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Comment by roncesvalles | Hacker News Reader

1. Jamaican cuisine is fairly popular globally.

2. Patties are popular within Jamaican cuisine.

It's not something very niche. I think my comment was perfectly fair. It's like not knowing what empanadas, samosas, shumai, or takoyaki are (and yes, one would be uncultured for not knowing any of these too). It betrays something about the cosmopolitan-ness of your life experiences.

It's not even about geography. I'm pretty sure a good proportion of even Torontonians don't know about the Jamaican patty, and I'd call them uncultured too.

There's nothing wrong about being uncultured, it's not the end of the world. You can even work to improve it.

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If we're going by anecdotes, let's add mine: I've lived in 4 continents, about 15 countries, I speak 6 languages, I hold a few citizenships, I consider myself fairly cultured and not only I've never eaten a Jamaican meat patty but I've also never seen one for sale.

In fact the only way I know about their existence is through watching news reports of what happened in Canada in 1985.

How familiar are you with food from the Amazon basin region? I wouldn't consider you uncultured for not knowing much about it, but orders of magnitude more people eat food from the Amazon basin than Jamaican food.

That being said I'll gladly accept Jamaican restaurant recommendations in Taiwan or close to Berlin.

>In fact the only way I know about their existence is through watching news reports of what happened in Canada in 1985.

Since you know about it, the label doesn't apply to you, regardless of how.

Alright, buddy :-)

That’s not very fair. Can’t pretend for a second they or the many like them haven’t seen news about 1985 Canada?

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/2501/

"The average North American probably only knows about Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat!"

"And Oxtail Stew, of course."

"Of course!"

Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? If not, which ones are OK to be ignorant of? Clearly Jamaica's a must-have, but I'd like the full list so I can remediate the issue at once.

>Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured?

No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that.

>Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat! And Oxtail Stew,

Yes... I would expect one to know these. At least that oxtail stew is a popular Jamaican delicacy.

> No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that.

Man, I so don't care about food. I pay attention to it enough that it doesn't hurt me and gives me the nutrients I need.

193? Top five? 10-15? 50-75? I could not care less to have a standard regarding knowledge about cuisines.

I get what food I can from the options I have available to me and use the words on the menu or out of the staff's mouth.

Edit: stick to the point

You’re asserting that Jamaican is in the top 15?

That’s quite the claim.

> You should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least.

Leaving aside how ridiculous these numbers you pulled out of nowhere are, what godsent culturedness list are you using that is somehow so common knowledge and that yet the rest of us uncultured boneheads somehow missed the memo for? Even searching this now, and no disrespect whatsoever to Jamaica, I neither see "Jamaica" nor even "patty" listed in the top search result for the 100 top cuisines in the world [1]. For reference, they have Russian, Dutch, English, etc. listed, which (again, no disrespect intended) are the ones you often hear people complain/joke about as being bland.

[1] https://www.tasteatlas.com/best/cuisines

I'm from Australia where we really don't have any 'national dishes', so we just eat a wide variety of everyone else's dishes. I've never heard of ackee, saltfish, oxtail stew, or Jamaican beef patties. Does that make me uncultured? I'd argue not. Do you know what a schnitty is? Or a sausage sambo? Everyone here does, but I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to know about them because 'of course' they're everywhere and significant.

Everyone's perspective is from their local area, so please don't expect everyone globally to know about your local food, no matter how broadly you think it's known.

As an american i'm quite certain the Australian national dish is made with marmite as opposed to the misconception that kangaroo is unseasoned

I think you're vastly overestimating the popularity of Jamaican cuisine. I've never in my life seen a Jamaican restaurant. I've had Jamaican food at a Jamaican friend's house, it was pretty good, but I'd never heard about their beef patties until literally today just reading about them on here. If you live in a part of the world where it's more prominent, good for you, but not everybody does.

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