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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what to tell you, if you think the cuisine available in the US isn't great it's because you aren't looking. The "tossed salad" nature of the country comes out in full force to create a food scene that holds its own against anywhere in the world. Even if you restrict yourself to classic American cuisine the food is still world class.

One of my absolute favorite things to do any time a friend from overseas who only knows American food from our media portrayal comes to visit is to take them out to eat and watch their eyes light up. The best reaction I got was from a UK friend I met on WoW— "good lord I see why you're all so fat" said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. If there's one thing America can do it's cook.

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Wording a criticism as a semi-compliment is typically British.

Not realizing this is typically American.

Am Brit, that stood out to me too. I mean, I've made the same comment, so I know what was intended. (See my next comment for another example of this "skill").

I mean I guess this could have been the case but this guy in particular was originally from South Africa and living in the UK at the time and is in now in the process of immigrating to the US after marrying one of our other guild members. So unless it's also a British thing to commit to an underhanded compliment for years and continue snarfing down American food every time he visits I'm gonna assume he continues to be genuine.

So American ;)

> Even if you restrict yourself to classic American cuisine the food is still world class [...]

> [...] said through a mouthful of cheeseburger

> If there's one thing America can do it's cook

FWIW, a variety of other opinions exist :)

Incidentally, our President today really likes his cheeseburgers.

I don't blame him.

> a UK friend

UK is also a place with amazing immigrant/ex-colonies cuisine (as in great places to eat), but if we were talking about the British cuisine itself, getting above it is far from a high standard.

It's still there under the surface, and it's still good. But it's not fashionable (when was the last time you had kedgeree, cullen skink or lardy cake?) Stichelton, about two years ago, was a religious experience but it's £30/kg and is the output of a single herd.

Our day-to-day diet is poor (we're probably the most Americanized European country when it comes to diet), but there are good bones we could build on. Someday. A lot was lost to industrialization and WWII and can't be recovered, but much still survives.

It's possible that the… uh, 4? I think? Times I've spent a month in the USA, covering California, Nevada, Utah, NYC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts (and Connecticut, only on the way through, but had a pizza there) may have not been diverse enough to fully encompass your cuisine, but…

But the food I actually saw in the USA was mediocre.

I didn't have any interest in 20 varieties of Oreo or bars of chocolate with bits of pork in it (for the latter, I'm vegetarian); the stuff that Whole Foods sold had slightly less flavour and variety than European discount stores like Aldi, Trader Joe's might as well have been a corner shop; the fancy restaurants were merely OK, the only positive of the fast food joints was the low cost, the "oh, you gotta try this while you're in Manhattan!" cafes and diners were on par with the random UK town centre breakfast diners you try once to see what they're like and never go back to, all the pubs were somehow even worse than Wetherspoons (UK chain with a bad reputation), the "cheese sauce" on tortilla chips was on par among the absolute worst approximations of cheese I have ever encountered.

And why is half your yoghurt thickened with gelatine, anyway?

The best food I had in the country was at a place covered by an NDA; but even that, the best, was "4 stars out of 5" by European standards.

I had the pleasure of entertaining a colleague from China who was visiting Portland while we worked at a conference some years back. She had offered many similar complaints about American food as you did. But the places I took her to (which were themed, respectively, as Argentine and Russian) seemed to abolish that completely.

America, outside of New York and maybe Orlando, isn't really set up to entertain international visitors. Many restaurants charge a high price because they serve food that kids like and parents can tolerate. Fast food is optimized to eat in the car; delivery pizza is optimized to be delivered, which is something you should never do to a decent pizza. Nachos are a meme. Whole Foods was good ten years ago; a decent host should have pointed you to Wegman's or Market Basket or Publix. Trader Joe's is great when you live here and you want to get a good price on a bag of "wild rice" (manomon) or pecans, but you wouldn't usually live off of it.

If you want to enjoy the food here, you probably need to go with a local.

