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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3207 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 7, 2024

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Does anyone here actually consider Western food amongst their favorite cuisines?

Personally, I find American cuisine is downright trash-tier. My city is lauded by many as a "top-tier food city" but the examples people give of great food are pizza, hot dogs, burgers, Italian beef, and cheesesteak. Most of the ones I've tried I would call oil-drenched slop. None were actually delicious enough to justify the health detriments, especially when similarly unhealthy but better tasting options exist like Mexican tacos, Indian curry, Iranian kababs, Japanese ramen, Chinese hot pot, etc.

In my experience, this has applied to Western countries in general. Except for the Mediterranean-adjacent Italian, Spanish, and Greek, I don't think I've ever particularly enjoyed any other Western food. Do Canada, Australia, and New Zealand even have an identifiable cuisine? I don't know of any British, Nordic, or Slavic restaurants in my area. France is stereotyped as the culinary capital, but most of what I've had was overpriced and looked better than it actually tasted.

It may be that most of the hype around Western food is concentrated in fine-dining, in which I'm largely uninterested. When it comes to a more typical meal, I have a hard time putting any country (aside from Italy/Spain/Greece) above bottom tier when comparing to other regional cuisines from East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America.

So am I eating the wrong things, is my taste atypical for someone raised in the West, or is it relatively common for most Western cuisines to be clustered in the bottom-tier?

Do Canada, Australia, and New Zealand even have an identifiable cuisine?

English Canada has always been extremely culturally interlinked with the US, so the only popular foods in Canada that didn't make it accross the border are from Quebec.

Australia / NZ have some local adjustments to the general Anglo cuisine. Prawns are a lot more common. Vegemite and Fairy Bread failed to become popular elsewhere. Emu and Kangaroo are more common.

British food in general is built around the idea that high quality cuts of meat can stand on their own. If you're spicing roast beef until you can't taste the beef, why are you paying for it?

Also British food has some presentation issues. Mince and tatties would be much more visually appealing if they just served it in a bowl with the potatoes on the bottom.

Foods that are basically a sandwich are mostly junk everywhere. Good western food plays to the strengths of the west - i.e. good protein. American BBQ is great, steaks are good in the west, pork, chicken, fish on the coasts. Even meat loaf is pretty good. Then pair that up with whatever non-fried side - this is where especially the US is bad because you don’t seem to understand what a salad is - and that’s a great meal.

I find that quality is orthogonal to cuisine. I've had really good and really bad versions of different cuisines.

American cuisine excels at producing and finding uses for preservable sauces and seasonings (S&S). Ketchup, Mustard, BBQ, Mayonaise, Hot Sauces, Old Bay, etc. And it is best at adopting foreign S&S into the cuisine, like Sriracha, Chipotle, Soy, etc. Certain "Americanized" foods like Chinese takeout is basically just heavily sauced versions of easily found American food General Tso's / Orange Chicken / Sweet and Sour / etc. If you don't enjoy the major S&S you won't generally enjoy American cuisine. Just like its hard to enjoy Indian food if you don't like curry.

I think British cuisine is often maligned too for the wrong reasons (I see you @fartVader). Its meant to be had at a pub with beer on a rainy shitty day. Much of it is very dense and thus good at holding in heat as you slowly eat it to warm up while drinking your beer at the same time. The flavor should be coming from the beer, which is why everyone calls most British food flavorless. But its like taking the curry out of Indian food and deciding that its all bland as a result. The food is meant to be bland, because its a vehicle for flavor from another source!

Italian and Parisian food often get lauded as the best food, but I think that is because both of those food traditions are meant to be served in restaurants with fine wines. The word restaurant is French! (also I say Parisian food instead of French food quite intentionally. Paris is a mega city with its own culture and food, and mostly that is what has been exported around the world.)

Street food from various cuisines you should look for foodtrucks that serve them. I've mostly never enjoyed Kabob, but I do usually enjoy it from a food truck. Took me some time before I figured that one out, specifically going to the foodtruck and brick and mortar versions of the same local brand of kabob and realizing that only the food truck one was good.

Asian Hot Pot should be eaten out of a hot pot.

Low and slow smoke or pit BBQ needs to be overseen by a pit master. If they use automated technology it turns to crap for some reason.

Things like a philly cheesesteak should be had at a sports game or during a lunchbreak when you've been doing physical labor.

Sushi should be eaten freshly made.

Korean BBQ should be grilled in front of you and eaten with KPop blaring in the background.

TL;DR: Cuisine has cultural and situational context, and some cuisines really fall apart when you take them out of that context. I think if you don't enjoy "Western" food you possibly just don't like the cultural or situational context necessary to enjoy them.

Yes, absolutely.

