we have a very good traditional bread that is served with a sauce or maybe flavored oil
He’s british i guess.
British food is unironically great, and the stereotype is based on experiences during WW2 rationing. It’s made funnier that the people who say it comes from a country where people spray cheese from a can…
Look I have been to Britain and the best British food I had was Indian. “Indigenous” British food is rarely anything special. It isn’t usually god awful but I’ve never had British food that made me want to eat it again
Americans always try to paint British Indian food as not being British, but they’ll happily claim Tex-Mex as American. Same goes for pizzas and such.
Funny that.
I don’t think creole cuisine necessarily belongs to either culture but I generally tend to like them 👍
Didn’t realize British indian food was particularly different from indian in general tbh
Yeah, I’m not taking the “that’s not indigenous food” from an American who im sure will unironically attempt to claim pizza and the hamburger steak as American.
Sad to hear you don’t like apple pie though. I thought you guys loved that one.
I was referring to like, shephards pie when I said indigenous but honestly I have no idea if thats even the case. Regardless the cuisine of the colonizer is usually mid at best
Tbf, some people just throw mash potato over mince beef they’ve cooked with chopped tomatoes and soggy carrots. I used to think I hated it too, until I made it properly.
However, I feel thats like deciding how good American food is based on next door’s poor attempt at a dry meatloaf. We have plenty of bad cooks here who panic and make poor food that they take no time over. Maybe more than our fair share.
Also, we don’t cover up the taste of spoiling, poor quality, food by drowning it in sugar syrup and seasoning powder. That can take some time for palettes to adapt to.
Idk why you are making this a competition i don’t even like american food man. Shit’s kinda ass and I don’t eat meat or cheese so most of it is off limits.
Pointing out that I think someone is being a bit unfair and overly generalising isn’t making something a competition.
It genuinely does take time for people to adapt. That’s not point scoring.
I’ve never had shepherd’s pie, but I can’t imagine mutton in a pie is easy to get wrong. I eat something similar most days for breakfast. Sometimes there’s different seasoning and veggies and some organ meats added in, but it’s never bad, except for the time it was testicles.
Yeah I’ve honestly never had it be bad. My partner regularly makes a vegetarian shephard/cottage pie that I find very comforting though it doesn’t exactly conform to british standards of the dish. British food just isn’t interesting or spectacular in the way a lot of many other cuisines are. It is comforting and I can appreciate that but its doesn’t excite me.
I was in London for a couple of days, Ate at a hotel, a couple cafes, two pubs, a chip shop with one hell of a line. I must have missed something; flavors were low-key, under-seasoned, and under-spiced. The closest thing I got to flavor was breakfast; the sausage was decent, I think you fully understand sausage there. The beans and eggs were just kinda meh.
Then you have places like this catering to local tastes. https://www.oldelpaso.co.uk/products/extra-mild-super-tasty-fajita-kit
I think things are changing. People are starting to crave a little more spice. There’s no lack of curry shops with plenty of spice, but they’re not strictly British food.
Chip shops in London are always shit. It’s rare you get good fish and chips outside of seaside towns.
A good chippy is non-negotiable in a northern town. Dunno why but Londoners can’t even seem to get the basics like skinning and boning the fish, never mind getting the batter crispy and not wet.
Brits love spice. I think you just were very unlucky or choose the cheap slop.
explain the old elpaso then ;)
Cheap slop?
A full English breakfast is one of the best meals in the world.
British food is unironically great, and the stereotype is based on experiences during WW2 rationing
I think this overstates things. A substantial number of countries have their modern culinary culture defined in the post-war decades, though.
Japanese culinary identity came together after World War II, and many of the dishes and traditions defining their cuisine are recently invented or have evolved considerably during the post-war period: the popularization and evolution of ramen, katsu, Japanese curry, yakitori, etc. Even ancient traditions like sushi and Modern Japanese food draws a lot of influence from classic pre-war cuisine, but the food itself is very different from what was eaten before the war.
