Sure, there’s no real English food. That’s why if I’m in the mood for a really good meal, I don’t go to one particular restaurant which serves oysters (from its own beds), smoked eel (from its own smokehouse), and a whole range of other seafood. People seem to forget that all of Britain is near the coast.
[QUOTE=EvilGhandi]
Ok I’ve had it.
Yesterday my wife was watching one of those chef competition shows on the food network.
One of the judges, an English woman if that matters, opined how she was not fond of “American food”.
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The thread pretty much ended here. An Englishwoman complaining about American food is like a Rwandan complaining about American ethnic tensions, or a Canadian complaining about how cold it gets in Alabama.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
The thread pretty much ended here. An Englishwoman complaining about American food is like a Rwandan complaining about American ethnic tensions, or a Canadian complaining about how cold it gets in Alabama.
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OK, so people weren’t flooding into the thread to defend English food - understandable, since it wasn’t the topic. But did you deliberately ignore me?
I’d give my left arm to eat at St. John and my right arm to eat at the Fat Duck, which would leave me having to dive face first into the plate but it would be totally worth it. Ah. English cooking. If it’s a joke, it’s a damn tasty one.
[QUOTE=Sir Doris]
And therein lies the image problem with American food in the UK, I should imagine. Popular with the hoi polloi, certainly. Popular with foodies, food critics and the like? Of course not. But until good American food is exported ignorance is not going to be fought. Keep sending us McDonalds/Subway/Bud/Coors and we’ll never learn, will we?
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Maybe you oughta be looking at what you’re buying? 
[QUOTE=Robot Arm]
Where were you in Germany? I spent a few months in Nuremberg. One thing I learned is that there is no one, single German cuisine. Just like the regional cooking in the U.S., there are regions in Germany. I had some great Franconian food.
It helps if you like pork.
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Idon’t mind pork but all the meat was kind of fatty, and I don’t like fat. Nor do I like liver. I pretty much became a vegetarian for the duration of Germany. Where was I, let’s see, Bad Kreuznach, Schwabish-Gmund, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Munich, Bitburg, the McDonald’s was in Munich.
Loved the wine though. (Available, in some places, in dispensers, three coins. Cheap and good.)
FWIW, if the chef was South African – South African cuisine is marvelous. Cape Malay plus Indian influences plus Boer meats (boerewors/droewors) as well as access to some of the best produce and wines in the world.
That said, saying you don’t like American cuisine is reductionism to absurdity. America is both too young and too varied to truly call anything purely American. Hell, even hamburgers and hot dogs are named after their German roots (unless you buy that Hamburg, NY BS).
That said, growing up in Texas, the finest piece of food product on the planet is a mesquite-smoked beef brisket, blackened on the outside but pink on the inside, top-marbled but not too fatty, served plus or minus two slices of thick-cut white bread with pickles, onions, pickled jalapenos, and a scant tracing of tomato-based barbecue sauce on the side as not to take away from the flavor of the meat. Behold its glory. I’ve tried all kinds of so-called barbecue. It is a little like comparing apples and oranges – a pulled pork sandwich or Memphis barbecue or that mustard-based stuff all has its places, granted. But there is nothing that can hold a candle to true Texas barbecue, as is sold in Lockhart or Llano or Oak Hill or the back of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Huntsville. Sure, I dream of eating at the Fat Duck or El Bulli or the French Laundry. But I’m not 100% sure I could really say that any one dish could top Kreuz’s Market or Cooper’s beef brisket.
And because I’m biased, #2 on my list is fajitas, made properly with the diaphragm of the cow (skirt steak), marinated tender in an fruit-based sauce, then grilled al carbon and cut crosswise against the grain and served on (yes I’m a gringo) fresh lardy flour tortillas. Add grilled onions and pico de gallo and good guacamole and you are set.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Maybe you oughta be looking at what you’re buying?
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I’ll try anything once. Except prawns. They’re too ugly to eat.
