Nice counter to the French as white: Milner Barry gambit

Looks like the only move that gives black a significant advantage is refraining from taking the pawn and playing a6. But if not, when the queen is tempod by the rook black needs to play Qb8 instead of Qd6, if Qb8 black has a slight edge but nothing major. The moves do lead to equality for black though...

I'm not generally keen on giving up 2 central pawns... I prefer the alekhine-chatard which sacs the h pawn and mounts a kingside attack. But you will reach this position more reliably than that, for someone tired of the french if it works for you it's not way worse objectively in practice or anything, if that's how you'd like to play more power to you.

Only thing I will say is this happens pretty early in the opening in a very standard position so it's not inconceivable that black will know the line and play the right moves even though they're somewhat obscure.

If you're really tired of the french another strategy may be to play something odd early like c4 or b3, at least then you're not just flipping a coin on relying on black to make a mistake early in the opening.

I hear ya. Its tough giving up the central pawns and it can fizzle out quickly like the smith morra. Not a good option for classical at higher levels. I like to attack and the french is hard to attack! I will play it for now in the spirit of good chess improvement... playing gambits/attacking chess.

It's not that difficult to get an attack started in french... you might be playing lines where it is difficult. In this setup usually I castle queenside and push the kingside pawns, I always get good attacks on the king. But there are a variety of lines that follow and you need to know which is which, however I think they all lead to kingside pawn expansions and attacks -