[QUOTE=DanBlather]
English breakfast sausage tastes more like a hotdog to me.
[/QUOTE]
You’ve clearly not tasted a proper British breakfast sausage. They’re nothing like hot dogs (apart from being tubes of crappy meat).
Have no foreign dopers been to a petrol station and seen, proudly sitting on the counter, a 5 gallon (1.9 decalitre) jug of pickled pigs feet? Or is this not surprising to anyone else?
[QUOTE=An Arky]
The thing about American food is that we (I’m an American) 1.) absorb foods from lots of other cultures into our cuisine and 2.) have a lot of chains that serve homogenized versions of more interesting foods (as **Elendil’s Heir ** said) and 3.) a very wide variance of quality, so I would imagine that for a visitor, it might be bewildering and you might not be able to get the “best” of anything without knowing where to look.
Case in point: Chicken Fried Steak. This is a fairly common dish (mostly in the South), but unfortunately, commonly prepared badly. It’s not something that bears mass production well. If you’ve had the real deal, prepared with fresh meat and homemade cream gravy (no sausage in it), it’s heavenly.
Another example would be BBQ. Lots of places will serve chopped up mystery meat slathered in ketchupy BBQ sauce and call it BBQ. Bleck!
And you haven’t had catfish till you’ve been to my house. Fried catfish and Hush Puppies are the South’s Fish & Chips, and if made properly, will knock your socks off.
Regional foods done authentically kick major butt, too. Real Philly Cheesesteaks (there could be a multi-page GD thread on those), Buffalo Wings, Tex-Mex, etc are all great when done right, not so much when mass produced.
[/QUOTE]
Huge +1. A store-bought hot dog in a white-bread bun is an insult. A True Chicago-style dog is a seduction. I happen to also love a well-prepared NY-style dog with just kraut and mustard.
Fun thread.
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Have no foreign dopers been to a petrol station and seen, proudly sitting on the counter, a 5 gallon (1.9 decalitre) jug of pickled pigs feet? Or is this not surprising to anyone else?
[/QUOTE]
There could be a whole thread on gas station food. shudder
Anyway, now that you mention it I haven’t seen a jar of pickled pigs’ feet or pickled eggs at a gas station/mini-market in years. Seems it’s mostly various forms of jerky nowadays (which I would assume are more profitable). A ‘friend’ got me to eat a Hot Mama sausage once. Once.
I just remembered the hamburger I had at Burger King in Pennsylvania, I think it was. We called them “Sawdust burgers” because they took a couple day to digest. I was also surprised by the cashier calling all sodas “coke.” I had ordered a sprite, and she kept talking about my “coke.” It was like “who’s on first?” 
A word of warning for Southerners visiting Canada - be careful ordering iced tea here. Chances are very good you won’t like what you get (our iced tea is usually not brewed - it’s fountain iced tea, like Coke).
As an American living in America, I would actually like to hear more along the lines of the OP’s observation, i.e., what other countries do to American food. Such as the British Wimpy’s, which Bill Bryson wrote “seemed to have compiled their recipes from a garbled telex.”
Myself, I got nothing other than the Japanese corn-in-pizza obsession, which you all know about, anyway.
To answer an unanswered question:
Yes, many people do like to eat whole pickles, straight up. My five year-old daughter, for one. (but she gets a pass because she’s, like, five. 
)
Calling all carbonated beverages “Coke” is (AFAIK) primarily a Southern thing - my aunt goes to the store and buys Pepsi Coke, and my uncle likes Dr Pepper Coke.
As for pickles, what’s wrong with eating pickles? Especially on a hot day, they’re good for you as they have a lot of water and salt.
[QUOTE=Promethea]
The quite superb steaks which made me wonder if the Americans haven’t bred some sort of ultra cow that they aren’t sharing with the world. Meanies! 
[/QUOTE]
A lot of factory cows over here are fed grain, mostly corn/maize heavy feeds, and little to no grass. A lot of these same cows probably don’t get much in the way of good, frolicking exercise. Some of them are also pumped full of hormones (rBST, I think) so that they grow to full size in several months instead of several years. I’d say that this and other factors contribute to the difference in taste.
Some cows are still grown “free range,” and will have a different flavor than the factory cows; however, they all still have slight variances in flavor that are heavily dependent upon what they’re eating. Different grasses make the meat taste differently.
It all depends on where you’re getting the steaks from as to how they were raised. A lot of chain restaurants and grocery stores mainly stock the “factory cow” variety of beef, but some of them also stock the “free range” variety of beef. Free range will almost always cost more than the factory cow.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
As I’m sure Liberal knows, but for the benefit of our non-American Dopers, in the North tea is (far more often than not) served unsweetened. But you’re free to add just as much sugar or artificial sweetener as you desire.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but it just doesn’t dissolve as well. Tea needs to be sweetened before it is chilled.
Yup yup! I grew up with “crunchy” iced tea that had to be stirred between sips because the sugar never dissolves.
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
Have no foreign dopers been to a petrol station and seen, proudly sitting on the counter, a 5 gallon (1.9 decalitre) jug of pickled pigs feet? Or is this not surprising to anyone else?
[/QUOTE]
WTF? Pickled pigs feet? Eeww… Thats sick, man!
And whats that about the apple sauce? You just eat it like it is? Like out of the jar, with a spoon???
Sit down and listen, and I’ll tell you how we eat apple sauce in Sweden.
We put it on:
-pork
-porridge
-pancakes (not american style pancakes, mind you - we don’t have those)
-in sourmilk
…and that’s about it, I suppose.
Haven’t been to US myself, so don’t have anything besides that.
[QUOTE=gotpasswords]
Calling all carbonated beverages “Coke” is (AFAIK) primarily a Southern thing - my aunt goes to the store and buys Pepsi Coke, and my uncle likes Dr Pepper Coke.
[/QUOTE]
This may explain my weird experience in a DQ in Texas, when I asked for “a Coke”. Instead of the Coca Cola I was expecting, I was served the aforementioned disgustingly sweet iced tea.
I had assumed that the ladies behind the counter heard my accent and said to themselves “that Englishman made a mistake, because we all know that English people only drink tea” and then substituted a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Maybe they actually thought I’d asked for “a random soda”. Or maybe they just didn’t understand my accent.
Maybe she just screwed up the order. I’ve order a coke before and gotten tea, and I have no acceeyent at all.
[QUOTE=gotpasswords]
As for pickles, what’s wrong with eating pickles? Especially on a hot day, they’re good for you as they have a lot of water and salt.
[/QUOTE]
Your pickle might be concealing a microphone. Keep your eyes open for a squashed cop.
[QUOTE=Etumretniw]
And whats that about the apple sauce? You just eat it like it is? Like out of the jar, with a spoon???.
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much.
I don’t really like it, personally.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
This may explain my weird experience in a DQ in Texas, when I asked for “a Coke”. Instead of the Coca Cola I was expecting, I was served the aforementioned disgustingly sweet iced tea.
I had assumed that the ladies behind the counter heard my accent and said to themselves “that Englishman made a mistake, because we all know that English people only drink tea” and then substituted a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Maybe they actually thought I’d asked for “a random soda”. Or maybe they just didn’t understand my accent.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that just sounds like she messed up the order.
(incidentally, the applesauce thing is reminding me of my confusion for many years hearing British people talking about eating “jelly”. I was thinking of American jelly (like jam, only made with the juice, so it doesn’t have pulpy bits) and thinking…eww, they eat that straight???)
[QUOTE=jjimm]
a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
[/QUOTE]
Nice reference!
Then again, it’s good you didn’t complain. They could have been looking to keep up their yearly quota of lynchings.