Eggs Benedict, or biscuits and gravy.

Sandwiches are top-tier, especially with high quality meats and cheeses, and I challenge any cuisine to compete with the PB&J in terms of ease of preparation, portability, and palatability.

Steak and potatoes with a caesar salad.

Beef stew and pot roast. Cottage pie and shephard's pie and chicken pot pie.

Most of the ones I've tried I would call oil-drenched slop.

This is my impression of Indian food. Meat in oily, spicy gravy. Literally slop, incredibly oily. Still tasty, mind you, but the most obvious slop I've ever seen.

I think I have sampled just about every relevant contender in these domains and come to the belief that Germany has the best savoury baked goods (including in particular bread) and Sweden has the best sweet ones.

There's plenty of greatness in the Mediterranean space but maybe we're excluding it. I concur with appreciating English breakfast; there are also some soups in my native cuisine (Russian) that I would be unhappy to do without. In the US, Cajun cuisine is the only regional one that I found worthwhile, and it's hard to count it as non-Mediterranean Western given how it's largely a fusion of French and Afro-Caribbean. Maybe KFC (which nowadays is good everywhere except for the Anglo countries), or Popeye's for a still-okay-in-the-US substitute, would count?

In general it does seem to be true that northern foods are generally less interesting - even the ones that people praise seem to be more in the "lots of high-quality protein, prepared in a way that doesn't ruin the taste" (steaks, good burgers) class than anything that registers as cuisine. This extends to extreme latitudes elsewhere (Mongolian food is legendarily terrible, and I would consider the outer reaches of commoner Northern Chinese food to be bland in the same way cabbage-and-potatoes Eastern European food is. What I've tried of Chilean food gave me similar vibes). It might be tempting to blame this on a lack of aromatic plants (plants don't have the same need to evolve repellent chemicals in areas where insect activity is low?), but many of the flavourful tropical cuisines (Japanese, Indonesian...) rely heavily on fermented products over spices.

Japan is not tropical, and Japanese food is not particularly flavorful, unless you count Japonicized continental foods like ramen and gyoza. As someone mentioned upthread with respect to British cursive, traditional Japanese cuisine is largely about purity and fresh ingredients that stand on their own.

Subtropical, surely; I'd climatically put the heartland at least in the same general class as Louisiana or the Mediterranean (east coast N hemisphere patterns suggest the former). If you go far enough back, every Japanese food of note is continental, but if you are willing to consider miso, soy sauce and fermented fish sufficiently native, those hardly make for bland fare. Generally, pickling and fermentation feature more in the older and lower-class dishes; "purity and fresh ingredients that stand on their own" sounds like copy for indulgences afforded by a modern society that has refrigeration and wants to flex it, not a tradition.

Full English Breakfast is great!

You can make perfectly decent food at home with fish, beef or lamb and vegetables. That's Western style. Steak, sausages, carrots, potatoes, beans... Put some salt and pepper on. Good to go.

Stew is pretty good, as are chicken pot pies and similar, I like burgers (especially with bleu cheese), steak is great (if that counts), roasted potatoes are great. Buttered bread can be quite good, depending heavily on the bread. I do like (American) Mexican food a lot, but I would choose Western foods over most of the other things you listed. And I don't know of any rival in desserts, though perhaps I just haven't really looked.

Northern cuisines are bland in the same way Chinese people look the same: you can argue about the definitions, but there's a grain of truth in there: Northern European cuisines are built around things that keep well: cured meat and fish, fermented vegetables, root vegetables, fruit preserves. Manchurian and Dong Bei cuisines are not exactly explosions of taste either.

A reinvention like the New Nordic cuisine basically goes all in on rare dishes and ingredients that maximize flavor and unusualness.

I can't tell about the rest of Canada, but Quebec's cuisine is mostly a mix of french, british/irish and italian, with some new world innovations added to it (some unique to us, others we share with the rest of north eastern america).

I think a lot of this is survivor bias. In order for a food to “make it” in another country, it has to be the top tier of the food in its own country. You aren’t getting trash tier Mediterranean cuisine where nonna opens the fridge and dumps odds and ends into a pot of canned tomato sauce and adds noodles to it. You aren’t getting the Chinese stir fry of chicken feet. What you’re comparing is often Western fast foods to other countries’ higher tier foods.

The other thing is that you likely eat western food daily. You have eaten millions of hot dogs and burgers. You’ve eaten your weight in French fries and Cole slaw. None of the flavors are new or exciting to you because you know what these things taste like. It’s not really a shock to the system to have yet another burger. You aren’t surprised by chicken noodle soup that you’ve been eating forever. Pho is new and interesting. Chinese food is interesting. Feta cheese tastes different than the cheese you grew up on. So you’re biased again, against western food not because it’s bad, but because it’s familiar and thus boring.

