It's true that most restaurants serve pre-prepared and frozen dishes. If there are more than a dozen dishes with a different base, they are prepared dishes, often from frozen.

After all, in France there is a certain quality, especially for meat and cheese, dairy, at prices that are quite affordable compared with other countries, and America, which overprice anything up than "value" quality and put a gourmet label on it, whereas in France it's just the standard with normal price.

Plus there are offers to avoid waste, you can find almost every day food to eat the same day or the next day at a discount of -35% to -50%. Even "Label Rouge" food have discount which is a highest quality food without additives, respecting more traditional recipes or process.

So if you have time to look around you can eat well for cheap.

Sure, it's not the same as it was 50 years ago, but a lot has changed in general.

To find good-quality food everywhere, you'd have to go around the Mediterranean in southern Europe and the east too.