Even French cuisine underwent a revolution with nouvelle cuisine, heavily influenced by Japanese kaiseki traditions. Before the 20th century, French cuisine was about heavy sauces covering rich, slow-cooked foods (see for example the duck press and how that was used), and it took a few waves of new chefs pushing back against the orthodoxy to emphasize lighter, fresher ingredients. The most notable wave happened in the 1960’s, when Paul Bocuse and others brought in small, lighter courses as the pinnacle of fine dining.
Korean, Italian (both northern and southern), and American culinary traditions changed pretty significantly in the second half of the 20th century, as well, through changes in food supply chains, political or economic changes, etc. And that’s true of a lot of places.
Britain’s inability to shake off an 80-year-old culinary reputation comes in large part from simply failing to keep up with other more food-centered cultures that continually reinvent themselves and build on that classic foundation. Some of the criticism is unfair, of course, but it’s not enough to point at how things were 100 years ago as if that has bearing on what is experienced today.
The only reason Britain still has that reputation is because Americans repeat it mindlessly in media that the whole world consumes.
Like the teeth thing. In the 2000s, the UK alongside Germany had the joint healthiest teeth in the world (although now they’ve fallen to 8th after the Scandinavian countries upped their game). Did it stop the “Brits have bad teeth” gag in US media? No.
The US, for whatever reason, has been engaged in a cultural pissing match with the UK for a long time.
I think that’s true about us missing out on those post-war culinary revolutions due to rationing still being in place for a while, and food was pretty dire still in the 70s and 80s. In the 90s celebrity chefs with TV shows really started to revitalise food culture in the UK — there’s a reason Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver among others are pretty well known — but by then instead of reinventing British cuisine it became about adopting recipes from everywhere. The range of ingredients you could get in supermarkets expanded hugely and became more cosmopolitan, and now you were more likely to be entertaining guests with a tagine or churrasco than steak and kidney pie.
Full English is still better than all of that though.
due to rationing still being in place for a while, and food was pretty dire still in the 70s and 80s.
That was definitely true of Japan, too, where ramen was a poverty food popularized out of necessity, that then became a foundation for innovation up the value chain.
Same with Korea, where American occupation (and a whole history of foreign conquest and occupation) made for interesting combinations of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and American ingredients. Now Spam is probably bigger in Asia and the Pacific Islands than it ever was in America.
Same with many American food traditions being rooted in the slave trade (see West African food culture being remixed with new world ingredients and exported right back to the Americas in what would become southern U.S. and Caribbean food).
And of course there’s the broader discussion between the interplay between fine dining, casual dining, home cooking, industrial/mass production of prepared/processed foods, etc., that often creates its own foodways.
I’m biased in that I think the cultural mixing in the Americas makes for better food innovation, where so many American classics are some sort of mix of German, Italian, Mexican (which is itself a mix of indigenous and Spanish cuisine, while Spanish cuisine itself has significant North African influence), Caribbean/West African, with even a little bit of French Canadian influence mixing in on Cajun food.
Merely importing ingredients is only part of it. There’s a lot to be said for techniques, tools/equipment, and traditions, too.
My wife was just telling me about unironic british abominations on tiktok
Oh wow, tiktok? Must be true.
Brits: I like my food like I like my trousers. Beige and tasting of cotton.
The word “zeitgeist” makes more sense to me than the word culture. I know what “zeitgeist” means but the use of the word word culture is applied more generally to the point of being vague or anthropological. I grew up eating lots of McDonald’s so is my culture Scottish, or fast foody?
I was watching a Rob Reiner interview today (Rest in Peace 😭) and he paused to think of the best word to complete his thought, and while he paused I thought “zeitgeist” is the perfect word to describe what he’s talking about, and I KNOW that’s the word he was searching for, but he used three other words as a synonym to describe it, and now I see you using the word zeitgeist, and hey, thanks for making me feel a little more complete today.
Season’s Greetings!
I once saw a post where the guy said he was from Minnesota and he thought ketchup was too spicy.
I wanted to burn the heretic.
It’s definitely too strong a (sweet) flavor for me, but I just dislike adding sweet sauce to savory things. I also find barbecue and teriyaki sauce unpleasant for the same reason.
Chilies and spices are fine by me though, and tbf, I wouldn’t ever describe ketchup as spicy.
