ugly american | A French American Life

I’ve been longing for French Polynesia. Palm trees, exotic fish, gentle breezes and sailing a catamaran while my fingertips trail in the clear blue seas…. We spent our honeymoon there, enjoying the warm waters and savoring the food and culture that was such a beautiful mix of Polynesian and French. One of many images stuck in my head: a local, decorated with tattoos and jagged scars (many locals sported these: rough encounters with the coral reefs and, sometimes, sharks), riding a scooter down a muddy back road with a half dozen baguettes jutting out from a sling on his back. Our vacation there was every bit as idyllic as every cliché about Tahiti professes it will be.

Tahitian bottle opener. Check out the scars on his arm!

Except for the Texans.

I’ve been to Texas a few times and I’ve found the locals gregarious and welcoming. But for some reason, we kept running into the worst of their lot on our trip. It started with a group on a snorkeling trip in Moorea: two couples, both from Texas, were loudly comparing the cost of their tickets, and their hotel rooms, and how much they’d paid for their excursions, and then how much their homes cost in Texas. Meanwhile, the guide asked for a show of hands for who spoke French and who spoke English. The group was evenly divided, so he said he would explain everything first in French, then in English. As he began his first French explanation, the Texans broke from their money talk to stare at him, then one of them shouted: “ENGLISH! We speak ENGLISH!”

Later, on Bora Bora, our resort was hosting a large group from Texas and while we and every other honeymooning couple on the planet tried to enjoy our romantic tiki torch-lit dinners on the sand, the table of 15 from Texas shouted and guffawed and threw bread from one end of the table to the other, prompting the staff to ask them more than once to calm down.

the Blue Pineapple on Moorea, where we first tasted poisson cru

Then this: We fell in love with poisson cru while we were there; it’s the local traditional dish and so simple yet delicious that I’ve made it several times since. I’m salivating just thinking about it. Our resort offered a class on how to make the dish, so my husband and I joined a few others, including a Texan couple, complete with teased hair and twangs, to learn of the long held tradition of poisson cru.

Conquering the coconut

Our instructors were all locals. We began with the diced raw ahi, to which we added squeezes of lime juice, then onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Next, we cracked open a coconut (way harder than it looks) and squeezed milk from the meat of it over the dish. And voila! It’s that simple.

As we all savored a plate full of the dish, the woman from Texas smacked her lips together and proclaimed: “I bet this would be real tasty with a bit of May – o – naise!”