For example, Marmite Crumpets don’t exist. You cannot buy them at the supermarket. To be clear: you can buy crumpets, you can buy marmite, you can buy butter; but you have to assemble them at home.
If you walk into a breakfast cafe, they will happily serve you sausage / egg / bacon / french toast / bubble / squeak (whatever that is). But no marmite crumpets. If you ask them to make it, they will give you a very strange look. It’s not typically offered. It’s something you just have to make at home.
It is unbuyable. Any tourist who comes to the UK to try a Marmite crumpet would need to bring a toaster or an oven with them, or quickly befriend a brit and hope that they have all the ingredients at home.
It’s not a secret. You just can’t have it.
*munches into crumpet thoughtfully, and salivates at the juicy savory delight, whilst staring at you pityingly and condescendingly*
Anyway, what’s something that I could never experience unless I made it myself in your local?
Food that is actually spicy. I know it is available at some locations on earth, but I do not live within 500 miles of any of them. The only place near me that even offers a legit hot sauce is a food truck and that one is still a bit tame.
I’ve never seen sourdough French toast at a restaurant and it is literally the best bread to use. The texture holds up well to the egg dunk and the funky sourness complements the otherwise cloyingly sweet dish. Even better, instead of syrup I use salted irish butter, making it a savory dish with a hint of sweet cinnamon.
Brother, we have all of those ingredients everywhere. We have a little British store run by expats who could get whatever packaged crumpet you use. Shit, I can make a batch of crumpets in about 15 minutes.
It’s not like a crazy recipe that needs balanced flavors to be done right. Like I’ve never had a good poutine outside of Quebec. It’s always sad beige gravy with the wrong seasonings or mozzarella or frozen fries or all of the above. It is never right.
What we can also talk about is local places making local dishes but they do it wrong and cheap or “good enough” and people come from abroad and try the dishes and think they’re mid because they went to the wrong place.
TL;DR: I love poutine.
/Rant
I had poutine at random place in Edinburgh which a Canadian friend said was the best poutine he’d had outside of Quebec. “Still shit though”, in comparison to in Quebec
It’s not like a crazy recipe that needs balanced flavors to be done right.
We’re talking British cuisine here
While you can go to a restaraunt/cafe and buy pancakes. I havent found a premade packet version that just needs warming up that isnt absolute shit.
Give me fresh or give me death!
Maybe most of the food is based in the ideals of what we want it to be, but the reality is the ingredients and the people who cook of your region.
Properly cooked hash browns. It takes too long for a restaurant to do it.
Disagree, mcdonalds does it perfect and I will die on this hill, or fight in this trench. Also their coffee is great. I am not paid by mcdonalds to shill their awful products
IMO a hash brown patty from Trader Joe’s is far better if it’s skillet-fried at home with a little bit of oil. It’s also far cheaper if you don’t need to eat on the go.
Their breakfast steak patty sandwiches though, no place makes it like them and I absolutely love them. I wish they made burgers with their steak patties, but that probably won’t happen.
Speculoos and jelly sandwiches. It’s possible they serve that in Europe somewhere, but you could never find that served in the US.
I’d like to be proven wrong though.
Speculoos
That sounds like a belgian thing. It’s gingerbread dust?
Sorry for not being clear, I meant the speculoos butter spread, most commonly Biscoff butter.
Chunky speculoos spread and strawberry spread is the way to go. I need to try it on brioche one of these days.
The Cannibal Sandwich, which doesn’t actually use human flesh, but is also not a sandwich. Anyway, you take a slice of rye cocktail bread, spread on some raw, ground beef, then top it with some sliced onion, salt, and pepper. You can’t get it ready-made, because nobody likes e. coli or salmonella poisoning. In fact, you have to make special arrangements to get the beef ground by a butcher in a clean grinder, and pretty much eat it the same day.
Oh now that’s something I want to try
Like beef tartare on rye bread?
Maple Walnut ice cream seems to be impossible to find in stores outside of New England
Lots in Canada
Widespread in Germany.
A Twinkie weiner sandwich.
