic than competing North African brands. Last year France imported $1,300,000 worth of bottled U.S. juice, compared with $5,000 worth in 1965. Half of the 46,000 tons of mostly frozen orange juice bought by Sweden last year came from Florida: it sold briskly at an expensive 43-c- for a 6-oz. can. European consumers are also starting to nibble at American iceberg lettuce--to the dismay of gourmets, who find the limper, leafier continental varieties more delicate. Imports into Germany have doubled in two years, even though iceberg heads (known as Eissalat) retail for up to 60-c- per lb., three times as much as lettuce grown locally. The Swedes, who until recently regarded salad as a novelty, now eat more than 4,000,000 Ibs. of imported iceberg lettuce per year, in addition to 432,000 lbs. of U.S. celery hearts.

U.S. food imports in London are called "the cream line" because the prices rise to the top: Mayfair restaurants pay up to $2.16 per lb. for American asparagus and charge diners $3.30 per serving of seven sticks. French shoppers have learned to ask for Indian River grapefruit by name, even though the Florida product costs 35-c- each, twice the price of Mediterranean fruit. Among the most popular U.S. foods are innards like liver, hearts and kidneys. Europeans regard them as delicacies, particularly the cheap young American variety, and import $40 million worth a year. The French transform some of the pork liver into high-priced pate--and sell it back to the U.S.

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