This paper explores the links among food, class and gender in memoirs written by two American expatriates living in France, Harriet Welty Rochefort and Suzy Gershman, respectively. It focuses on the tensions that arise in the texts when the two authors strive to describe their new, supposedly ideal lives in terms acceptable to a presumed American female readership. The argument I wish to make is that food is one of the means, if not the primary means, by which Rochefort and Gershman present themselves and their new life in Paris as both more “privileged” and “authentic” compared to their previous life in the USA, yet seemingly without challenging prevalent democratic and feminist ideologies in contemporary American society.