Not necessarily the best meals (or places), but the meals (or places) that best represent your culture.
He he the Swedish kebab & bearnaisesås pizza (no one said it had to be good, and I didn’t say surströmming which is something nobody eats after all). Very popular! You might never forget it except if the Italians finds out and declare war on Sweden and everyone dies.
what’s different about the swedish kebab vs turkish ones?
Canadian cuisine isn’t really distinctive, but you should really try French fries with salt and malt vinegar before you perish.
Is malt vinegar on fries a Canadian thing? It’s my go to for otherwise plain fries but I don’t think its very common in my area.
I have nothing to contribute myself, I’ve only been briefly to anywhere in Canada other than home and I can’t think of anything that isn’t gimmick fast food, doesn’t originate from other countries, or have a near identical equivalent elsewhere in the world. Like I had friends that lived on the rez and sometimes their parents would prep bannock dough that we would cook over a firepit and fill with honey and it was excellent, but its literally just honey on bread that was cooked on a stick.
Boston cream pie… more like a cake. Very delicious. If you’re ever in Boston, you can visit where it started at the Parker House Hotel (Omni).
- BBQ, from any/all regions
- Cajun food – very important one!
- Fried chicken and waffles – I tried explaining this umami to a handful of people in Japan, and they didn’t understand.
- Casseroles of all kinds
Good point on the BBQ. The differences between regions is substantial, and although you may not like one region’s BBQ, you may very well love another region’s. I for one am not a fan of the vinegar based BBQ, but a good dry rub, or mustard base, I am all there.
Apart from the obvious cheese and chocolate, i‘d reccomend some good ol rösti with a spiegelei
I’ll fight you!
- Cheese: France, évidemment
- Chocolate: Belgium, potferdomme
- Rösti: …'mkay, I’ll leave you the potatoes leftovers fried in a greasy pan, but ffs not the dried-out thingy from Migros please
Oh hell no. Alway buy the potatos, steam them for 20 mins and then they‘re ready to be grated into the pan. Don‘t forget the aromat!
Currywurst. Chopped fried or grilled sausage with ketchup and curry spice sprinkled on top. Often served with fries.
You can get it almost everywhere in Germany, especially at street festivals. Simple, absolutely unhealthy and delicious.
Turkish immigrants didn’t invent döner. They changed the ingredients a little according to local people’s tastes. Döner dates back hundred of years back. Döner is Turkish, no one can argue about that. However you can call your version of döner local food of your country. Same logic goes for pizza, origin of it is Italian (maybe Greek idk) but there is American pizza.
I have never seen a German version of döner here in Turkey. I guess you can find it in some really busy touristic places.
One of my biggest regrets in life is not eating currywurst while I was in Germany. I will make it right though. Maybe next year.
I’m not usually much interested in “food experiences” but nonetheless I have an answer and it is the sugar shack pancake breakfast.
Oh yeah, that is the best! They have one at the conservation area near me. You go there around March and slap on some cross-country skis to get to the shack. Then just as the cold is starting to set in a bit, you walk in there where they’re boiling the sap and take in the aroma. Then you sit down at a long table and gorge yourself on pancakes with the syrup still hot and mixing with the butter. And then on the way back, if you have any bird seed in your pocket, you can just hold it out and chickadees will land on your hand. It’s magical!
I mean if you’ve never eaten Pupusas, I don’t know what life you’re living.
I have no idea what it is but I want to eat it now.
Corn tortilla dough is filled with cheese/pork/beans and other yummy options, and cooked on a greasy ass flat grill. Served with a Salvadoran vinegar slaw, they’re delicious
oh my sweet fuck I want that so bad now
We have a Salvadoran restaurant near us (in Maryland, USA) and we love these!
Loroco y queso!
What is even that flower? I wonder if I can grow it in my apartment in Canada cause that shit is delicious. They sell frozen loroco where I live but it’s expensive. And I haven’t been to El Salvador in a decade for the real thing
The US at large? Too diverse to have a specific cuisine but corn is a native food here, I recommend corn on the cob, either just with butter or the fancy Mexican style, and also try cornbread.
Local food, we have Cuban sandwiches and deviled crab, I didn’t know until recently that those are only served around here, despite the name these are Florida foods. Cuban sandwich is a three meat affair on Cuban bread, deviled egg is a sort of fried dough with seasoned crabmeat in the middle.
