Foods The USA Has No Clue About

[Alix]

Just an FYI GB, I prefer the ones that are in the tomato based sauce to the ones in the molasses based sauce, but that is purely preference on my part. As to the flavour thing, well for me it was more about the texture. Bush's beans were more mooshy than I like. Heinz are firmer and less sweet.

 

[LEFSElover]

Well now you've gotten my interest up regarding the Heinz beans. Can someone please tell me what to ask my friends to buy for me in LGW or LHR or anywhere they may be traveling in England. I can go and search out the markets there too when I return to working, but for now, it's going to have to be a favor I ask of a friend or two. What's it called exactly? TIA.

Thrilled to see that Urmaniac13 and I are completely on the same page regarding Olive Garden or California Pizza Kitchen. DH and I have been to both, several times. I can say unequivocally, those times are in the past for good. We have never had one good thing in either. What's the big deal about (is beyond us). And yes Urmaniac13, there is no Italian food anywhere that is even close to the masterpieces they concoct in Italy. It's worth a trip there, seriously, simply to eat their cuisine. I have never in any of my travels, eaten like that, with such gusto and eager apprehension nor enthusiasm, and don't think that experience will ever be again, until I/we go again that is.

The experience I have had in England (per se) in the markets there, have been pretty much lack luster due to me not knowing what I should be looking for (to then) bring home here. I do know of two incredible finds that I knew I had to bring home from when I was a little girl and my best friends' parents were from England. Her grandma lived with them and everyday that I was there for breakfast, I was always given a cup of tea, milk and sugar, tea leaves in bottom of tea cup. Let me tell you what? I adored that tea. Never had anything like it since. Her grammie also made the most moist odd flavored cake I'd ever had. Very different for this little girls taste buds. Almost bland. If I could pin point the flavor I would but can't and she {my friend still} (to this day) can't help me with what her grammies ingredients were. I guess that's something that will be forever in my memory and also, forever saddly gone now. But, my favorite lunch eating over there was bar none peanut butter sandwiches on her grammies home made white bland bread, sliced thin, with Lyle's Golden syrup on them. And the desserts she made using Treacle. I own both in my pantry. When I want a good memory, I make home made white bread, not as good as hers of course, and spead it with Skippy and Lyles. Yumm.........takes me right back to Kathy and I on our horses or someone else's ponies, up in the mountains in Chatsworth California. "Those" were the days.

 

[licia]

I know that much of the food in restaurants here don't have exactly the same type in Italy, France, etc. But I have Italian relatives and they learned to cook while living there. Some of the dishes are very good and some have been Americanized. It really doesn't matter to me if one type food is true to the beginnings or not, as long as they are good. Sometimes they are improved over the original version - sometimes not. I like some of the things at Olive Garden, some at the french restaurants and some in Mexican, etc places. Due to availability of different ingredients the dishes would naturally be a little different. That benefits our country and others. From some who have travelled widely, I understand it is much easier to find American type dishes in other countries now. Also when visitors come from other countries they seem to greatly enjoy American food. It seems to be the best for both worlds.

 

[Ishbel]

I travel a lot (and I am really grateful to have the opportunities to do so) and have done so since I was a very young child, when my Dad was in the army. We lived in Singapore and other points around the globe. I've travelled to Australia and the middle east, and to many European countries, including lots of the Greek islands... All I can say is: the dishes of each country are worth studying and trying to repeat in your own home. However, the authentic taste is often lost, simply because tomatoes grown here, instead of Italy for instance, do not have that special flavour... Breads never taste the same - 'French' bread needs to be made in France to taste authentic.

That's not to say that we shouldn't TRY to emulate the dishes... of course we should!

The one thing that I have always found difficult in the USA is the way that I am 'overfaced' with food! Smaller portions are the norm here, and I cannot bear an overloaded plate!

 

[amber]

I agree with Jenny. I am married to a brit and lived there for a few years.

for sure they have us beat on:
sausages
bacon
baked beans in a tin (Heinz) for beans on toast

for fast food:
fish & chips
donner kebabs

there are a few other things we miss, but these are the big things available here that don't even begin to compare.

Wow, another fellow Mainer! I'm married to a brit too! My husband would agree about the bacon, sausage too. And he loves the heinz beans for beans on toast (Shaws sells heinz beans). He also misses a good curry, which we dont seem to have here in Maine.