How do you know people like spicy food? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Yes, people in my culture often speak about the foods they enjoy.
Funny story. As a kid I’d laugh at my father, because he put black pepper on everything.
Today I have about nine different hot sauces on my spice rack.
If only it were actually “people often speak about the foods they enjoy” and not “you’re a weakling I love spicy everything’s spicy fuck not spicy” which is the reality for most morons.
That’s an unexpected bonus from living in a multicultural area.
The Asian and South American places serve truly hot food. The posers know not to ask for it ‘extra spicy.’
Implying that ketchup is spicy at all?
Maybe it is spicy ketchup or something? I don’t know. People who judge others’ spice tolerance belong in prison.
I agree. But if I give you table sugar and you tell me it’s spicy, then that’s not a question of spice tolerance. You just don’t know what the word spicy means.
Although, come to think of it, if you think ketchup is spicy, you may want to check if you’re allergic to one of the ingredients. Regular ketchup is absolutely not spicy.
How do you know people don’t like spicy food? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Wasn’t there some variant of christians that considered the pleasure of eating a sin thus that area has dull food?
The cultural equivalent of:
“So what do you like to do?”
“I like to have fun.”
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Sometimes we even include women
Greece
“I like to laugh”
I mean, I’ve never seen someone have a giggle and then frown and say: “that fucking sucked”
Well you guys eat tuna sandwiches for lunch. Thats not loving food.
Who are you talking to?
You guys
Bro has never been to England
Or a Presbyterian church service. I gotta give it to the Pentecostals, they might be a cult but at least they know how to party.
Or they’re dutch
What about sis?
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I admit, i made a bold assumption based on the name Kenny, but Ken is genderless, so my bad.
Or is from England and cannot imagine that a good food culture can mean more than: “I like the taste of some stuff and everyone else in my country consumes food too.”
I mean, I’ve had German and British food and I can confidently say it doesn’t seem like they love food, lol.
Have you tried Currywurst or Spätzle or Sauerbraten or any kind of German sausage or Mettbrötchen or German bread and still think we don’t love food?
I have used Mettbrötchen with success to scare foreigners away from my German food. “Yes zis bread has ze raw meat on it. Salmonella? Das ist eine possibility. Schweinepest? Worth it.”
Joke’s on you, it just made me love it more!
Lol sausage and ketchup, let’s pretend you didn’t mention Currywurst.
Spätzle might be the one exception, although the Swiss make it better.
Sausages, I don’t get your fetishization of it here. A random merguez from the local Arab place is still better than these.
And bread… Yeah, a billion sorts of it, still worse than a random French bakery’s baguette.
Germans never wonder why there’s no German restaurants abroad, go figure
Lived in Germany for years and had all of these. Love mettbrötchen, krustenbraten etc etc. BUT. I believe Germans don’t prioritize food. They will eat any cheap shit and save the money for beer. In the office a bunch of people - mainly foreigners - got together and arranged for a restaurant to be bringing food every day for a relatively cheap price. It was great. But most Germans would still prefer to go to Lidl and eat canned pasta for lunch. It’s not that they couldn’t afford it. They just didn’t want to spend €8 for food every day. Canned pasta and Birckenstock with white socks dude. Every day.
OK, some people are just lost. Canned pasta are disgusting. And I promise that I won’t go further than to my mail box in Birckenstocks ;)
I don’t think I’ve ever had bad food in Germany. In England my limited experience is mixed, some good, some bad and some interesting lunch choices like salted peanuts.
Sounds like you’ve never had Finnish food
I haven’t had the pleasure yet.
German food is underated. Apple strudel with vanilla sauce is amazing. Like a sweet lasagna. Genius!
That is more of a southern thing if not Austrian
Sorry Germany, you lose again🤷
Apfelstrudel is definitely not just a southern treat. Germknödel / Hefedampfnudeln are a regional (and delicious) food. Other typical south german foods would probably be schweinshaxe and several types of sausages specific to that region. Also all the austrian versions of foods such as palatschinken
Before you say that, maybe read the history of those treats first. Apfelstrudel is Austrian/Hungarian not even German. And Germknödel are likewise not common in Northen Germany but a Bavarian/Austrian dessert.
