# Worst national cuisine? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 6, 2015, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134 "2015-08-06T05:49:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/61 "2015-08-07T03:20:45Z")
National foods, or national foods are interpreted and eaten in the US? For example, I love Chinese food in either country, but they are vastly, vastly different. I enjoy both versions of Mexican food, too. Same for Italian. German food seems to be very similar in Germany and the USA. Italian is hard to say. I’ve never been to Italy, but the Italian restaurants outside the USA seems to be consistly the same in being very different than the Italian immigrant adjusted fare that we call “Italian” in the USA. I’ve never had “Nordic” food, but the Swedish meatballs I ate growing up taste nearly the same as Ikea’s. It’s important to separate “Lebanese” from Arabic, because we can order liquor in a Lebanese restaurant. 🙂 I will go with _Thai_. Although I like American Thai food, it’s really just spicy Chinese food in the USA. And in Thailand, some of the best dishes I ate were Thai, but that’s only at high-end places. The mediocre run of the mill restaurants I’ve been to (including the company canteen) offer really mediocre food. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/62 "2015-08-07T03:25:57Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I have the impression (perhaps an exaggerated or mistaken one – would welcome opinions from Dutch participants on the board) that Dutch cuisine has, for most people from other countries, little to recommend it. Stemming, I gather, from the severely Calvinist position of regarding people’s indulging themselves in any of the pleasures of the flesh, as sinful: with consequent seeking to make food less, rather than more, interesting. Dutch food tending thus to be wholesome, but very plain, and with few distinctive dishes (the savoury pancakes, being a definite exception to the above generalisation). Here’s an opinion: fuck you and your retarded cliches. Seriously, WTF. Try a Hema rookworst, and see how Calvinistic that is. Bah! ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/63 "2015-08-07T03:26:02Z")
Chinese food in the US is a joke now, sugar and fat and MSG. Hot and Sour soup is one of the wonders of world cuisine though. I’m in Boston and we have an embarrassment of Thai. In fact it seems to have replaced Chinese in the hearts of people around here. Thai food is great. I don’t know why anyone would object to it. It’s less fatty and the veggies are fresher. Bean thread noodles are great. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/64 "2015-08-07T03:41:02Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > then specificity about what you really mean when you say “salute onions” \*\*actually matters! \*\* Is it best to salute just until soft? Till Golden? Till browned at the edges? > > Well, I just hijacked myself… Everyone knows that you salute your onions until they salute you back. Duh! ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/65 "2015-08-07T03:46:32Z")
Chinese is at the bottom of my restaurant choices, simply because most of them don’t give a shit about preparation. Nasty, goopy sauce on everything, swimming in grease, just bad food. Next would be Scandinavian, although I’ve had killer trout and salmon dishes there. My neighbor owns and chefs a Scandi restaurant. It’s okay, but not someplace I go out of my way for. And the guy is really into bone marrow, which I don’t like. Having lived in Europe for many years, I love most any of it. German is awesome, as is Polish, Belgian, etc. English is somewhat bland, but then I can live on fish and chips, so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/66 "2015-08-07T04:38:40Z")
Love the people, love the culture, love bagpipes, but all Scottish food I have ever tried is not good at all - oatcakes, Scottish egg, Haggis. The comedian Danny Bhoy does a whole stand-up routine about growing up on Scottish food. All I have to say is there are very few Scottish restaurants. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/67 "2015-08-07T04:49:25Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Here’s an opinion: fuck you and your retarded cliches. Seriously, WTF. Try a Hema rookworst, and see how Calvinistic that is. Bah! Dude, relax, he was seeking opinions and admitted he had very little experience with Dutch cuisine. Seriously, wtf, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/68 "2015-08-07T05:03:40Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Here’s an opinion: fuck you and your retarded cliches. Seriously, WTF. Try a Hema rookworst, and see how Calvinistic that is. Bah! This against the rules of this board. Do not ever make a post like this where you say that to another poster again. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/69 "2015-08-07T05:27:19Z")
[QUOTE=Trinopus;] I’ve heard very bad things about Tibetan cuisine. [/QUOTE] Well, there isn’t a lot of variety. I mean you can have Yak done just about any way, ground roasted barey cooked just about any way, a side of goat or lamb, then occaisional turnip, and the staple of yak butter tea. The tea, by the way, is mainly leftover stems that has boiled for hours. You get the delightful yak butter tea mixed with the ground roasted barley into a tasty raw dough delight. The cheese tends to be hard dessicated rocks that you soak in yak butter tea to soften, but occaisionally can be simply divine fresh camembert type cheeses. And that’s about all. You really have to acquire a taste for yak butter tea or it will be challenging. I love it now but mao on a pogo stick it was bud gnarly for the first couple dozen times I had to choke it down. I came in to say that I think cavier is waaaaaaay overrated and over priced ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/70 "2015-08-07T07:58:03Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > kind of reminds me of the okayu I had in Japan. rice porridge; utterly tasteless on its own but OK once you added stuff to it. In my experience that’s also true of tofu. You can do great things with tofu. You probably should, because the tofu’s not gonna lift a finger to help. ---