[QUOTE=Sir Doris]
I’ll try anything once. Except prawns. They’re too ugly to eat.
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Well a pig aint exactly handsome, or a chicken come to that 
[QUOTE=RickJay]
The thread pretty much ended here. An Englishwoman complaining about American food is like a Rwandan complaining about American ethnic tensions, or a Canadian complaining about how cold it gets in Alabama.
[/QUOTE]
Except we established that she is South African, not English.
Are you shitting me?
What part of “if that matters” is escaping you?
I was merely describing the womans accent to help identify the show. Not to give anyone crap about their regional cusine.
People, I could live quite happily on the food supplied here by lunchwagons, you should be so lucky.
I was upset by the common attitude that American food is crap. It seems to be getting global. Those of us who live in the United States know there is a vast assortment of chow here, from the fast to the down right elegant.
I wanted this thread to be a list of what we do well (foodwise) in America, nothing more.
Gah, and after reading it back my last post sounds like a rant.
I read through some of the opinions and was intrigued by what American food really is.
I gotta say Hawaiian might not qualify, it’s been around awhile.
And coffee? No shit? I thought that was from the middle east. Or did I just get whooshed?
Actually, come to think of my earlier comment, many verseas countries seem to be absolutely wild about McDonalds, Subway, KFC, evemn Taco Bell. But they seem to assume that we are, too, or that we eat nothing else. We have our own food stereotypes, but generally the people who hold them in fact (British have lousy food, Germans all eat sausage, which half-right and half-wrong IMHO)admit they dont’ really know anything about it, and are just saying what they heard. Europeans especially are very snobbish about it, but at the same time both think they know more about us Americans and actually eat more fast-food per capita.
[QUOTE=chowder]
Well a pig aint exactly handsome …
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What if he’s ten times more charming than Arnold on Green Acres?
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Europeans especially are very snobbish about it, but at the same time both think they know more about us Americans and actually eat more fast-food per capita.
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If you want to see the biggest concentration of McDonalds I have ever encountered in my life, travel to Milan, Italy. They start just across the street from the main train station (2 of them I believe) and it never seems you are two blocks from one anywhere in the city. I didn’t eat at them but they were handy for using the bathroom.
[QUOTE=Usram]
Except we established that she is South African, not English.
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And the comment she made was along the lines of, “I put a tomato in this dish since you Americans put Ketchup on Everything,” spoken with a rather disdainful air.
[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
If you want to see the biggest concentration of McDonalds I have ever encountered in my life, travel to Milan, Italy. They start just across the street from the main train station (2 of them I believe) and it never seems you are two blocks from one anywhere in the city. I didn’t eat at them but they were handy for using the bathroom.
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There was a McDonald’s and a 7-11 every two blocks when I was in Melbourne last month. I thought I was in some weird alternate universe.
[QUOTE=FairyChatMom]
Maryland crab cakes. Pardon me while I drool…
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Just what I came in to mention (except I’m from Virginia and mine are just as good, if not better, than anything I’ve had in Maryland).
[QUOTE=MLS]
And the comment she made was along the lines of, “I put a tomato in this dish since you Americans put Ketchup on Everything,” spoken with a rather disdainful air.
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To which my response would be, “Bite me, bitch.”
Tomatoes do not equal ketchup, for crying out loud. I MIGHT put ketchup on my French fries, but normally I would be happy with salt and pepper. I haven’t had ketchup on my hot dog since I was a kid…I much prefer mustard.
But then again, I suppose “You English” drink tea at every meal and consider a dried out, well done steak to be the height of fine dining. :smack:
She paints with a very broad brush, and I dismiss her comments as meaningless.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
I didn’t know about the fortune cookie, but I figured most Chinese restaurant fare originated with some Asian guy thinking, “What can I feed these schmucks that is cheap but looks exotic?”
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And will allow me to get rid of the feral cat population.