I’ve encountered BBQ restaurants (with and without regional specificity), soul food restaurants, and fast food chains. I didn’t eat at any, so I can’t speak to authenticity. I understand that the fast food places will often modify their menus for different countries.
If you’ve eaten at restaurants that bill themselves as serving a cuisine from the United States, I’d like to hear about it. How did it compare to the real deal, if you’ve had that food in the US? I wonder what the most common themes are, and what styles don’t translate well. I’m doubting we’ll see places serving concord grape jelly and Skippy on wonderbread with a side of jello salad, served with a big glass of root beer. But maybe I’m wrong.
Food from one country often gets modified in another, and can sometimes migrate to a third country. E.g. a Peruvian-style Chinese restaurant in the US (I made up that particular example, but I recall a newspaper article on this phenomenon.) I wonder about American-style X restaurants in other countries. Perhaps serving an ex-pat or military customer base.
BBQ ribs I’ve had at local restaurants in Panama have sometimes been terrible: boiled ribs slathered in BBQ sauce. The best ribs here are actually at the US chains like TGIFriday’s and others.
Hamburgers and hot dogs generally have both ketchup and mustard, and hot dogs may also have mayo.
US chains are pretty close to their equivalents in the US, with perhaps some local additions to the menu. KFC, for example, carries sancocho, the local chicken soup, and side orders include a mazorca, or chunk of corn-on-the-cob.
There are golden arches and burger kings here in the Yucatan. Because the regional food is great, I have never eaten at either. But I have seen their posters in the windows. The pictures of burgers always have jalapenos and other chiles. So, I guess the menu is basically the same, but have added spices that people here prefer.
I once went to a sort of fast food restaurant in Berlin that advertised itself as American. They primarily served sandwiches made with thin slices of roast pork (plain and dry), shredded lettuce, and a ton of mayo.
I’ve never had pork cooked and served like that anywhere in the US. Google tells me it might be a Philly thing? If so it looks like everything good about those kinds of pork sandwiches was lost in translation.
I’ve never experienced it personally, but apparently in Thailand you can get “American fried rice”, a dish the locals invented to please GIs by incorporating foods they thought Americans would like into traditional fried rice.
I think its a function of the number of Americans in the region. In Ramstein Germany, down the street from the Ramsteinerhof hotel (very nice family run place BTW) there was a Mexican restaurant that had all you can eat BBQ ribs really cheap on Tuesdays. They were actually pretty good. Meat didn’t fall off the bone like boiled ribs, but gave way with a gentle tug. Really well cooked.
Pretty much the same as my experience in Colombia. However, there are local places which try to imitate American fast food, too, such as American Broasted Chicken. It’s hard to describe, because it looks like it should taste like typical American chicken fast food, but there’s something, well, just different about it, that I can never identify. It’s not bad–it just never tastes the way things taste in the States. Either it’s fresher, or they fry things different, or I don’t know. But when you go there, you have to put out of your head any expectation of what you’re used to in the U.S.
Corn on the cob at KFC is standard in the US, too.
And nowhere in the Old World really understands American corn. I’ve also seen it as a pizza topping in Ireland, and heard of the same in continental Europe. Meanwhile, I don’t think there’s anywhere outside of the Americas that you can find cornbread.
In Central and South America they put pieces of corn on the cob in soups, such as the sancocho mention by Colibri above. It’s really annoying, because if you really want to eat it, you have to get soup all over your hands.
It’s basically childrens food - burgers are cheap or unmentionable cuts of meat, pizza is cheese on bread. Proper meals tend to involve a bit more thought. Fried battery-reared chicken is popular. Everything else is done better elsewhere.
Yeah, an Ecuadoran friend once served soup that way. He seemed to think that fishing the cob out of the soup to eat it was no big deal, so… <shrug>. When in Rome and all that. His wife was really excited to be making it, because it’s hard to get all of the ingredients in the US (the corn is easy, but it also included plantains and yucca).
I’ve eaten at a few Chinese-owned American restaurants in China.
It varies, but the food isn’t all that bad. The place I liked the most served great pork-chops and had an OK french-and-onion soup.
Steaks were horrible. Thin, overcooked. Eating steak on its own is not a big thin in China. In fact, beef was not all that common. It was no shock the steaks were terrible.
Hamburgers were OK. They have McDonalds, so they are at least aware what a cheapo hamburger is supposed to be like.
Their mashed potatoes were bland, dry, and had no gravy on them. They had french fries, but you got so few with your order it was not worth it.
