Well, out of season, or real industrial, sure. Fresh from a farmer’s market, wonderful. Go to California in the summer and the produce we had delivered from the organic farm to our house was delightful. Georgia peaches from a roadstand converted me to a peach lover.
But, even if it isn’t the best, it’s there. You can get even a crummy salad virtually everywhere. Gas stations have apples and bananas. In Austria I barely saw a fresh piece of produce, or a lightly cooked one.
You know they have those in other countries, right?
My vote goes to eastern European, based on the horror that was my Ukrainian mother-in-law’s cooking. Boiled everything. Seasonings = salt, salt, salt, and garlic. Food cooked by her cohorts seemed to be about the same, so I don’t think it was just that she was a bad cook. I tried to educate her by taking her to a good butcher shop for some quality steak. Porterhouse, I think. She fried it and then steamed it for a half hour. Her main criterion for good food was that it be soft.
We did not invent ice cream, it was brought to America by Thomas Jefferson after his stay in France, nor did we invent sherbet, which was originally Persian.
The main issue with British cooking is actually recent - post WW1. The cuisine took a hit because after WW1 and up until the mid 60s there was a lot of supply line trouble in Britain. There was actually food rationing until 1954 IIRC. At one point in time about 2 years into WW1 when the first German submarine blockades started sinking British shipping they had something on the order of 2 months of food stockpiles left [that was not grown in the British Isles itself. Britain has been very dependent upon imported foodstuffs thanks to the combination of limited growing space and population size, much like Japan.]
When you combine food rationing with the amount of time generationally stuck with rationing, you get 2 generations of people who really couldn’t learn to cook the traditional foods and who used the government issued ‘cookbooks’ developed to use the available rations in a reasonably nutritious manner. When you think of the ration limitations, the stodgy food makes sense - meat was fairly tightly rationed, along the order of a few oz per person per week, sugar was tightly rationed, eggs, butter, even canned goods were rationed. I seem to remember from talking to my friends that back in the late post war 40s and early 50s they would actually get sent gift packages from Denmark that was stuff like butter, hams, dried fruit and such a few times a year, near holidays and it ws considered fantastic.
It is hard to keep a cuisine ‘alive’ when the materials needed are just not available in general for almost 40 years. Just when they started getting back after WW1 in the mid 30s, they took a hit with WW2 starting. If you look at brit lit, you get great meals like the Christmas feast in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Byron and Keats used food allegories referring to love, Charlotte Bronte used a fair amount of food in her writing, and Jane Austin used fine foods to sort of indicate that the woman involved was scatterbrained and superficial.
Woah I felt exactly the same way in Germany! I was there for two weeks and I think I ate two veggies and maybe one piece of fruit. The food there is awesome though so I wasn’t really complaining. BEST POTATO SALAD EVER!! Everywhere we went we just ate til we wanted to hurl because everything was so awesome.
On another note…
I too say “let’s go get some Irish food” quite often. I go to the Irish Fest every year and can’t wait to get some Guiness stew, bangers and mash, corned beef and cabbage…yummy. I grew up in Pittsburgh and now live in DC and both have “Irish” restaurants. Many of them in DC are run by Irish folks.
I also must say that southern comfort cooking is simply delicous. I mean the word ‘comfort’ is in there for a reason. That food just makes you feel…warm and satisfied. So I think it’s unfair to say that America has no “cuisine” to offer the world as one post said.
Good lord- where did I say they didn’t??? All I said was compared to Austria I like that my country has more fruit available.
I don’t think I’ve found a cuisine I don’t like yet, but I suspect some Inuit stuff might turn me off.
It’s a shame that Britain still seemingly has a bad reputation for food. I’ve had consistently good meals–especially at pubs–there, including some of the best meals of my life. I also don’t see how America could possibly be on this list.
We were in Prague last year and found the food uniformly bad. They don’t appear to have fruit or vegetables there. It’s meat, meat, and more meat, which sounds great but gets tiresome quickly. On the plus side, it is apparently acceptable to drink beer all day long, and in public. That took away the sting of the bad food.