>And why is half your yoghurt thickened with gelatine, anyway?

Because Americans didn't eat yogurt until they started marketing the fat-free stuff as a diet food. Real yogurt is an afterthought for most manufacturers, though Dannon sells the real thing. Now everyone has switched to strained ("Greek") yogurt so the market for the normal kind is even less.

I think when comparing where to live, it's more helpful to look at what's normal. That's what you're going to be eating at mealtimes at work, it's what your kids are going to eat at school or their friend's place, etc. It's what you get when the company moves its office away from New York and you have to follow.

> Whole Foods was good ten years ago

My visits there were between Christmas 2014-15 and the end of summer in 2018, Whole Foods wasn't that good even on the first trip.

> If you want to enjoy the food here, you probably need to go with a local.

I did, that's how I got the "oh, you gotta try this while you're in Manhattan!" cafe — can't even remember the name of that cafe now — and Whole Foods, and the Co Op in Davis, CA: https://maps.app.goo.gl/38HdERDX99vxBzF66

Overall your description seems to be broadly agreeing with me, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to "abolish" my low regard for American cuisine?

>My visits there were between Christmas 2014-15 and the end of summer in 2018, Whole Foods wasn't that good even on the first trip.

Shows something about my perception of time. I have some fond memories of the first time I went to Whole Foods in 2003 when I was eleven at math camp in Charlotte. At that point the "organic food" movement was just getting started, so food labeled "organic" was usually from independent farms, and the store had so many free samples you could practically have lunch for free. By the time I was in college I was going to a warehouse market (Your Dekalb Farmers Market in Atlanta).

I'm not sure why you would go to a grocery store as a tourist?

>Co Op in Davis, CA:

Davis is a very small town that basically just serves the University. Why would you go there? Was it for a symposium? I'm sure it was pretty good for local produce by the standards of a small town when it was the season in California, but it's not exactly the sort of place where you would normally visit. I lived an hour away for five years and never went.

Anyway it just seems like you got some dubious advice, and on behalf of America, I'm sorry.

> Davis is a very small town that basically just serves the University. Why would you go there?

My partner at the time had family living there, working at the university; this is also how my trips were each a month long.

So you think the US government should appoint someone to make our food healthier?

I'm not proposing anything, let alone that specific thing. And I'm not even writing about health, this is about taste.

If you want to surprise the entire world by having your government do anything like that, entirely your choice.

But it would be a surprise, especially as the people your electorate just voted in appear to be against all regulation and federal agencies.

Americans voting for that would be as much of a surprise as the President demanding transfer of ownership of an ally's territory and refusing to rule out use of military force to get that.

Their BBQ culture isn't bad if you avoid the sauces.

One of the BBQ sauce's is mustard based and not overly full of sugar.

Uhh, if you're comparing to the UK, maybe. Walk into a random restaurant in any big city in the US and you're going to have a bad time.

Walk into a restaurant in Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Seoul, Tokyo, Lisbon, the food is going to be much better.

Maybe at the top, the very best restaurants, the US holds its own. But the standard for the average restaurant is low.

I don't disagree with this assessment at all, the food at a randomly chosen restaurant in Paris was better than randomly choosing in the US. I had the same experience in Prague. Not usually "wow" but far from disappointing. But I've lived my whole life with the mantra that 90% of everything is shit so mediocre food places existing anywhere doesn't affect my read of the scene overall.

It's not usually the "top" restaurants that are the best in the US, I take people to dives, little holes in the wall, and greasy food trucks that just happen to be where some artisan decided to hone their craft. The place that cheap plastic tables and still has a line every day.

There are amazing craftspeople of any craft in the US. Far more than any other place I've been to. Cooking, or rather restauranteuring, is no exception. But the average restaurant is... not that.

I worked at a village next to Geneve and the local restaurant was really good considering the price and location. (Cafe American in the city for the rack of lamb which is exquisite -- if they are still there; this is circa 2000)

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