In response to the thread about taking Mexicans to Taco Bell, Italians to Olive Garden, etc., I’m wondering if anyone has ever come across a restaurant outside the US purporting to have “authentic American cuisine” but utterly failed at the execution. Has anyone encountered such a thing?
I’m vaguely reminded of a Simpsons episode where they go to Japan(?) and visit an “American buffet” there, where of course it’s anything but authentic.
I once visited a place in Mexico where their idea of a hamburger was an actual piece of ham with some breading on it and served on a bun.
I believe it is called the Buffalo Grill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Grill
OK, I was traveling in France, it was late, we were hungry, it was just off the main road so we wouldn’t get lost, and we were curious.
It was very surreal. The place was kind of decorated like a 1960’s Western movie Whore House. Lots of deep red and fringe. The walls had photos of a wide variety of American West people. IIRC Geronimo next to Johnny Cash, next to Roy Rogers, next to some cows.
The food was just ‘off’. Not sure how to put it. It’s been a while. The chicken wings we got for an appetizer were very mild and the dipping sauce container was too small to dip a wing into it.
Small French children were having fun doing “Indian” war cries, the thing where you sort of slap your mouth.
It was strange dining experience.
McDonald’s and Burger King come to mind. They are a cheap knock off of a decent American cuisine.
I’ve gone to one “American-style Sports Pub” in Germany where I got horrid chicken wings (this was in the Hyatt Hotel, I figured they should be able to pull it off). There’s a New York Diner in a sleepy German town that I often drive through, but I’ve yet to be tempted to check it out. I suppose I should in the interest of science.
We went to a Tex Mex place in France, near the train station when you leave Versailles.
Brie in the Quesadilla
Dijon Vinaigrette on the Taco Salad (that again, used brie for the cheese).
It was not pleasant.
There are a number of chippies in England which sell what can only be described as an epic hamburger fail. Of all the ways I’ve seen hamburgers sold in the US, battered and deep-fried is not one of them. Bleh.
As I said in the other thread:
Hush, now; you’ll be giving the county fair food purveyors ideas.
I can’t say a hamburger I ate on Okinawa was awful, but it was tiny (beef is expensive in Japan) and had sliced carrots and cucumber (not pickles) on it.
This is what I was going to post. My brother-in-law had that served to him once in Britain.
In Qingdao, China, my brother-in-law took us to a “Western” restaurant. This was in 2004, but the place screamed 1980s. “Rambo”, “Die Hard” and “Commando” posters on the walls - Bon Jovi and Wham! videos on the TVs. The food was… Chinese food. No attempt at a burger or steak or fried chicken or pizza. Just the same local seafood that all the other area restaurants served. Apparently “Western” meant Western decor, not Western-style food.
Surprisingly, the McDonald’s in Qingdao serves food that actually tastes good, unlike the US counterparts. The chicken nuggets tasted like chicken, not the mystery meat covered with deep fried stiff bread served in America.
What would people really consider as “American cuisine”? The great thing about this country is that we’re bound together more by shared ideals rather than DNA or culture. Is Tex-Mex American? What about Panda Express-style Chinese food?
The only thing I could really think of when it comes to American cuisine would be a hot dog or a burger, but there are plenty of variations on that in other countries. Plus, I wouldn’t all a slab of meat between bread a “cuisine”. Its about as much of a cuisine as a cookie
I live in Korea. Burgers here are terrible; the Crown Bakery serves cold burgers with Thousand Island dressing and shredded cabbage. McDonald’s burgers have very little meat (but there’s a pork burger that’s pretty tasty). There’s an Outback steakhouse in Cheonan where everything is shockingly sugary (the butter, the steak sauce, the coconut onion rings they serve in lieu of a Bloomin’ Onion).
Right, there are too many “American” cuisines to count and many of them aren’t related in any cultural, historical, or culinary way. My home start of Louisiana alone has several types of internationally renowned cuisine on its on (cajun, creole, and modern New Orleans being the most famous) and people still bastardize and abuse the crap out of those even 100 miles away let alone internationally.
Modern pizza was even invented in the U.S. in New York and Chicago by Italian immigrants. Combine that with Texas beef BBQ, North Carolina pork BBQ, New England seafood recipes including clam chowder, all types of California cooking styles and, well…I give up. There are too many to name. Tex-Mex is American food but Texas was a part of Mexico when that style of cooking started so it isn’t truly “fake” like some people claim. The same is true for California Mexican food. You can easily make the case that Chinese buffets are very American as well.
Yeesh, I can’t remember the name of it now, but I went to a Western restaurant in Tianjin that had movie posters as well.
It was actually pretty good. Not great, but pretty good.
It had a German name.
Duke writes:
> There are a number of chippies in England which sell what can only be
> described as an epic hamburger fail. Of all the ways I’ve seen hamburgers sold
> in the US, battered and deep-fried is not one of them. Bleh.
Was it actually trying to be an American-style hamburger? There are a lot of chippies in England (and even more in Scotland) that serve items that are battered and deep-fried versions of common food, things like deep-fried Mars bars. They are perfectly aware that these are not the original versions of those items. Was it advertised as just being a hamburger, or did they call it a deep-fried hamburger?
Dude, you’ve been in the desert too long, but if you smother it in tasteless cream gravy that’s what passes for Chicken-Fried Steak in a lot of restaurants.
There’s a nice cafe in Hyderabad, India, that serves Western food and has wifi and no one stares at foreign women on their own and I really liked it and went there several times. Anyway, they have a Tex Mex veggie burger that is…pretty distinctly Indian. It has all of these Indian spices in it and it in no way resembles anything Tex Mex.
It’s still pretty tasty, though. I ordered it on more than one occasion, as a matter of fact.
Many years ago (late 70s) I went to an American-style pizza place in London. The “pizza” was square. Cheddar cheese instead of mozzarella. Ketchup instead of tomato paste. (No oregano.) Ground beef instead of sausage. And to complete the disaster, the crust was soggy.
Oh yeah, and I ate at a Tex Mex place in Amsterdam 5 or so years ago and the food, while not awful, was really, really bland. No peppers involved at all as far as I could tell.
Hah! I’ve got you beat. The freakiest “pizza” I ever saw was one my buddy ordered in Budapest pub back in 1991. It was a round slab of undercooked dough, slathered with ketchup and topped with mozzarella, peas, carrots and corn. For all I know, it was a tasty vegetarian delicacy, but it sure wasn’t a pizza.
As for myself, the strangest I ever got was a hamburger in an Amsterdam. Excellent beef on a whole wheat bun but drenched in 1000 islands dressing and topped off with a hard-boiled egg. I wasn’t complaining, though. It was pretty damned delicious (but that might have been augmented by our earlier activities at the coffee shop next door ;))