The beaconing white twin longhorns of the aptly named Texas Grill, located half a kilometer from my apartment, could very well be located off any interstate from Oklahoma to New Jersey.

The promise of one-inch-thick steaks and the carved wood totem pole outside in the parking lot remind me of restaurants we used to make pit stops in on the long drives down to Florida from Ohio.

But the Texas Grill I'm referring to is not a highway pit stop for weary travelers. In fact the restaurant in question is approximately a four-minute walk from my local boulangerie in a city called Dieppe. In upper French Normandy. In France.

The extent of proliferation of American culture into others often astounds me. Not that in this day this is all that surprising, but for a culture that is notoriously protective of its traditions, the Americanisms that have wheedled their way into the French periphery are, as many would argue, some of the worst. McDo is a favorite among teenagers, and KFC has become an increasingly popular lunch spot in Paris.

The Texas Grill, with its red roof and painted white bull, claims to offer up hearty American food, fresh from the ranch, in a commercial, outside mega-center complete with the Wal-Mart equivalent, Carrefour, and outlet stores selling everything from electronics to house furniture.

That isn't to say on any level that France is not entitled to partake in the idea of bulk convenience or even in culturally themed cuisine such as the Texas Grill. (The United States is guilty of everything from Don Pablo's to Hunan Express, after all.)

But from a foreign perspective (or I guess my foreign perspective), this side of France, it doesn't tend to register immediately in my cultural constructions. One of the ways we differentiate culture is to do exactly that. Register the differences. How is Spain different from Hungary, or different from Indonesia? And these lines tend to blur once we enter the world of globalized mega-markets and strip malls.

About two months ago, I found myself for the first (and last) time eating lunch in a restaurant called Flunch that is the French take on the infamous buffet.

As I sipped my coffee that mysteriously came from a token machine, my friend Andrea looked up at us mid-conversation, forkful of frites halfway to her mouth and exclaimed,"We could actually be anywhere in the world right now in this restaurant."

And it's true. I swear I've seen the same carpets in the Wendy's across the street from my old high school—the same porcelain coffee cups, the same yellow -wallpapered walls.