Northen German desserts are Rote Grütze, Windbeutel, Franzbrötchen and Pfannkuchen as well as fruitsoup with Klütchen. All those varying from region to region some being more prevalent in the East some in the west.
But you’re definetly wrong on your take.
If you look at the history you can describe no food as German as the concept of a unified German state is very modern.
At best you could only describe foods regionally, but then that’s problematic because you are using terms that were applied after WW2 as many states were regrouped.
Where does it stop?
Okay im trying not to be rude here but before you accuse me of not knowing what i am taking about, perhaps read what i write at all. I know the impulse to be snarky is strong on the internet but still, at least put the minimum effort in.
I did not at any point refer to historical origins of any food. I stated where these kinds of food are being eaten these days; according to my experience. Strudel is a commonplace dessert around the holidays even here in Niedersachsen. Germknödel i specifically mentioned as a typical, southern regional food since it is a lot less common (although not entirely unknown) up here.
I don’t think there even is a true Pan-German dish. Everything is regional in germany. And sourhern germany is still germany.
I’d wager bread and Bratwurst are the main pan-German dishes with minor differences in style
Bread in general is a pan-world dish
The “bread” a lot of the world calls by that name does not even deserve that term. It should be called “toast”, cause the only thing it’s good for is getting toasted.
I can confidently say that north and south american, aswell as north central asian bread isn’t. Many others only have one specific local bread variety, which are good but do not constitute culinary bread cultures.
You insulting Central-Asian bread can only mean that you lack any taste in regard to bread, or that you actually haven’t eaten Central-Asian breads, and perhaps only tasted a stale lavash shipped to you over two weeks.
I accidentally ordered a wurstsalat once. I have opinions after that expirence
At least mine had the decency to be in a dark pub hidden from the light
Honestly, it doesn’t sound like the worst combination.
A US version would be spam and bread and butter pickles?
Spam isn’t the right meat, tasted like shredded hotdogs
And to add on that, yes German food can be very good. If you try it out though, be aware of what is regional in the area you’re in. To familiarize yourself, just read the wikipage on German food
We absolutely love our bread in germany
Very true, they’re bread (and beer) connoisseurs!
German bread and beer is good. The only problem is that they have extremely narrow definitions of what makes good beer and bread. For example, the Reinheitsgebot law means that most German beer tastes the same. It’s not that it tastes bad, but the number of varieties is lower as a result. Similarly, with bread, Germans like a very specific style of bread. Sometimes they put seeds on it. But you have to search to find naan, corn bread, challah, roti, milk bread, injera, etc.
I recently learned about German bread and damn it looks legit af! But I’m a sucker for a lot of Bavarian food. Been lucky to eat a HOFBRÄUHAUS in the States and it was really good
Good lord, the funniest thing I remember from college German was how easy it was to distract Frau Professorin from her lecture by just mentioning bread.
I’ve had the pleasure of dining at one of Heston Blumenthal’s restaurants and I can categorically say that it was the most wonderful dining experience of my life
Lots of Germans defending German cuisine, so as another German: you are absolutely right!
Germany has some great food and some Germans love making good food but German culture is absolutely not about food. The food culture we have is a development of the last ~40 years. Traditional German food is supposed to make you sated so you can go back to the fields and work! And the go to the army and fight! And then go to the ruins and rebuild!
Tasty and awesome food? Yes! A culture that tells you it loves food? No!
Now I want to try this brand spanking new cuisine you speak of. It has become my life mission. 👀
Döner
Next do tacos and kebabs.
Swedish food is the same!
Traditional German food is supposed to make you sated so you can go back to the fields and work! And the go to the army and fight! And then go to the ruins and rebuild!
This is frickin awesome. Ima tell this to my German-American relative. They come from a family of farmers, come to think of it.
You haven’t had the right german food then.
The Germans love their döner kebabs, possibly even more than the British love their chicken tikka masala
When I meet a German outside of Germany, it’s not german-style beer or doner they’re hurting for, it’s a german bakery.
I’m addicted to British doner kebab, much better than the ones in France IMO.
How about the ones in turkey?
