Yeah, it’s not like they have diversity in Italy. The food in Northern Italy is just like the food in the South, right? It must be, it’s all Italian. What do you think they do in Italy, say “let’s go out for Italian tonight”? Food in the south uses more tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic. In Sicily there are Arab influences in how they mix sweet and savory together. In the north they use more butter and cream, more like French food. Cheeses in Italy are made from cow, goat, sheep, or water buffalo milk. It ranges from aged, blue veined gorgonzola to mozzarella eaten within days of it being made. The staple starch of Italy varies among regions as well: polenta, pasta, rice, or bread. There is a huge difference in the wines: big reds in the south, crisp whites in the north, bubbly Proseccos, sweet Vin Santos.
Do you really think bump was trying to say that all Italian food is the same and that there’s only a couple dishes in the whole country? Of course not.
For all I know, it’s a stereotype of Italy that they have lots of wonderful, authentic little restaurants serving local food, but not much international food. But please fight my ignorance for me - since I’ve lived all my life in Canada and visited the US. In Italy, is it easy to find restaurants that serve a wide variety of foreign cuisines? I’m not talking about Venetian vs. Sicilian dishes. How about Indian food? Mexican? Thai? Ethiopian? German? Russian? Japanese?
I live in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), which is not known as a bustling international metropolis with good food (especially compared to Vancouver, Montreal or Toronto). We have plenty of your standard North American restaurants and supermarkets, but there are also farmers markets and local options, and better restaurants, and a wide variety of international cuisines are easily available.
But his example is BBQ, Tex-Mex, Cajun, and Creole, all of which are regional “American food”.
In my experience, Canada has an incredible variety of ethnic restaurants. Large cities in the US do as well, but it’s fairly recent that the variety of restaurants we see today were available in smaller cities. When I moved to Portland there were maybe one or two dim sum places and a couple of places that served sushi. Now you can get sushi at Safeway and there are a dozen dim sum restaurants within a mile of where I live and a couple dozen more spread out over the city.
I don’t know if I ever ate at an “ethnic restaurant” in Italy, but Paris is loaded with Greek, Italian, Moroccan, Vietnamese and other choices. The bast pizza I ever had was in Grenoble, where there is a whole line of pizza places along the river. The UK, of course, has an amazing variety of restaurants: tikka masala and donar kebabs are more popular than fish and chips these days.
I wouldn’t want to argue whether US food choices are more or less diverse than other countries, and it certainly varies by which regions in the US you compare to which countries in Europe.
If the OP was about tourists complaining that food in the US was all the same, then I would be sympathetic. But I still find it hard to believe that people think that food in the US, on average, is as good as you will get in most of the rest of the world.
Could it be that food is a matter of taste?
I’m willing to accept that for someone schooled in gastronomy, France has better food, on average, than the United States. I am skeptical that “most of the rest of the world” has better food that the United States. Most of the rest of the world is relatively poor, for one thing. North America kicks ass at food production for another.
Let’s see here, what did the single tourist mentioned in the OP complain about?
“There were complaints about the bread, butter, cheese, produce, fruit, milk, coffee, meats and sausages.”
That’s a pretty long list. Where’s this person eating, a gas station? Can’t get good milk in the US? Can’t get good meat? Fruit? Bullshit.
Some of it really is just a matter of taste. As I mentioned before, Australians visiting the US complain about the coffee. I fail to see how espresso is objectively better than Americano. It’s like saying that whiskey is better than beer. I prefer one over the other, but that doesn’t make somebody who differs is incorrect.
To me, the tourist described in the OP is merely unable to enjoy foods that are different than what he or she has at home.
Damn, now I am getting seriously hungry …
When it comes to food, the US and Canada have a very ruthless “you get what you pay for” system.
If you are prepared to pay a few bucks, the food at a good restaurant will stand up to the best of any other country. But if you take your chances on cheap random food, then ALL BETS ARE OFF, there is really no minimum standard you can expect. You can easily end up with inedible food at a fake “restaurant” which is an organized crime front.
Having said that, there is a new movement in favor of inexpensive high-quality (organic or locally grown) food, and those places are starting to become easier to find in North America. They are wonderful if you can find them.
Even if the food in question happened to be crap, it is still extremely impolite to complain about it. You can say “I’m sorry, it’s not quite my style” or “I don’t like it, sorry” stressing the “I”, but you don’t go “OMG the food here BLOWS GOATS!”
And yes, I have expounded before on my troubles with Food Abroad in these forums, but it’s not as a complaint, it’s shooting the breeze. “You guys put much more sugar in cakes than we do, and I don’t even have a sweet tooth by Spanish standards” isn’t a complaint: it’s an FYI, a war story…
In much of Europe you can shell out the extra cash and still get crap food. Good example is Mexican. I’ve eaten it in various parts of the US, sometimes it’s just all right, other times amazing but it’s almost always been cheap. Here Mexican food is a fucking rip off and crap by the standards of most American regions.
Don’t forget maggots!
How do you milk a maggot?
very carefully?
This traveler is just rude no matter where he/she is from. Maybe an adolescent?
I guess you expect more tolerance from Europeans because they have to deal with people of different cultures more often than most Americans due to proximity to other countries.
An Americano is espresso diluted with hot water to the strength of American-style coffee. Any place you could get a decent Americano would serve decent espresso as well.
All the food snobbery aside, you can learn a lot from trying food from the local hole in the wall (Anthony Bourdain style). Maybe Europeans are unique in wanting leafy greens sprinkled with the finest olive oils and garden grown herbs.
Maybe?
OK I’ll admit, as a European or Irish entity, cornbread makes no sense to me. It’s like coarse madeira cake. I can’t imagine eating madeira cake with anything other than a sugary cup of tea.