Unpopular opinions go here

[Reynard]

I'm in Tucson the rest of the week. What MUST I eat?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree with you on a lot of stuff, but not this. Regional variety of cuisine is a real thing, even in the USA. Yes, there are national chains that, unfortunately, people eat at...but that doesn't erase regional cuisine. Local restaurants, local flora and fauna. Local cultures and mixes of cultures. Enclaves of foreign cultures. Fusion between those various cultures. Etc. That's still a real thing regardless of how many McDonald's there are.

Maybe.

I suspect if we compiled a month of at-home dinners from posters around the US, it would be difficult-to-impossible to guess who lived where. In contrast, if we had enough Mexican posters, I think their differences are more stark.

In any case, it's a matter of degrees; I don't think there's a binary test we can apply to see whether or not the US truly has regional cuisines.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I blame our British heritage for the bad food and our French heritage for the resistance to culinary innovation.

I still maintain that the British Empire was largely driven by everyone trying to find something better to eat.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm in Tucson the rest of the week. What MUST I eat?

This is a pretty compelling list.

 

[Reynard]

This is a pretty compelling list.

THANKS!

 

[Gradine]

I still maintain that the British Empire was largely driven by everyone trying to find something better to eat.

The problem is mostly that they found it. They found a lot of it. And then they found out how to make all of it but without any flavor.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The problem is mostly that they found it. They found a lot of it. And then they found out how to make all of it but without any flavor.

I am medium-scared to try "curry" the next time I visit the UK.

 

[CleverNickName]

I am medium-scared to try "curry" the next time I visit the UK.

It's actually pretty good.

The trick is to clear your mind of expectations. Don't order the curry in the UK, and expect it to be like the curry you might get in India or Japan or anywhere else. It won't be. Let it be UK curry...let it be its own thing, like Creole or "Tex-Mex," here in the states.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be fair to Americans, in the 21st century, we don't really have regional native cuisine. Sure, every region may have one or two signature dishes, but I can expect to be served the same food, generally speaking, in Bar Harbor, Maine, as I would in Kansas City (either one!) or in San Diego.

The fact that the rest of the world is not like this -- that the English, insanely, have a different accent every 20 miles -- is hard for us to wrap our minds around.

While not to the degree to countries that have, well, history, I dunno; once you get outside of chains that deliberately keep everything as similar as possible everywhere, you tend to run into a lot of variations even on the same "dish" as you move to different areas (some of them interesting, some--not so much. My wife tells a story about visiting family in Delaware in her youth and having them take them to a local "Mexican" restaurant (she was raised in Texas). She characterized it is kind of a cosmic horror in food form...). But as an example from pseudo-Italian food, there's a pretty wide variety of approaches to pizza across the country.

(Admittedly, there are things the American taste pallet doesn't deal with short of foreign-originated cuisines pretty much at all, but I still think its easy to underestimate how differently some things are prepared in different places. Though its fair to argue they aren't really "native" cuisines in some cases.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Maybe.

I suspect if we compiled a month of at-home dinners from posters around the US, it would be difficult-to-impossible to guess who lived where. In contrast, if we had enough Mexican posters, I think their differences are more stark.

In any case, it's a matter of degrees; I don't think there's a binary test we can apply to see whether or not the US truly has regional cuisines.

Well, there's absolutely what I once heard in my youth referred to as Great American Bland. And some may eat that more than not. That's just far from everything.