I could literally live on plain potatoes for the rest of my life and I’d be fine with it. My ancestors must have been as culinarily boring as possible.
TBF, potatoes slap. Potatoes and rice are like 80% of my fatass diet, lol.
And then, even Englishmen look down on Scots who think oats porridge is human food.
hell yeah corporate culture
My kind of people. “We see food as necessary but not really a key part of enjoying life”
I used to think that way in general, and personally I am still a bit like that. It’s just one piece of figuring out how to get my brain & body to cooperate with me.
But something I have learned, for me at least, is that leaning into things that engage a variety of your senses in a positive way is often a good thing. And even better if it leads to good interactions with other people that matter to you (insert boo-hiss from my introverted recluse AuDHD side).
I think in the US especially, we often treat food as a necessary evil rather than just a necessity. People don’t have time to waste on preparing healthy food and then eating it with their family. They need to focus on the “important things” like putting in long hours at the office so that they can afford to drive a BMW home instead of some pleb Honda shit. They’ll just grab some fast food or something in a box that will fill stomachs provide some macros to sustain life in the near term, and everything will be just fine.
The alternative is thinking food is more important than working toward securing a house that you own, or paying off your student loans, or retraining yourself so you don’t go broke, or any number of other things. Food is cool but it’s just not all that.
Nah I don’t think that’s the alternative. It’s not about dedicating your life to it. It’s about allowing yourself some nice experiences to enhance your daily life even though you have very important bills to pay and can’t just buy whatever food you want.
I didn’t even comment because I’m some kind of cooking or dining enthusiast. It was more about the general attitude (which I very much grew up with) essentially that it is silly and self-indulgent to stop and smell the roses when there’s money to be made or work to be done. Basically the conservative culture where being a good human means being a productive boot-licking worker bee and not getting into all that touchy-feely human stuff.
The thing is, I just don’t enjoy food that much. It’s not that enjoyable most of the time. If you’re eating the way your doctor wants you to it’s going to be unpleasant. It’s better to just treat it as a slog that it is instead of using it as an escape. Imo.
i mean. have you encountered soylent culture? white people get marketed to like eating sucks and all your nutrients should come in a tube
I loved that shit, saves me so much more time to do things I enjoy. But it’s expensive, so I don’t have it any more.
Eating is a chore to get nutrients into my body, and I often forget to eat for large periods. A quick drink is so much better (except during winter when it’s cold).
This is not meant to be a counter, I’m curious: have you? Cause I haven’t, and I’ve always wondered who the target audience for that stuff is. Everybody I know thinks it’s stupid, and I’ll at most use drinkable food for health reasons (as in, if they have really sore teeth and can’t chew or sth like that, or can’t keep solids down) or if they’ve misplanned and can’t have real food (like between two appointments).
that’s where i’m at, too, but i’ve known a few people who view their body’s need for nutrition as an impediment to their ability to be productive. they’re very sad people…
I used to make my own soylent because it was dirt cheap and I couldn’t be bothered to spend all that time in the kitchen every day. I still cooked once a week, did meal prep and whatnot, but breakfast would be a carrot, lunch would be a nap and dinner would be a cold oaty soylent most weeknights. I just enjoyed not cooking and cleaning more than I enjoyed food. And because it was diy, I could make the soylent powder the way I liked it.
I tried it back when I was trying to gain weight. The powdered Soylent was absolutely awful.
Did you ever find anything that tasted like food and wasn’t just sugar or protein powder for weight gain? I never did and dirty bulking makes me feel gross but adding the things to protein supplements to make them more foodlike increases volume so much and then I’d just end up with worse versions of regular food.
Hm, if we’re talking protein shake, I like to buy unflavoured pea or soy protein powder then mix with soy or oat milk and blend in fruit, nut butters, frozen berries.
Not really. I ended up following the P90X diet which basically meant I was eating 5 full meals a day.
I rely pretty heavily on meal replacement shakes (not Soylent; they taste like ass, and not the good kind). It’s part of what allows me to actually enjoy solid food. I’m sure you can imagine that force feeding yourself something that you normally enjoy would quickly make you form negative associations with that food.
Hollywood actress culture
Well my culture loves watching TV and vegging out!
