I’ve been “there,” so to speak, and I think I’d’ve taken two hours, or what seemed like two hours, to savor every delicious bite.
Even longer if I were high.
Israeli restaurants generally manages to replicate American cuisine fairly well, but there are a few interesting additions. Feta cheese, for instance, is a very popular pizza topping, and plenty of upscale burger joints serve hamburgers at least partially made of lamb meat.
Oh, and MacDonalds offers (or used to offer) the MacShawarma.
I’m currently in England. I just heard an ad for some sort of authentic TexMex place. They proudly claimed to have fresh Jalapenos. I think I might skip it.
note the lack of the ñ, it kinda changes the pronunciation
Pfff. Welcome to California pizza. Here’s your accordion.
Pithy, but California pizza would have been a blessing by comparison.
In Japan, “American Style” pizza was pizza with corn and mayonnaise on it. In general, we came to expect that if something at ar estaurant was called “American” it would have corn and/or mayonnaise on it.
The best Tex Mex I ever had, though, was at a place called “Desperados” in Nagoya.
And the worst imitation of American cuisine I ever had was at a place called “Imo’s Pizza.” In Missouri.
Right. Also back home, there’s a greasy spoon we frequent that sells “double breaded cheeseburgers,” which have cheese surrounded by the hamburger, then the breading.
When I went to India, the pizza had chili powder in the sauce. So did the hamburgers. Chili powder kept rearing its head in many unexpected places.
Bah. I could head into town right now (well, later today; its not quite 7am here) and get a soggycrust-hamburger-cheddar 'za at any number of places. What’s worse is the locals have no clue there’s something wrong. To be fair, most places the sauce would be properly spiced, kinda, but that would be just a nod to pizza-dom.
In the building where I work in Korea, there’s a CHEERS bar (a licensed franchise somehow connected to the TV show). All the food and most of the beer is Korean. Families bring their children. And there are no seats at the bar. So much for a place where everybody knows your name!
Back in the 70’s when I was living in London a new “American” themed restaurant was opened in Central London, not far from the West End.
The owners had themed the restaurant with various american band paraphernalia, and served burgers, shakes etc.
They called it “The Hard Rock Cafe” 
I remember walking past a Tex-Mex joint in Amsterdam, and actually took a quick look (morbid curiousity) at the menu.
Being from Salt Lake, the only ethnic food that is always done right on a consistant basis is Mexican food. (there are a lot of Mexicans here in Utah) There are dozens of excellent Mexican places around here, from simple taco shops to high-end regional specialty Mexican cusine.
Being spoiled and used to really, really good Mexican, I typically avoid Mexican food that is likely to be sub-par, and the Dutch take on it was not something that sounded promising.
I once got some very good Chinese food at a place not far from the Van Gogh Museum, though…
I had lunch at an American-style restaurant in Madrid called “Nebraska”. Simply terrible.
We were on a western Caribbean cruise, the buffet had ‘tamales’ one day.
Massa with no reddish meat filling center…Whole corn kernels spread throughout…and little chunks of sliced ham.
They were rather amazed when they found out I knew what tamales are supposed to be like. They were shootin’ in the dark.
Yeah, I’m going through that phase myself. Chili powder or straight red pepper. Or both. In everything.
I went to Chang’s American Diner (read that name again) in Nuremburg and had a burger with slices of cucumber on it. I figured “pickle” got lost in translation, somehow.
I was in Nuremburg for three months, which included November. On Thanksgiving, I got it in my head to eat some form of turkey. Turkey is not commonly eaten in Germany. The only place I could find was the American Grill (it may have been a former Hard Rock Cafe, judging by the enormous ersatz guitar behind the bar) which had chunks of turkey in tomato sauce served over rice. I have never seen anything like it, before or since.
Jokes aside, the Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo does a decent imitation of “low” American cuisine–something pretty difficult to get in Japan. One of the few places to get a decent blue cheese burger, and amazing desserts. I have had quite a lot of sad disappointments in my time in Japan. Also McDonald’s–it’s easy to make fun of McDonald’s, but if you’ve ever been a long term ex-pat, having something that tastes EXACTLY like home is surprisingly comforting, even if it is McDonald’s. McDonald’s tastes like McDonald’s no matter where you go. This is not going to be the case at most restaurants.
As other people have mentioned,
pizza–mayonaise and corn
hamburgers–soft boiled egg
Also,
caesar salad–cabbage on the bottom, iceburg letter on top, very weak dressing and a raw egg on top (I realize traditional caesar has raw egg in it, but I mean there is literally just a complete, unbroken egg sitting on top of your salad, for you to mix in, presumably)
also, any kind of salad–way more raw cabbage than I consider acceptable, and, again, too much corn
hamburg–note lack of “er.” A hamburger patty with gravy on top.
pumpkin pie–quite literally a pie made of pumpkin. No spices at all.
nachos–made with normal potato chips, not tortilla chips. Actually, surprisingly tasty. Although it was at an all-you-can drink bar.
chocolate chip cookies–turns out chocolate chip cookies can come in a surprising variety of flavors, including pumpkin and strawberry.
Also, yogurt is really weird and liquid-y in Japan. And it all comes from Bulgaria. (?!)
Bagels that have clearly never seen a pot of boiling water
Curry that only comes in one flavor–brown
The Japanese even fuck up apple pie. A pie is not the same thing as a cookie, Japan!!!
OK, think that’s enough complaining for me.
Bulgaria takes credit as the origin of yogurt, and indeed yogurt is a big deal there.
I’ve been to and lived in more countries than I can count, and I have never had a decent hamburger outside of the U.S. Of course, that’s what I get for ordering something so distinctly American (by way of Germany) instead of local cuisine. I’ve had them mixed with pork or egg or all manner of odd ingredients. They are uniformly bad. Even American chain restaurants overseas rarely get it right. I once ordered a pepperoni pizza at a Pizza Hut in Frankfurt, Germany. Unfortunately, “pepperoni” in that part of the world means “long green banana peppers”, not “small thin slices of cured meat”.
When I went, we stopped at a burger joint.
The place’s name: Big Maxx, and IIRC is was written “inside” the bun like “Burger King” does here.
The logo: The two from the “Love is…” cartoon, like these:
And so on. Wanton appropriation of American icons. And of course enough hot spice in the food to burn off your eyebrows.
These two are actually decent imitations of dishes popular in Britain at the time of their introduction into Japan.
One thing you forgot to mention: Pastries that are basically biscuits (in the American sense) with filling. It’s just not right. 