**Author:** ![camille](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/22d042/32.png) [@camille](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/camille)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/71 "2015-08-07T08:45:59Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > My vote is easy: Nordic. With the exception of Danish pastry and Swedish meatballs, pretty much everything I’ve ever seen, tasted, heard of or watched on a cooking show has fallen somewhere between “impossibly bland and tasteless” to downright revolting ([lutefisk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk) and [Surströmming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming)) For awhile there was a cooking show on my local PBS station that was Danish or Swedish… and while it looked like it was shot on the Sound of Music hillsides, the food was relentlessly uninteresting. > > The overwhelming impression I came away with: the food is as white as the land where it came from and the people eating it. I’d have to go with this, but I think they are handicapped by a limited _terroir_. They didn’t have as much to work with to develop a great cuisine, unlike say, France and Italy. Being blessed with a great terroir is really central to great French and Italian food: high quality and variety of native ingredients. Unfortunately, the recipes suffer when they are transplanted to other countries and lesser quality ingredients are substituted. Countries with the best cuisine have also taken care to develop and codify techniques to bring out the best of whatever ingredients are available. They learned how to layer flavors and balance textures. They care about food and the social aspects of eating. I’d put Asian (including South Asian), Mediterranean, Mid-Eastern, and (some) African cuisine in that category for the same reasons. > [@Trinopus](#): > > I’ve heard very bad things about Tibetan cuisine. Same problem here as the Nordic countries. What have they got besides Yak? ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/72 "2015-08-07T10:17:57Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I have the impression (perhaps an exaggerated or mistaken one – would welcome opinions from Dutch participants on the board) that Dutch cuisine has, for most people from other countries, little to recommend it. Stemming, I gather, from the severely Calvinist position of regarding people’s indulging themselves in any of the pleasures of the flesh, as sinful: with consequent seeking to make food less, rather than more, interesting. Dutch food tending thus to be wholesome, but very plain, and with few distinctive dishes (the savoury pancakes, being a definite exception to the above generalisation). > [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > Speaking as a Dutch Calvinist: There’s a big difference between Dutch American cuisine that you’d often find at a church potluck (ham on buttered buns, orange drink, Jello salad, bland green bean casserole, plain potato chips), and actual Dutch cuisine (stroopwafels, Dutch licorice, oliebollen, erwtensoep, bitterballen, stamppot with sausage). I wot not of Dutch American cuisine as described (I’m on the other side of the pond) – am glad, though, to find that I seem to have been mistaken about Dutch-proper food. That said: you bonkers Dutch people like _salty_ licorice, isn’t that so? I’ve tried licorice that way, once; and for me – sorry, but just no. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/73 "2015-08-07T10:44:26Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’m sure that Haggis and Hunter’s Stew are both, at the end of the day, perfectly edible. But they are at the lowest wrung of cuisine. Anything lower and you’re basically just looking at raw produce. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I’ve heard that haggis is very good. Never had a chance to try it, however. I’ve had haggis a few times – my feeling is that it’s pleasant enough, but a bit unexciting – simply, kind-of like a soft-textured, mildly spicy sausage / pate. For me, certainly didn’t live up to its fearsome reputation – that based, I reckon, on ingredients rather than taste. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/74 "2015-08-07T11:55:10Z")
**Švejk** Telling a poster “fuck you” for insulting national cuisine is way out of line. Warning Issued > [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Here’s an opinion: fuck you and your retarded cliches. Seriously, WTF. Try a Hema rookworst, and see how Calvinistic that is. Bah! ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/75 "2015-08-07T12:35:43Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Jewish food is Deli…and while I agree there are some scary things (gefilte fish? Gah) deli is also the flag flying over two of the greatest things ever invented: corned beef and pastrami. So no, Jewish is hardly the worst! Nitpick, but for what it’s worth gefilte fisch, chopped liver, bagels with cream cheese, lox, matzoh balls… and so forth are not the whole of Jewish cuisine, it’s specifically \*Ashkenazi \*cuisine. