I’ve always had a mental list of things I love that no one else seems to care about. Top of the list is Butterscotch - pudding, candy, pie, ice cream sauce. All of them seem to suffer because if they are available, chocolate is also available. French Dressing (salad). It’s a perfectly good salad dressing, but even I will often choose Bleu Cheese. When I was a kid, Catalina was always on our table, but we kids always chose Italian. Now I kind of miss it, and haven’t seen it in the grocery store for years.
Consequently, there’s also a list of things I don’t particularly care for that everyone else seems to love. Best example is jelly, doesn’t matter what flavor really, but the only one I somewhat enjoy is strawberry. I prefer honey with my peanut butter or buttered toast than any kind of jelly. Another one is raisins. When did we start putting dried grapes in freaking everything!? Cinnamon bagels are just fine, but put raisins in there and I’m out. Same goes for breakfast cereal.
What foods are on your Under/Over rated lists?
To clarify, I’m not talking about things that people have strong love/hate feelings about, like licorice or pineapple on pizza. I’m talking about things you love that others seem to tolerate, or things you can tolerate but others seem to love.
Most all commercial salad dressings are overrated. I prefer vinegar and olive oil, with a good grind of pepper.
Lobster. Overrated and egregiously expensive in restaurants, yet we sign up for “lobster week” at a local restaurant every year, because my wife loves it.
Underrated: The simplest of pasta dishes like cacio e pepe or aglio e olio.
I’m not into sweets. Desserts that people LOVE are almost always a pass for me.
Same with steaks & chops. Large wet muscles, barely seasoned, barely cooked that people LOVE are almost always a pass for me.
Underrated: I’m phasey so I’ll eat a bunch of something for a while. I’m currently eating about 15-20 pears a week (boscs & Barts) and the same mixed rice thing I made on Sunday for five days lunches. I’ll be sick of both soon enough but really digging both now.
Eta:
As far as I’m concerned, that’s just getting with the winning team. Blue for me.
I find that my expectations of creamy Bleu Cheese dressing always exceed my enjoyment. I realized a few years back that what I was looking for was a good vinaigrette with bleu cheese crumbles and crumbled bacon. You can’t really bottle that, so lately I’ve been picking French.
In my old age I’ve gotten really turned off by gobs of gooey, melty cheese. I like cheese on pizza, and cheese in mozzarella sticks. But I see a lot of “easy recipes the whole family will love” (casseroles) that are loaded with cheese and it turns me off.
Could be the GLP-1 talking, too. I don’t really care for creamy food anymore either. The thought of alfredo sauce makes me nauseous.
I’ll second that butterscotch is underrated and lobster is overrated.
I think ketchup is overrated. Why add overly sweet glop that doesn’t even taste much of tomatoes to your food - better to appreciate the taste of whatever it is you’re eating. (But in keeping with the OP’s question, sure, it’s not that I hate ketchup. It’s okay.)
Similarly, I think mayo is underrated. It seems rather fashionable to declare one’s hatred of mayonnaise. While I agree that adding too much of it is an abomination, a small amount on a sandwich enhances the flavor.
Just about the only thing I can tolerate tomato ketchup on is scrambled eggs, and even that comes from years of eating powdered eggs in the Navy. Proper catsup is mushroom based and closer in taste to Worcestershire sauce (and I’d be into it if a commercial version were easy to obtain).
I think people often forget that mayo is more about lubrication rather than flavor. A small amount enhances flavor because it allows the ingredients of the sandwich to mingle. Too much is overwhelming because you stop tasting the ingredients. I use mayo, sparingly, in some unconventional ways: instead of butter, I use mayo and a little mustard for grilled cheese sandwiches. French fries dipped in mayo are far better than using tomato ketchup. I also put a small dab of mayo on grilled steaks while they are resting.
In my house a small squeeze bottle of Heinz ketchup lasts a year. A large jar of Hellman’s mayo lasts about a month.
I can recommend the Trader Joe’s Blue, it had disappeared for a couple years but has returned. It’s refrigerated. Otherwise, feta stands in pretty well in a salad.
I like the TJ Goddess dressing, too. Seasame and not oversweetened.
Over-rated is burgers. They’re ubiquitous at fast food joints and cook-outs, and I’m not a picky eater but I’d choose almost anything over a burger to eat.
Under-rated is beans. A tiny amount of the stuff for dinner keeps me satiated all the way to the next morning, and there are so many different varieties and ways to prepare them. Plus they’re cheap and healthy, so why aren’t they as ubiquitous as burgers? They should be.
For me, cold pizza can work, but it has to be a well-loaded pizza – multiple meats and veggies, plus extra cheese. A skimpy, barely-cheesed chain pizza like Little Caesar’s can be OK fresh out the oven (as basically a form of flatbread, not a great pizza), but isn’t good cold the next morning.
I’ve had the same observation. Catalina seemed to be one of the fundamental salad dressings of the 1970s, and was often in our house when I was a kid. Over the last 30 years or so, it seemed to have disappeared – though I have recently found a dressing brand selling a Catalina (I’ve forgotten the details, through). There are some similar red-orange dressings out there under different names (i.e. not Catalina) and I wondered if it had just been the Catalina name that went away.
Aside: How similar are Catalina and Russian dressing? Russian dressing is not popular down here, so I’m familiar with it. I understand it’s more of a thing in the northeastern U.S.
I’ve never understood the appeal of beer and wine. Virtually all taste terrible.
I think chicken dishes at cheap chinese food restaurants are wildly underrated. Even a mediocre chinese restaurant will have a dozen different ways to prepare chicken (general tsos, orange, pineapple, teriyaki, honey, etc) most of which are great.
Also I thought Kraft sold catalina dressing pretty much everywhere
I’d say fast food burgers are certainly overrated. But a really GOOD burger? I feel like that’s fairly rare (heh) and under-appreciated. I recently found a halal place near me that makes the best burger I’ve ever tasted. I haven’t eaten a fast food burger in ages, but this new good… no, GREAT burger has reminded me how wonderful it can be.
All forms of pasta and sauce are overrated. Pasta does nothing to quell my hunger, I don’t like tomato based sauce, and white sauce like Alfredo is too rich. Ice cream is also overrated. I just don’t get the love. Underrated is butterscotch. Even as a kid I preferred butterscotch.