These are solid points, but I don't think they apply to my case.

I'm generally comparing popular candidates for "best pizza/burger/etc in the city" to non-Western food options and they still come up far short. On top of that, the burgers/etc. are often times recommended by Americans, whereas most of the time I have foreign cuisines with people from the relevant country they'll tell me it's only bad to average compared to what they'd find back home. Based on my experiences traveling to places like Italy/Japan they were absolutely right and "average" was being generous.

On the second point, my family almost never ate out as a child, so I was mainly introduced to these things simultaneously. The only "burgers" I had were McDonalds or Burger King and I only really think of them as "burgers" in the sense that Taco Bell makes "tacos". They were super health-conscious any wouldn't let me eat many hot dogs and the like, it was mostly lightly seasoned fish/chicken/vegetables/grains. There might be some slight effect in the sense that my average meal may have been closer to the new gourmet burger than to a ramen, but I don't think that effect is particularly large. (Funny enough, someone down-thread suggests the opposite - that early exposure creates a nostalgia effect as opposed to a familiarity-breeds-contempt effect).

Asian food tends to have a big advantage in the west because they bring over relatives with or without working papers to work in their restaurants, while domestic cuisine expects their kitchen workers to have finished cullinary school.

The "best burger" thing is a little different. I think it goes back to Blue Tribe aversions to eating beef. Going to a restaurant to try a "fancy" burger is a loophole in the taboo.

Your argument is invalid:

  • Gumbo
  • Crawfish etouffee
  • Muffaletta
  • Nachitoches meat pies
  • Grits and grillades
  • Shrimp and grits
  • Australian meat pies
  • Sunday roast
  • Fish and chips
  • Bangers and mash
  • Belgian waffles/stroopwafels
  • Schnitzel
  • Spatzel
  • Sauerkraut

I could go on. I will concede that generally speaking, American Yankees (here meaning northeastern people of pallor) are indeed doing it wrong and their food should rightfully be shunned and mocked, except for maybe desserts and lobster. Also Old Bay sucks, fight me.

Sauerkraut

I love sauerkraut as much as the next Midwesterner, but even I have to admit it’s an acquired taste. To anyone who didn’t grow up with it, it’s about as appealing as lutefisk.

I didn't grow up with it and I love it. Then again I enjoy most fermentated foods I've tried, so I'm probably not normal in that regard.

Well, then (and I can’t believe I’m actually suggesting this), maybe you should try lutefisk, which is Scandinavian fermented fish. It’s a horrible, foul, gelatinous substance, but if you like fermented food, you may actually enjoy it.

lutefisk

fermented

You are thinking of surströmming, which is fermented herring, acidic and has quite strong smell. It is advised not to open a can indoors. Lutefisk is gelatinous and has mild taste and smell, it is not a fermented product. It is dried, then soaked in godawful amount of lye solution for preservation.

Thanks for the correction. It seems I may be blending the memories of trying two awful Norwegian fish dishes into one.

I've heard of it before, and if I had the chance I would definitely try it! I had fermented skate in Korea once. It had a very unique and pungent taste.

And to add another perspective: I grew up with it (Polish family, we had so much of it) and I don't like it at all.

Old bay was developed for bars giving away crabs to sell more beer. It's salt levels reflect that. It would be far more interesting without the salt.

Spatzel

Spätzle.

Thänk you.

Just doing my ethnic duty.

Non-mediterranean western food sucks. That's well known. The French are single handedly keeping the reputation up, but French lunch/dinner doesn't make it to Tier 1. Amazing desserts and baked items though.

Spanish is honestly quite underrated. Maybe I've just been lucky, but all my best meals have been in Spain. Contemporary Spanish blends Northern African & Latin American with existing Spanish food, to give you the best cuisine. The spanish can do preserved foods, meats, rice dishes, spicy food, everything.

(Note: Must be food food. Breakfast (bakery foods) & Dessert do not count. Alcohol only counts if part of the meal itself. )

My personal ranking goes (in order):

Tier 1

  1. Spanish (Plus colonies which are primarily ethnic Spanish. Ie. If you killed ALL the natives, then you Spanish)
  2. Thai
  3. Indian (South Asian generally. I might be underrating because I want to avoid personal bias)
  4. Chinese (All Ethnic chinese food.)

