Utah restaurants don’t have anything particularly local or abominable in general. The only local thing you’ll find frequently is fry sauce – a blend of mayo, ketchup and spices for dipping French fries, which I like.
To really sample the abominable local cuisine you’ll have to go to a pot-luck or a funeral lunch. The covered dish or casserole has a long and venerable tradition which has been absolutely destroyed. Here’s a sample recipe that is nearly ubiquitous:
TATER TOT CASSEROLE
1 (32-ounce) package frozen potato rounds
1 (16 ounce) container sour cream
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 (6 ounce) can French-fried onions
Now, for those few of you that are thinking that it doesn’t look half bad, the current Utah mom looks at that recipe and thinks, “Too fattening!” and then substitutes fat free sour cream and low fat cheddar cheese.
After the casseroles, the next abomination you’ll find is the jello salad. I like gelatin. I like jello, but the things these people do! Ever had shredded carrots in green jello? It’s like the state dish. Celery is not unheard of. Mixing in a carton of cottage cheese is common.
Gefelte fish is really not “jellied”. It’s more of a ground fish poached in a broth that gels when cooled. It’s like saying that chicken soup is jellied chicken, because fresh stock will gel at refrigerator temps.
My mother’s is made from fresh whole fish which she grinds herself, and gently simmered in a stock with carrots and onions. We eat it warm with a little broth covering it. You can also make it in a terrine, and serve cold as slices.
If you get the jar stuff, pour it into a sauce pan, add sliced carrots and onions, some fresh parley and maybe a touch of dill and simmer gently. It improves the taste immensely.
Let me tell you about durian. Back when the wife and I were first married, we lived in a small studio apartment in Bangkok for a couple of years. My in-laws were still alive then, and we went over for a visit one day. Unbeknownst to me, my mother-in-law gave the wife some durian to take home. She had wrapped it in aluminum foil and sealed it in a Tupperware container. When we got home, the wife placed the container inside our fridge. So the durian is wrapped in foil, sealed in Tupperware and inside a refrigerator. And I still don’t know it’s there.
We start watching a video. During the course of the video, I start noticing an awful smell. I think it’s me, because I’ve not showered yet after being out in steamy Bangkok all day. The smell grows worse as the movie progresses, and I’m thinking: “Man, I don’t remember ever smelling this bad before. The wife may actually divorce me over this. What gives?” After the movie, I apologize for the smell and head off to take a shower. That’s when the wife tells me it must be the durian. Sure enough, opening the refrigerator door, this sickening stench rolled out in a big wave.
That’s my point. In order to have a successful restaurant serving “Cuban cuisine,” you have to serve food that is nothing like what 97% of Cubans actually eat. (It doesn’t matter if the cooks are actually Cuban or not.) The only kind of place you’ll find food like that in Cuba is in the Hotel Nacional in Habana, where mostly foreigners eat.
Of course I know that. :rolleyes:
Notice that all of these testimonies are about “Caribbean” food being sold in the U.S. and Canada–so it’s not really “local cuisine,” which is the title of the OP. Obviously they have to serve something that people will come back to, and urbanites in the U.S. and Canada would not find the food that is typically served in the Caribbean worth coming back to. It’s like the Chinese food you find in the U.S.: not what the majority of Chinese people eat.
I lived on the Caribbean coast of Colombia for almost two years, and the only food that had flavor was Arabic, cooked by my girlfriend’s mom, who is from a Syrian family.
I love pho. Not true local pho I guess cause I’ve only had it in Korea, but the place just gives you what you order (brisket, flank, seafood, chicken etc) sans unidentifiable extras, and you add hot peppers, cilantro, onion etc to taste. Really really good.
Well you point was certainly lost on me. :rolleyes:
Especially since the OP, himself, used Chinese food in Ireland as the example. So the thread was a bout what cuisine, in your locale, is gross. As in yucky, not merely inauthentic.
The worst is when you get a jar of gefilte fish, eat a couple, put the rest in the refrigerator, and try to eat more later. That’s when it really starts to congeal. It’s like eating snot.
Yeah, cous cous (or fufu or whatever) is a pretty universal staple. It can be made from manioc (cassava), maize, millet, sorghum or even rice. With a good sauce it can be edible. With leaves, peanut butter and rotting dried fish it is stomach turning.
I learned there is a reason why we don’t have too many sub-sarharan African restaurants in the US.
Okay, I see that. But the word “local” seems to imply that it is only in that place. Is this food bad because it’s in my locale, or is it bad because that’s its indigenous quality?
The cuisine in the example I gave is ‘Chinese’, as in mainly sold in Chinese restaurants but it isn’t to the best of my knowledge a dish eaten in China or anywhere else except Ireland (and in certain instances in Scotland too). Maybe it’s more widely eaten than I imagine though. The example I gave is really really tasty, just really really bad for you and also not very aesthetically pleasing. Something akin to poutine (?) in Québec (putain de poutine!). So I’m looking for stuff that’s popular in your locale of any ostensible background that you find reprehensible on tastebuds, health, aesthetic or whatever other grounds. You might actually like the food .
Are you deranged? Skyline chili is what I came here to condemn. Chili containing cinnamon, allspice, cloves and baking chocolate? It’s the very definition of abominable. The whole spaghetti thing is just adding insult to injury.
I can find many examples of that, but they’re not necessarily limited to my locale, or any other. Cotton candy, American cheese, hot dogs… Bad Chinese take-out is everywhere.
I thought the title was about tastes that are acquire in specific places.
I’d have to be pretty damned hungry (or drunk) to eat either one!
Chorizo is very popular here in New Mexico, however.
It always amazes me that Taco Bell is popular in New Mexico. There are so many places to get authentic, delicious New Mexican cooking (cheap, too) and people go to Taco Bell!
I know, some people actually like Taco Bell, but drive one or two blocks around here and you can get the real thing! It boggles my mind that anyone would choose Taco Bell after sampling what’s available in this area.
A breakfast burrito smothered in green chile sauce is pure heaven.
How to explain Jumbo Slice? Let’s try this: You cannot get good pizza in Washington, DC. It doesn’t exist. (I’m told there’s a place near the new stadium that is passable, but the friend who told me this is wholly unreliable, and I don’t believe him.) Good pizza is wholly foreign to Washingtonian culture.
However, we’re prodigious drinkers. The Adams Morgan neighborhood on a Saturday night will be filled with drunk college kids, interns, grad students and junior staffers. Drunk people want pizza. DC has no real pizza. What to do?
Enter the Jumbo Slice. Three bucks will get you, from a number of hole-in-the-walls blaring bad music, a slice of “pizza” the size of half an entire conventional pizza. Seriously, you need two plates to hold these things. They’re also vile beyond description - greasy, odd-tasting things with a small that sort of clings to you long after you’ve consumed them. Never, ever, ever eat a Jumbo Slice sober.
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