Yeah, there are so many regional cuisines that it would be impossible to write the entire country off. Boston clam chowder, mmmm. Cajun, mmmm. Hawaiian ahi-ahi, mmmm.
Heh. Somewhere on the Board is my tale of a beer-addled wandering through Brno one afternoon, in the present-day Czech Republic but still Czechoslovakia back then.
I’ve only tried Ethiopian once, and found most of it mediocre at best. The injira, on the other hand, was downright unpleasant. Sort of musty-sour with a nasty texture and an unappealing appearance. On the other hand, the tej (a honey wine) was pretty tasty.
Aw, you beat me to mentioning hakarl. I’ve not tried it personally, but I’m given to understand it’s vile beyond all reason. Toxylon recently had a thread about eating hakarl over in MPSIMS, in case anyone is really curious about the experience. On the basis of this “dish” alone, I think I’d have to vote Iceland.
Regarding the Great Vinegar War: I’m from the US, and I like vinegar on fries/chips and on chips/crisps, among other things. I particularly like to make rosemary bread and dip it in balsamic vinegar.
Hell, even if we were to limit it to fast food, dammit, I like America’s fast food. I cannot believe how many countries I’ve been to that completely fuck up a simple concept like a fast food burger.
They don’t do burgers, but that’s not the point. Most other countries have fast food that’s a lot better, tastier, cheaper, and more healthful than our burgers, fries, chicken, etc., fast food.
Yeah, Eastern/Central European food can be a bit short on the veggies (except in pickled form). Don’t forget pasta and potatoes. That region loves their pasta and potatoes. Czech and Slovak food, in my opinion, tends to be the blandest of that general area. Still, when done well, it can be tasty. And there are plenty of vegetables in evidence at the markets–they just don’t seem to make the restaurant menus that often.
I don’t really get the hate of British cuisine. Granted, the entirety of my experience with British cuisine consists of a meal at the Rose & Crown Pub at the UK pavilion at Epcot, but still…
Mrs. Homie’s fish & chips were to die for. Her shandy (I believe it was Bass Ale & Sprite) was delicious, and to me that’s saying something, because I don’t even like beer.
As for me, I was in ecstasy over my Chicken Pot Pie. The crust was buttery & flaky, the meat was tender and delicious, etc. What’s not to love?
Personally, I disagree. I mean, yeah, I like a nice Thuringer rostbratwurst from the sausage cart vendor in Erfurt, but I also like the Italian sausage sold by the dude outside Grand Central station. The only fast food I’ve found that I liked better than its American counterpart are perhaps some doner kebabs.
Worst is when local places try to imitate American fast food. I have seen some Thai outfits producing some pathetic, soggy little “burgers.”
Well, since this is about offering opinions, I’m not surprised someone is disagreeing. I also disagree with pretty much every word that StPauler said about Ethiopian food.
But I have yet to find any street food/fast food anywhere in the world that isn’t better than our fast food, whether Latin American, French, British, Indian, Singaporean, Chinese, whatever.
Whenever I’m in a supermarket in Austria or Germany I’m always appalled at the poor quality of the produce. Stuff that would have been thrown in the garbage days earlier in Britain is still on sale. They just don’t seem to care about the quality of their fruit and veg.
I’m also curious what definition of “fast food” is being used. Are we talking “street food”? Are we talking ma & pop quick places to get a bite to eat? Or are we talking chains and franchises like Quick and Nordsee and the like vs. McDonald’s and Chipotle, etc? I really can’t think of any examples where the local “fast food” is uniformly “better, tastier, cheaper and more healthful” than American fast food.
Italian street food is effin delicious. Arancini di riso (rice balls filled with meat) pizzete (fried pizza dough) croquet di patate (stuffed, breaded and fried mashed potato) and tarali ( pretzel like, but made with almonds and fried in lard) is better than any sausage truck link or fry truck chip I’ve ever had.