 

[licia]

Ishbel, I bought a product called "Petticoat Tails" which remind me of something between a flat scone and shortbread. Are you familiar with these? They taste great and I would like to make them myself. Have you ever made them and if so, do you have a recipe? Thanks a bunch!

 

[Ishbel]

Traditionally, petticoat tails is just the description for Scottish shortbread that has been 'fluted' around the edges before baking (said to resemble the edge of a lady's petticoat!)

This was a thread on Scottish shortbread that I started some time ago - there are a lot of good points made in the thread!
http://www.discusscooking.com/forums/f10/shortbread-4531.html?highlight=shortbread+scotland

There is an illustration of petticoat tail shortbread (the triangular shaped pieces in the photograph) on the Dean's shortbread site The Dean Shortbread is soooooo much better than that awful Walker's stuff so loved by tourists to take home as a 'treat'....!
http://www.deans.co.uk/

 

[texasgirl]

I am feeling very sheltered here!! Now I want to travel and see what the big deal is on the food. I've only eaten what's here. Born, raised and still in Texas

 

[licia]

I bumped up the thread on shortbread since the questions you answered were linked to that.

 

[AndreainDC]

Wow, another fellow Mainer! I'm married to a brit too! My husband would agree about the bacon, sausage too. And he loves the heinz beans for beans on toast (Shaws sells heinz beans). He also misses a good curry, which we dont seem to have here in Maine.

Good to know about Shaws. Have been shopping at Hannaford's since we moved up here a few months ago.

I agree about the curry - loads of great options in England. Found a few places in DC we liked, but haven't stumbled across a favorite up in Maine yet.

Where are you? We're in Brunswick.

 

[mish]

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

 

[daisy]

I'm not speaking from first-hand experience, but from information received from other people who have been to America.

According to the majority, there's not much in the way of food that Americans have got right! My poor DIL goes there on business, and says there's an excellent chance if her trips are longer than expected, that she might starve to death. The bread is inedible - miles too salty - and everything just swims in grease. She's been to some fancy restaurants and stayed in good hotels etc, but she said she hasn't had a decent meal over there at all! She visited some hamburger place in LA famed for the best hamburgers in the world (I forget the name) and after she'd drained off about a cup of fat from it, she just walked out. Breakfast is perhaps the worst meal of all. Toast either overdone or underdone, eggs ditto, bacon so fatty, and everything with about a truckload of salt in it. Even things like cookies, cakes and desserts she's found inedible for the amount of salt in them.

Other people have said Americans just can't do a decent meat pie, or plain old fish and chips.

The most common comment is that everything is overdone - it's too big, too salty, too sweet, too fatty, too many choices (like 100 different kinds of ice cream in one place!).

As I say, I can't speak from personal experience, but if this is so, it's very sad, and from my point of view, it's even sadder that Australia seems to be following similar trends. No wonder our population is obese and heart attacks and stroke kill us off by the million. Convenience foods are handy in an emergency, but when you're living on them - well, you don't live for too long! I have heard it said that malnutrition is far more common in advanced countries than in Third World countries. Something like 60-70% of our children are malnourished. Not starved, just not well-fed. And it's adversely affecting our intelligence levels, apparently. (Sorry, can't give sources, but these things came to me via my DIL, a biological research scientist currently investigating diseases etc caused by malnourishment.)

On the bright side, I'm informed that Americans have got Apple Pie pretty well down pat. Pity I don't like apple pie!!

 

[buckytom]

has anyone ever been to nyc?

while yes, there's lots of crap out there, there are some really fantastic places to eat here, from a corner breakfast bistro, to a full high end restaurant of some of the world's best cuisine.
no, it isn't paris, or rome, but i'll bet you can't get good korean bbq for lunch, then have dinner at a top notch swedish restaurant, then have homemade brazillian desserts just down the block from each other in those cities, admittedly the centers of the world for great cuisine. not having been to any of these countries, i've relied on co-workers, friends, and even tourists who were only here for a short time for their reviews, and far more often than not, they were pleasently surprised at how good the food was here. you just have to go looking, usually not all that far.
you can get a half way decent meal from just about any country anywhere in the world. you can't do that in too many places on the globe.

i do want to thank everyone from taking it easy on the criticism. america bashing is easy (heck, except the burnt effigies, we're pretty good at it ourselves), and it gets old very fast.

sorry i'm cranky, but i found this thread to be in very bad taste. not everyone's responses, but just the idea of the thread. it's easy to find dirt and crap, just look down.

but to quote monty python, "always look on the bright side of your life"... (i'll bet you're whistling, aren't you)

now, with that said, back to the thread. after all, freedom of speech is one of our tastiest dishes.