Tier 1.5

  1. Mexican
  2. Japanese
  3. Korean

Tier 2

  1. French
  2. Vietnamese
  3. Brazil
  4. Peru
  5. Levant / North African
  6. Ethiopian
  7. Italy

Tier dunno much but probably good

  1. Indonesian / Malay (These are probably tier 1.5)
  2. Iranian (Too similar to Levant / Parsi-Indian to differentiate. Same for Afghani)
  3. West African (Maafe and Jollof is good)
  4. Greek / Turkish (I don't like octopus that much. Turkish breakfast is great, but rest is alright)

Tier bad

  1. British
  2. Scandinavian

Everything else is mid.

A lot of Japanese food is extremely mid and bland, though. Dining in Tokyo is great but that’s because chefs have adopted all the best French methods and cook with rare precision (compared to the rest of the world). The best, most flavorful ramen is available outside of Japan reinvented by others who wanted more from it. Japanese curries are more bland than Currywurst. A lot of bland deep fried food, almost Dutch in character.

Sushi and wagyu are good but stand out because of the ingredients (and the same is true for other Northern Euro cuisines, one could say the same about British wild game or Dover sole or oysters for example). Eating in Japan is great but it is only rarely so because Japanese cuisine is.

It seems we have similar tastes. Main differences I'd have are fusing 1/1.5 then bumping up Italy and MENA into Tier 1.

Haha, 1 and 1.5 were fused until I separated them last minute.

Middle east's best dishes are Tier 1. But, I've docked points for lack of variety. I love their mezze spread, but MENA quickly runs out of ideas once you beyond that.

Italy got docked on a technicality. Gelato and Tiramisu were considered desserts. Foccacia & Pizza went to baked goods. And Italian coffees did not feel exclusively Italian. With all of those included, Italy woud rise back up.

Does anyone here actually consider Western food amongst their favorite cuisines?

If were counting French and Italian cuisine as "Western" than yes. And that's not even considering Barbecue/Soul-food which is less "Western" and more "North American" but by my count 3 out of my 5 favorite genres of food are arguably "Western" with Mediterranean and Thai as the outliers.

So if you exclude half of western food and squint hard it's not very good outside of fine dining?

3 countries out of 30+ constitutes "half"? If we go by population, that's still <10% of "the West" (by which I mean broadly Europe + USA + Canada + Australia + New Zealand). Additionally, those three one could argue are non-central examples given their geographic location on the Mediterranean, resulting in heavy influence from MENA regions.

Yes, food isn't evenly distributed between population and polities.

If what you really wanted to say was that British food is kind of meh then I'm on board.

Your taste is not atypical for someone raised in or around immigrant enclaves where disdain for "white people food" is quite common, but less so for someone that grew up eating and therefore has at least some childhood nostalgia bound up with said food. All the same I think Western food is too broad of a category to dismiss, as even limiting ourselves to the US we have regional cuisines or styles of preparation (Cajun, Southern barbecue, Southwestern) that can put up a decent fight against what China or India has to offer.

As far as explanations for why people prefer the latter, one involves the industrialization of food production, which over time transforms meals from family gatherings where a peasant grandmother slaves for hours over a pot to squeeze every last drop of flavor out of rare and precious ingredients into mass-produced microwaveable slop that people eat by themselves solely for sustenance and not enjoyment (and this is not just in western countries; the food that the typical Japanese person eats every day is also to my eyes bland and unappetizing compared to the Korean or Chinese equivalent, since the latter two developed later), and the second is that you can usually get a better deal eating at a restaurant owned by a poor immigrant than one owned by a local i.e. why would I pay $20 for a craft burger and fries or a single appetizer at a good Italian place when I could get a giant bowl of pho for $12 (your local prices may vary proportionally) instead?

How can you think that about cheeseburgers? A great burger is always amazing, or southern BBQ, perfectly smoked brisket is objectively one of the best things you can eat. Maine lobster with potato salad and corn on the cob is quintessentially American fare and also delicious. Who can forget blueberry and apple pie for desert?

If you pick trash food from a lot of cultures it can be kind of gross, while a dry aged ribeye steak and a baked potato can be mind bendingly good. Salmon on cedar planks with fiddleheads is American all the way and very good, Alaskan Crab...Amazing, muscles in white wine and french fries, awesome, raw oysters by the dozen, delicious, crawfish boil, fun as hell.

Fresh caught trout and eggs for breakfast, real maple syrup on some buttered english muffins (invented in america) maybe a sausage on the side with a bit more syrup on it, of course baked beans as well!

I think your taste is atypical for someone raised in the West. For example, I could never agree that tacos are better than burgers. They are both incredibly tasty foods. In general, I think American food is quite good (albeit not always very distinct due to our immigrant culture and the fact we adapt a lot of other cuisine).

Indian and Italian food are the two greatest cuisines.

Both are definitely in my top tier. My first time in Italy completely changed my perception of so many foods I only thought I knew. I can barely eat pasta or pizza in the US anymore.

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