Generally speaking, there are three things about the British that the Americans never fail to find hysterically amusing. These are, in no particular order: our diet, our dental hygiene and our cars. Hence the enduring popularity of 1970s-era jokes such as this:

Q: Why do the British drink warm beer?

A: Because they have British Leyland refrigerators.

Unfair, yes. Outdated, for sure. And yet inescapable. Which raises the question of why one of the world’s most successful Englishmen would bet his entire career on selling the Americans one of the very things they enjoy mocking so much: British food. It’s a question a lot of people are going to be asking Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, as his first “Fresh & Easy” supermarkets open around LA this week.

Now, to me, the idea of the British selling ready-meals to Californians makes as much sense as the Iranians selling Second World War text books to the Israelis. There’s a culture problem. A big one. I get the feeling that Sir Terry already knows this: nothing else could explain the almost military secrecy that has surrounded the Fresh & Easy project since its inception. You would think they were developing a tactical nuclear weapon, not a selection of microwavable dinners.

You can’t fault Tesco for not doing its homework, though. Executives from the company spent a fortnight living with 60 American families and studying their pantries. They even set up a fake trial store in an LA warehouse, and passed it off as a film set to anyone who asked.

Which makes Fresh & Easy’s debut “dinner made easy” promotion all the more inexplicable. This is what they are offering: “A 25oz beef lasagna, Caesar salad, ciabatta loaf, and bottle of wine, all for under $12.” Yes, Sir Terry is trying to sell the residents of the most diet-fixated, calorie-paranoid, carbohydrate-obsessed city on Earth a combination of red meat, pasta, bread, cheese and booze. A round of applause, please, for the Fresh & Easy marketing department. Incidentally, if someone offered you a beef lasagna and bread at an LA dinner party, you’d sue them. A three-cheese lentil and tofu lasagna you might get away with — but you’d still be unpopular.

The bigger problem here is that ready meals just don’t appeal to Californians — as much as Britons cannot understand it. You can see why by visiting a Gelson’s, a Whole Foods or a Bristol Farms. These LA superluxurymarkets hire their own chefs to prepare gourmet food daily and sell it piled high at deli counters so it looks like a king’s feast. Even boxed sushi is prepared in-house, by a resident sushi chef. Of course, Tesco hopes there’s a middle ground — a refrigerated, prepackaged niche somewhere above Wal-Mart and below Whole Foods. But I’m not at all convinced.

In the meantime, I think Sir Terry’s best bet is to keep those Tesco logos hidden. And to keep quiet when he’s visiting, so no one hears the accent.

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