I’m curious to know if UK Dopers have visited the US and found foodstuffs here that can’t be found over there. This, of course, excludes local brands that have equivalents in the UK; and it will exclude candy products (because every country in the world has candy bars in various and sundry shapes, sizes and combinations).
The only thing I can think of (and I got this by reading an older thread about a different subject) is lemonade. Note that what is called “lemonade” in the UK is called “lemon-lime soda” (7-Up®, Sprite®) in the US. Apparently, real lemonade (water with sugar & lemon juice, like Country Time®) is hard to find in the UK.
I’m sure there must be dozens of other things, but for the life of me I can’t think of any offhand.
Well, I spent the Fourth of July in the UK a few years ago, and got inspired to make a classic American dish for my British friends; my first though was cornmeal-battered catfish. No go. I found the cornmeal after a while (labeled “polenta”), but nobody seemed to be selling catfish. I ended up making chocolate chip cookies instead.
I also noticed a distinct shortage of all things Mexican, but with plenty of good, cheap Indian food I wasn’t about to complain too much.
I can’t find those 24 packs of stubbies, you know the little 330ml cans of cooking lager like MGD.
It’s a great ‘filler’ beer and good for parties.
A1 steak sauce. It’s one of those things you don’t really notice at the time, and although I’m sure you can buy it somewhere, I’ve never seen it anywhere except Jerry’s Home store…and it was something like £7-50 for a tiny little bottle.
Yeah, we have oreos here, but only in boxes of odd little twin-packs.
I’ve never seen pumpkin pie available on retail sale (I’ve made it myself), same with pecan pie.
McDonalds don’t seem to do rootbeer any more, it really was Germolene flavoured (but I liked it) - it isn’t the same as ginger beer - Dandelion and Burdock is similar (but far superior IMO).
Root beer is a carbonated soft drink flavored with the bark of the sassafrass tree (well, originally it was. And the high-end root beers probably still are; most of the rest is made with artificial flavors).
Root Beer is not legally flavored with sassafrass root bark (note that it used to be the bark of the root of the tree) anymore. That particular material is chock-full-o-carcinogen. In any case, sassafrass was never a mandatory ingredient for the concoction.
As the name implies, it is a beer made from roots. That root could be sassafrass or burdock root, and I’ve even seen one old recipe with dandelion root. Many other spices like birch bark, wintergreen, cloves, just about anything imaginable, can go into it. The real stuff (even without sassafrass) is simply delightful and is made by many small companies, including some beer brewers like Sprecher and Saranac. The industrial drek that is marketed under brand names like “Hires” or “A&W” is a miserable travesty, weakened of all character and real flavor.
Originally, as far as I can tell, it was a fermented beverage, but the fermentation was only allowed to go on for a short time before drinking, so it was fairly low-alcohol.
The first time I visited the USA from the UK my family and I ate at Denny’s almost everyday for breakfast. You can’t get pancakes like that in the UK… they are totally differen…
I don’t think you can get Dr. Pepper there, but that may have changed. I also thought most American cereal was superior to UK cereal… of course this was when I thought Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles were the holy grail of cereals.
Wait–do you mean you don’t have 24-packs of beer (“cases”) or you don’t have 12-ounce cans of beer? (Or that you don’t have cases of bad, mass-market beer?)
That’s not strictly true. What we call lemonade is indeed like 7-Up and Sprite, without the lime. It does taste different. And it’s quite easy to get water with lemon juice and sugar version of lemonade over here. Most supermarkets have cartons of it and call it “Fresh Lemonade” or “Old Style Lemonade”
And yes, we do have Oreos over here, unfortunately
Oh, and Sainsbury’s sell their own brand of root beer, thankfully I haven’t tried it but according to people who have the likeness with disinfectant is uncanny.
Sorry, what I should have added, and is the real point, is the uber low price of those cases of crappy beer.
I think you can get those little cans over here not in many brands, maybe in heineken.
Cases of bottles hold similar amounts, but it’s not the same.
It’s really hard to shotgun a bottle;)