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews eat very different things - better, tastier things 😛 ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/76 "2015-08-07T13:02:07Z")
> [@Poysyn](#): > > Love the people, love the culture, love bagpipes, but all Scottish food I have ever tried is not good at all - oatcakes, Scottish egg, Haggis. The comedian Danny Bhoy does a whole stand-up routine about growing up on Scottish food. All I have to say is there are very few Scottish restaurants. Actually there are some spectacular, high end Scottish restaurants, as their natural ingredients are so good (and exported around the world) – angus beef, salmon, langoustines, oysters, in fact seafood in all its guises, to name but a few. Problem is, the poorer locals don’t eat much of it. Absolute hands down worst cuisine for me was Cuban. Now, I realise there has been a long standing blockade which hampers their choices, but the local cuisine consists entirely of: Scrawny friend chicken Random fried fish black beans rice boiled potatoes, and lobster. Lots of lobster. But not a herb or spice or variation in site. It will literally bore you to death. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/77 "2015-08-07T13:22:13Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > Absolute hands down worst cuisine for me was Cuban. Now, I realise there has been a long standing blockade which hampers their choices, but the local cuisine consists entirely of: > > Scrawny friend chicken > Random fried fish > black beans > rice > boiled potatoes, > > and lobster. Lots of lobster. > > But not a herb or spice or variation in site. It will literally bore you to death. This goes back to having quality ingredients. Cuban food in South Florida can be delightful. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/78 "2015-08-07T13:44:51Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > I guess you guys just got the wrong war refugees. I’m currently at a uni that sits smack dab in the middle of Paris’ Chinatown, which is more like Vietnamtown. There’s a working class pho joint like every five meters, and every time I went for some it was awesome. Great value to boot - something like 10 bucks get you enough broth to float a battleship in and enough meat & noodles to build it with. Yeah, around here (Dallas) and back where I grew up in Houston (SW Houston- Alief) pho is good stuff. Insipid would not be the word I’d use to describe the broth- it’s generally intensely beefy and well spiced, and comes with your choice of (for certain values of the word; stuff like “fatty tendon” is not my thing), rice noodles, green and regular onions, and what I think might be cilantro. Then there’s always that plate heaped with lime quarters, bean sprouts, ram-rao, cilantro, sliced jalapenos and some other stuff I can’t quite identify, along with the ubiquitous bottles of sriracha, fish sauce, hoisin and something similar to sambal oelek. And when you order the “regular”, it’s about 30 oz of soup, with the large seeming to be more like 40 or even more. I can’t say I’ve ever had a foreign cuisine that I’d mark down as uniformly terrible. Pretty much everyone has their staple starches that are bland, and every cuisine has something that’s an acquired taste and generally regarded as being nasty or tasting like ass to people not brought up eating it or something similar. And some cuisines aren’t particularly punchy or spicy in any way… but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad. A lot of Asian cuisines are pungent and spicy- sweet, sour, spicy, funky in ways that Northern European ones aren’t, but that doesn’t mean that the N. European dishes are bad either. People are bashing Nordic cuisine, but stuff like Swedish meatballs, pickled herring and gravlax are awesome. English cuisine has a reputation for blandness, but roast beef, pork pies, English cheese, fish & chips are great, and the English breakfast is probably up there with all the other amazing English inventions over the years- it’s awesome. Other “good” cuisines have some really funky and nasty stuff; people go on and on about French cuisine… which also has andouillette as one of its dishes, which is a sausage made from pig colon. By every account I’ve ever read, it’s straight-up nasty. Italians like all sorts of gross offal that we Americans shy away from. And so on and so forth around the world. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/79 "2015-08-07T14:10:46Z")
> [@camille](#): > > Being blessed with a great terroir is really central to great French and Italian food: high quality and variety of native ingredients. Unfortunately, the recipes suffer when they are transplanted to other countries and lesser quality ingredients are substituted. A saying you may like: food should be cooked in the same water that was used to raise it. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134/80 "2015-08-07T15:26:57Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Jewish food is Deli…and while I agree there are some scary things (gefilte fish? Gah) deli is also the flag flying over two of the greatest things ever invented: corned beef and pastrami. So no, Jewish is hardly the worst!.. I do adore a good corned beef on rye and rugula is a treat from the gods, but I stand by my statement. I have always been put off by the look and smell of the vast majority of Jewish cuisine I have encountered (I’m Jewish so I’m allowed to take potshots 😛 ). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-national-cuisine/727134.md?page=5)