Interestingly enough, that’s how many places in Budapest would serve “gyros” as well. These were typically Turkish run joints, but they would still call it “gyros,” where “döner kebab” would be a better phrase. The flatbread used to wrap the gyros was like a large flour tortilla. It was not quite like a lavash or similar Middle Eastern flatbread; it really was pretty much indistinguishable from a flour tortilla. The filling included shredded cabbage and onion, and the sauce some sort of mayo-y or mayo-and-sour-cream concoction, usually fairly garlicky, and an optional (or, for me required) drizzle/ladle of a hot sauce. God, I miss that stuff. It was awesome.
Shark and taties.
I realize that when I want Mexican food, what I really want is New Mexican food and I shouldn’t expect to get that particular variety in upstate New York. It is not Mexican, it is not Tex-Mex, it is not Cal-Mex. That said, I’d be fine with any of those types of food as well if it was at least done well. Instead, I might as well just go to Taco Bell and save myself some money.
Oh well, that’s what home cooking is for, right?
Nachos. How can anyone screw up nachos?
Everyone who tries to make it in England, that’s who.
Bag of tortilla chips from a bag? Check.
Some sort of guacamole and/or sour cream from a tube? Check.
Vegetation? They have diced tomatoes and shredded lettuce over there.
Sliced olives? OK
Some kind of dubious meat? They have that.
Cheese? Houston we have a problem. In the UK, all cheese is cheddar. It’s shredded and there’s lots of it. For the first five, maybe six seconds after serving it’s actually pretty nice. But then it sets. You bowl of nachos congeals into a cheesy slab of concrete. If you can wrench out a mouth sized chuck, it’s doesn’t taste too bad, but whatever it is, it sure ain’t nachos!
Yesterday for lunch I selected the “fish and chips, with a side of french fries”. I guess Rusty Scupper doesn’t quite get the concept.
Since leaving the PA/NJ area many years ago I have learned that if the menu item is listed as “Cheese Steak”, there’s a better than even chance you’re going to get a by-God steak on a roll with some cheese on top. I’ve learned to ask specifics about the sandwich before committing to it.
But if it’s specifically called a “Philly Cheese Steak,” then it had better be shaved/very thinly sliced beef. Whether it’s a particularly good example of the Philly cheesesteak…well, I don’t expect much outside the mid-Atlantic region. But I do expect at least a passing nod to the fundamentals.
Speaking of Fish and Chips.
I went out to my normal bar yesterday, and while I was there, in walked a miserable old guy who is a high maintenance pain in the ass. As usual for Friday, there were fish specials.
The Bartender went over to take his order. He wanted fish and chips. But he didn’t want the fish breaded. And he wanted the fish baked not fried. And he didn’t want chips, he wanted a baked potato.
She took his order, and while walking by me, gave a little wink and head tilt toward the chalkboard. I read the board and smiled back. There was a special; baked cod with choice of side for 6 bucks cheaper than the absurdly expensive Fish and Chips. Anybody else and she would have let him know, but for the asshole? Fuck im. 
In the Pacific Northwest, you’d think that the fish would be piled high. Nope. Most places I’ve been to or taken away from serve pieces of fish the size of something you’d get out of the frozen section of the supermarket. If the fish were as large as what you’d get on a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich, that would be amazing. The SO brought home a three-piece fish’n’chips meal from Ivar’s, founded in 1938 and a Northwest institution, and couldn’t believe she’d paid so much for such dinky pieces of fish. (She also bought crab cocktails, intending for us to split the fish.)
Not that the fish is breaded like the frozen ones or McDonald’s. Most of it is very good. (Although one day at Pike Place Market I went to a place I saw on Andrew Zimmern’s show, and the fish was overcooked.) The choice is usually between true cod and Alaskan halibut. It’s just that for an area famous for fish, restaurants seem a bit parsimonious. And overpriced. Halibut is good, but I don’t want to pay a 20% premium for it.
I was spoiled by the fish’n’chips at Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica. No one makes it like they do. Except me. Mine aren’t as good, but I consider the fish’n’chips I make at home the second-best. The thing of it is, the SO doesn’t eat enough and I generally make too much.
And on the subject of fish, I wish Mexican restaurants up here could understand the concept that fish tacos are, by default, to be served on corn tortillas.
In NY I ordered a ‘Philly Cheese Steak’ not thinking of what it might turn out to be.
What I got was a hot roast beef sandwich & cheese on an italian roll. It was actually pretty good but it wasn’t a cheesesteak.
When I get fish and chips it is typically a big solid piece somewhere between 9 inches and a foot long but I think I’d prefer smaller pieces.
OK, these you just deserved. Anybody who eats ethnic food anyplace where said ethnicity doesn’t at least have a sizable enough population to be represented on the city council (or local equivalent) deserves whatever atrocities they are served. Chinese food in Scotland? In a coastal village? I’d as soon expect authentic Aleut food. 
The only fish and chips I’ve found up here that’s worth a damn is at Beau Legs, a tiny little soul food restaurant in an easy-to-miss strip mall on the ass-end of Lacey. $14 gets you a three-piece halibut combo with fries, hushpuppies, coleslaw, and a housemade tartar sauce so amazing I could just eat a bowl of it by itself, and their gumbo is utterly amazing. If you find yourself down Olympia way, it’s worth checking out.
I didn’t know WHAT to think when I first went there. The FRONT of the place is amazing and has the most wonderful old school Mexican decor… but not what you’d expect from a Mexican restaurant. They have lots of authentic Mexican tile… and, for some reason, old movie posters from Cantinflas movies, which were common when I was a boy, but are very hard to find now, to the point where their decor may be worth more than they think it is.
The interior includes a cliff diver in residence, and a cliff AND lagoon for him to dive into. And that’s just the second thing you notice, after all the Cantinflas stuff. They have a fake cave grotto… for DINING IN. They have pirates, and a pirate ship, a guy in a gorilla suit, various “theme areas” for dining, an arcade AND gift shop, a haunted cave thingy…
It is a place to take children. They do serve Mexican food, and it is passable, if you’re okay with Taco Bell calibre. But from what I have seen on South Park, they’re not even really exaggerating. The place IS like that.
It’d have to get quite a bit better to rise up to Taco Bell level.
Maybe they weren’t used to eating…food. Good thing you vamoosed.
I asked because I expected a more piscine bill of fare everywhere and was told that all the fish they catch is sent to California. You vamoosed the wrong way.
Yeah, that’s smoked fish in the northwest coast Indian style. It’s more like stockfish than lox. It can be exquisite, if it’s what you’re expecting and it’s what you’re in the mood for. If you’re expecting lox, though, you’re not going to be happy.
That’s even less authentic than the stuff my folks called “barbeque” when I was a kid - cooked ground meat mixed up with tomato sauce and seasoned with mustard.
At one point, during a trip up north, my daughter and I, both native Texans, decided to try what the yankees call “chili” in a variety of places in Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan.
The yankees do in fact make a variety of delightful and delicious foods. But their chili is a thing to scare babies with.
Kinda strange, but the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had was in Texas. I did not see that coming.
I do miss me some good “flake” for fish and chips. These days in NZ, it is all is all hoki or terakihi or snapper (if you want to pay the extra). I mean, snapper is really good (I caught a beauty last weekend out on a work fishing trip), and any of them certainly beats cod or haddock as served in the UK, but I grew up eating flake (i.e shark) from the local takeway, and I really do miss it as an option when I do get fish 'n chips.