IMHO it’s the temperature. Good sushi, at least based on my tastes, should be room temperature to slightly warm. Of course this isn’t possible for a food product with raw meat ingredients that might be sitting for a few to several hours before being consumed, and so they refrigerate it. That’s what lowers the quality.
That may be part of it, but the main thing is freshness. Supermarket supply chains mean they just can’t process the fish in a timely enough way to make even decent sushi. TBH there isn’t a lot of fish I buy from supermarkets for the same reason. Salmon holds up ok but most fish is just way off its best because it’s taken too long to get instore.
Sushi grade fish is chosen for its vibrant colour, texture and consistency, but above all else its freshness. Hence it doesn’t smell ‘fishy’ and is nice and firm.
Not intending to say that all Japanese restaurants owned/operated by Japanese/Japanese-Americans are awesome - but my experience has been that the food at Japanese restaurants owned/operated by other-than-Japanese folks is second-rate.
That may be part of it. Next time I pick up some grocery store sushi, maybe I’ll try leaving it out at room temp for a bit before eating it.
Actually, and I only learned this a few years ago, several types of sushi fish are aged to obtain the best flavor and texture (though not all-- some do need to be ‘the fresher, the better’- especially shellfish). It’s a very controlled process of wet aging, and very different than sushi that’s gone off because it hasn’t sold and has been sitting around too long. But ironically, that may be why some grocery store sushi is good, but not as sublime as high-end restaurant sushi-- it’s maybe too fresh. I know, this fact blew my mind when I learned it, but it’s true.
True, but it is usually thawed from frozen even in the best places in the US. Grocery stores around here (California) use the same fish, but the time sitting in a cooler until the customer eats it is what makes it inferior to restaurant sushi.
There’s also a preferred method for killing the fish that reportedly results in optimal flavor, and that method may or may not have been used for the fish supplied to any given sushi restaurant:
-looks uncomfortable-
I believe the proper thread for this is riiiiight next door!
[ Mostly for the comparison and the lolz, I’d at least try a few of those, and shouldn’t slam anyone’s national/cultural food choices, because they’re interconnected with culture and so often desperate need. But figured a gentle poking fun (which I feel there was in the quoted section as well!) was fair game. ]
How could you leave off the mopane worms?
I try not to remember the mopane worms.
The last one I had left a disturbing taste in my mouth for hours.
My read of the OP is that it’s asking what cuisines you’re likely to be able to easily find, if you’re traveling to the largest cities, around the world.
Mexican - despite the current vote - is not on that list. I don’t believe that Thai is particularly common either. This isn’t to say that you can’t find them, given a hard enough look, but you’re unlikely to bump into one, randomly.
Italian and Indian are fairly common, as well as something Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean. After that, maybe sushi and Chinese.
French cuisine, I’d gauge, is at a fairly even level of omnipresent rareness, everywhere.
And American. Most cities have more than a few places that sell hamburgers - and not just international chains.
From what I’ve heard, the most ubiquitous American chain, worldwide, is KFC. Chicken doesn’t hit any cultural taboos the way that beef or pork would, and apparently fried chicken is simple enough that nobody considers it “too foreign”.
It’s extremely difficult to find decent Mexican food outside of Mexico and the US. And there are places in the US (I’m looking at you, Seattle) where it’s nigh on impossible.
Tacos Chukis.
I have never been in a large international city, from Helsinki to Kuala Lumpur to Venice to Paris to Berlin to Amsterdam to frigging Jubail, that didn’t have Mexican restaurants (and TexMex is a kind of Mexican). Apartheid-era Cape Town had several. I strongly disagree on this one.
Naah, McDonalds is bigger I’d say. They adapt to food taboos - a lot of veggie burger options in India, for instance (and they tried lamb but I believe they don’t currently). And beef is OK everywhere else.
I’m willing to bet there are many more Vietnamese than Thai immigrants around here, so that explanation makes sense.
Come to think of it, there are probably more restaurants that are 100% Vietnamese than 100% Thai, and there were already half a dozen of the former and only one of the latter in my neighbourhood when I moved here in 1992. By the late 90s Vietnamese food was very familiar to me while Thai still felt like a novelty.
That applies to where I live as well. The Thai, Japanese, and Korean places are almost all run and staffed by people of Vietnamese, Chinese, or even Filipino ancestry simply because there are a lot more or them living around there than there are people of Thai, Japanese, or Korean ancestry.