 

[Ishbel]

We are really lucky in the UK, too... We have had waves of immigration (not on the scale of the USA or Canada of course, which truly are immigrant nations) - and most of the groups have assimilated very well - so well, in fact, that we are now told that chicken tikka masala has replaced roast beef and yorkshire pudding as our 'national' dish!

During the last world war, Edinburgh was used as a base by various national groups, eg Free Polish forces, Free French etc.... Oh, and Edinburgh Castle was used as a PoW camp for Italian soldiers. Many of them were extremely attractive to the local girls(!) who they married after the war and settled here... I went to school with as many girls called D'Agostino, D'Angelo, Risi etc, as I did with girls called Stewart, MacPherson, Gilzean etc! This has meant that we have many, many regional restaurants. Our Italian ones are great, but so too are Indian (mostly run by Bangladeshis, by the way!), Japanese, French,Polish, Jamaican, South African and other national cuisine places.

I live by the maxim of trying not to say 'Things are so much better/tastier/cleaner/etc at home'.... Things aren't BETTER, they are just 'different' in foreign countries.... I have to admit though..... I'm not keen on Mexican food (what IS it with those refried beans and things?!) - apart from that, I'm game to try most things... after all, I come from a nation whose national dish is HAGGIS!

 

[mish]

BT, I'm glad you spoke up here. Sadly, I'm more than a little offended with daisy's observations, particularly since the comments were going by what you've heard. But, we're a friendly site and everyone is welcome to their opinion. Have a great day.

 

[licia]

Of course there are restaurants with less than really good food, but we have lots of them with the best of food. I don't know where Daisy is from, but I would put our choices up against any place. We may not have the exact same food, but we probably have more choices of good food than any place.

 

[urmaniac13]

Hey, gastronomic preferences are so subjective, something that is totally exquisite for someone can make some other go

(for example... caviar in my case...)

If some one like or dislike something that doesn't mean he/she is wrong or right, and as long as each people enjoy what they cook or eat, that is perfectly fine..... let's not get too emotional over someone else's comment, we are only expressing our personal opinions here

 

[Jikoni]

Interesting thread.Got me thinking. Our friends visited us here in Suisse from Canada and the US a few years back, and were surprised at the way everyone eats salad with their meals here and another thing was the lack of jar baby foods, in one supermarket,there were about 3 different kinds of about 20 jars of baby food on a small shelf of a huge supermarket.Well apart from food, they were fasinated by our little villages and small roads and small cars and small supermarket trolleys.Living here, I have to go to a British supermarket in France to get our family supply of sausages and bacon, the sausages here are just not right for us! On arrival in the Uk my mother-in-law ensures a hearty meal of fish and chips and mushy peas. Suisse is quite interesting, everybody seems to go out for lunch for a proper sit down meal and a glass of wine. People hardly grab a bite and eat it in their office.

 

[GB]

I think for some people the meaning of this thread has been lost so please let me clarify my intention behind starting it. It was not intended as a thread to highlight how food in the USA can be bad or done poorly. And the only reason I picked the USA is because I live here.

My intended purpose was to see what types of things we eat here that are done so much better elsewhere, but that the majority of people just do not even realize (like tea). This is not to say that Americans have no concept of good food. We have some amazing things here in every state. And this question could just as easily be posed to other countries about their own foods as well. Every single country has things they do better than anyone else and things that they try to emulate that they just do not get right at all. That is not a negative comment or bashing a particular country or anything like that. It is just a fact, plain and simple. it is what makes food so interesting from place to place.

 

[Ishbel]

GB
Like most countries, the UK has more than its share of crappy cafes, restaurants and pubs. Too many pubs (whether tourist or for locals) offer too many bought-in microwavable dishes. You could order lasagna in a pub in London or in Southampton or in Penzance... and if the supplier is the same source.... they taste EXACTLY the same - no regional differences at all!

We all need to be selective in what we choose to eat and WHERE we choose to eat - this drives up the quality of the food available; which can only be of benefit to us ALL!