- Cook a hot dog
- Slice a twinkie halfway through the bottom longwise to get something like a hotdog bun
- Insert the cooked hotdog into newly created bun
- Squirt easy cheese along the length of the hot dog
- Dip in milk
- Eat
Weird Al invented this in 1989 in his movie UHF and it’s still not available in stores for some reason
Isn’t a Twinkie partly chocolate?
Nah that’s a chocodile which is a chocolate covered Twinkie
You may be thinking of a ho-ho. Also made by Hostess.
I need to rewatch that movie (and seriously, how great of an actor is Weird Al?)
For good reason. Wtf
Yeah some foods are too powerful for the general public to consume freely.
If I’m going to have a twinkie, I’ll grill it (or toss it in the air fryer I have to try that) just enough until it starts to caramelize on the outside
YES CHEF that sounds unironically delicious
it is. some friends in college were getting together around thanksgiving for a turkey roast. i’m allergic to turkey so I intentionally misheard them and showed up with a box of twinkies. a tradition was born that day.
Sounds like something you could get at a state fair
Coffee. I used to be a coffee fiend, I drank up to 12-13 cups a day, and only stopped because it was worsening my anxiety. I live in a coffee producing country and learnt how to make a good cup in an espresso machine, even got all the doodads to make the process standardized and get the exact same cup every time.
I can only drink coffee made by select hands now. Everything else tastes like jet fuel, and it’s worse when travelling.
That sounds like an intense relationship you have with coffee. I have to admit, 2-3 a day and I get palpatations and am unable to sleep. I rarely drink it for the flavour
Oh I needed it for college. I was impatient and pushed myself too hard during my last 2 years, some weeks I slept fewer than 10 hours collectively.
I’ve since cut it almost entirely, and because of that my usual cup gives me the jitters. I still love coffee and would like nothing more than having one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but my body can’t take it anymore (nor can my mental health honestly). Aging sucks, lol.
Don’t ever, under any circumstances, drink motorway service station coffee in France. It tastes like battery acid even if you’re used to shitty coffee.
I make sure to never get attached to one brew so I can drink it anywhere, anytime. I’ll drink instant without hot water if I need to (and not just frappe.)
That’s… Probably not a bad idea, lol. I got too used to good things.
The sad thing is that it is buyable but not in places below like 200k population. In Europe idk how far third wave type coffe got everywhere else but I’d imagine in international cities it’s largely available all over the world.
It’s frankly insane how different a specialty coffe place is from a Caffe. And how many specialty coffe places there are in big cities/ university towns.
The provinces seem to not be able to sustain good coffe unfortunately. Unless there is someone who doesn’t care about the balance sheet.
Outside of the caffeine and kidney stone issues you must’ve been peeing every 30 minutes
Pretty much, lol
Buckwheat kasha, you won’t find it even in a Slavic restaurant. It is a simple dish of cooked buckwheat and milk, with sugar added if one desires. Such a simple breakfast dish is sold nowhere to my knowledge.
I’ve never had buckwheat that wouldn’t have funky smell/aftertaste. It just weird all the time. Probably trying wrong brand or IDK. I’m slavic so my ancestors ate shitton of buckwheat, though it was almost non existent in my childhood. And now it’s weird ingredient I’m scared of :-D
It sounds like chinese congee, but with wheat instead of rice
Marmite crumpets shouldn’t exist!
What other cosmic horrors are you creating in your kitchen‽
The British were so focused on whether they could, they didn’t stop to think about whether they should.
we have a chicken stew that we make with barley and oats that sometimes has entire pieces of cartillage in it, if that helps
thank you
Marmite crumpets shouldn’t exist!
You’re right. Not without cheese.
Are hotels in the UK not equipped with toasters?
No, just a shitty kettle.
You’re supposed to wash it out after you shit in it
I would never. The next guest would want to savor my peaty aroma and be awed.
you love the sweet plastic taste and you know it!
Trypophobia, apparently
The Marmite causes the eggs to hatch in your tummy 🤗
Batmobiles. Lots of companies sell Batmobile toys, no companies sell Batmobiles.
You’re just not looking hard enough. This was the first hit when I searched.
But those are all custom builds and don’t fulfill the definition of being possible to “buy ready made” given by OP.
When you’re right, you’re right.
Bake him away toys.
