Today, for the first time in my life, I took a photo of my dinner. It was the Dope’s fault. In an American diner in an industrial estate in the north of France, poutine was on the menu. I did not eat it for me, I ate it for science.
I only know of poutine because of the Dope. I gather it divides opinion. I don’t know if “Canada’s national dish of shame” is fair or accurate (its how I briefly described it to a mystified Mrs T). But it led me to ponder on the idea of a National Dish Of Shame.
No further definition is offered - why narrow the scope? I’m English, and I’ll offer as my national dish of shame The Full English Breakfast (particularly the version that comes with baked beans). It’s way too much for any meal, let alone breakfast. It’s full of fat/grease. It features baked beans in the morning. It comes with a mug of tea.
You may agree or disagree with this. But hey, let me know your proposal for your own (or - heh - someone else’s) National Dish Of Shame.
The US has a lot of shameful choices. So very many to choose from. Since we have to start somewhere, I’ll open with the corn dog. This staple of county fairs frequented by bumpkins is as far as one can get from haute cuisine.
Perhaps we need to create subcategories for the US like a Jello-meat “salad” category
I’m English as well and though I rarely eat it I think a well executed FEB is a thing of beauty.
I confess I’m struggling to come up with something that, no matter how well done, is something to be ashamed of. I think parsnips should be fired into the sun but I’m aware that’s far from universal and they don’t really count as a “dish”.
I do not have a national one for the US. I do have one for San Francisco - the clam chowder bread bowl. A hollowed-out mini loaf of perfectly good sourdough filled with chowder - an invention just for the tourists, of which there are many, and a way for restaurants to charge more and serve less soup, compared to a regular bowl. I guess you are supposed to break-up the separated top, or “stump” of the loaf on the soup, as well as eventually eat the rest of the loaf after you have spooned-out the soup. It ends-up as a soggy and chewy sourdough crust, most of which just gets thrown in the trash. Such a waste of good sourdough!
Edit: there are probably a lot of “regional” dishes of shame around the US.
There are two dishes that I have found out are pretty New York centric but I’m not ashamed of them at all.
Buttered roll with coffee regular
Jamaican patty with cheese
Maybe other people would look askance at a NY regular coffee with all the sugar and half and half (and also not quite know what a ‘hard roll’ is) and others without a large Caribbean population won’t know what a Jamaican patty is and those who do would scoff at how you can go to a pizzeria where they will open up the patty and put mozzarella on it and pop it back into the oven. But they’d be wrong.
I don’t think there are quite as many dishes of shame here in the U.S. as there were back when people served Fluffernutter sandwiches (peanut butter and marshmallow fluff between bread slices), Jello studded with carrots and grated cabbage, and noodle rings filled with a bland creamed tuna.
I nominate Hawaiian pizza, even though we’ve had that argument recently. (I’d spell it Hawai’ian were it not an insult to actual Hawai’ians, few of whom will actually eat the stuff.
Speaking of fair food, at the Texas State Fair the corn dog long ago metastasized into an ungodly proliferation of Deep Fried “X” — Oreos, butter, beer, ice cream, pecan pie, pop tarts, potato salad, etc. I know it’s just a novelty for most, but the seemingly endless willingness of fair goers to cram into their maws any food or food-adjacent item that has been coated in batter and fried in probably filthy cooking oil is disconcerting.