I’m Ukrainian. We have a very particular way of making salted hearing. It’s really good and totally different from more commonly sold salted hearing and I would recommend it to anyone.
We call it селёдка (see-leot-ka)
Pa amb tomàquet, bread with tomato.
You take some slices of bread, or something like a baguette or ciabatta sliced longitudinally to make a sandwich. Good bread, mind, not that spongy stuff you get in the U.S. Something with some crust, with a bit of a crunch. Slightly toasted (but not burnt) is good, and easier, but not necessary. You can eat this hot or cold, it’s good either way.
Anyway, as I was saying you take some bread, and you take some tomatoes. Red, juicy, the tastiest the better. Slice one in half, take half, rub the sliced part on one side of the bread (on the crumb, obviously, not the crust), until the bread has soaked a good amount of the tomato’s juice (you could do both sides if you wanted to, but it’d probably be a bit of a mess). It’s not a problem if some small bits of the tomato’s meat also end up in the bread, but you don’t want big chunks (unless you want tomato as a topping, though that’d be a bit redundant). You don’t want the bread to get too soft, don’t ruin that crunch. If the tomato is juicy enough you can reuse it for the next slice, until it runs out of juice or you’re just left with the skin.
Once you’ve got all your slices done, sprinkle some salt over them. Don’t go overboard, you want to be able to taste the bread, and the tomato.
Finally, dribble some good virgin olive oil on them. Again, don’t go overboard, don’t drown them. Once you’re done you can take one of the slices and use it to help spread the oil and salt on the other ones by tapping the crumbs against each other.
You can now eat the slices as they are, toast them if you want, accompany them with cured meats (cured ham is fantastic with this) or cheeses, as a side or as toppings, or as the filling of a sandwich. Experiment, try different kinds of bread, toasted or untoasted, different toppings (anything you’d put in a sandwich will almost certainly work), oil from different types of olives, maybe rub some garlic on the bread before the tomato, if it’s hard enough to take it… there are infinite possibilities and combinations, and unless you go overboard with the toppings they’re just five minutes away as long as you’ve got some bread, some tomatoes, some olive oil, and some salt.
(Also, if you’ve got really good bread and really good oil, but would rather skip the tomatoes, pa amb oli, bread with oil — and a sprinkle of salt — can also be an excellent snack to eat by itself before a meal, though pa amb tomàquet is better if you want to eat it with toppings, or as a sandwich.)
Literally my favorite bar food from southern Spain, cozy and fresh!
Found the Italian?
If you don’t live in Italy and you’re naughty, rub a little bit of garlic on the bread before the tomato :-).
Italy has so good food it’s crazy (and I’m living in France!) but it seems impossible to get that bread, those tomatoes etc elsewhere (there is surely some magic to it too). It’s like oranges from Naples. You just don’t make them anywhere else.
Found the Italian?
Close, Catalan. Food’s good here too.
Oh yes it is! A shame Barcelona is so overcrowded with tourists nowadays (I went there a lot some 10+ years ago, stopped when the tourist invasion happened, I mean I was then part of the problem).
Mediterranean food for the world !
Fair warning to anyone who wants to visit for our food, just in case: the food in tourist focused restaurants here is… not particularly good, and extremely overpriced.
If you want good food, avoid the more touristy areas, and find out where the locals eat when they eat out (or get them to invite you to eat some homemade food).
Okay this is going to be a little less high brow then many other suggestions
Fat Shack - There are a number of locations in USA mostly in Colorado and Texas but there are in about 10 state. I would never call this food good for you. But it may be one of the most American things ever.
The main sandwich they make is called the Fat Shack and is a hoagie roll filled with Cheesesteak, chicken fingers, jalapeño poppers, mozzarella sticks, french fries & honey-jalapeño mustard. And you can get your choice of sauce (I always choose cheese sauce because at this point why not). The smallest size of this sandwich comes in at 1600 calories.
All their food is in the same theme and most locations have a you bring it we fry it thing too. They make no guarantees but will try to fry anything you want to bring in.
If you are visiting an area with one or live near one it is quite the experience to eat one of their meals and really one may be enough for a lifetime.
Poutine, but just the classic kind. Cheese curds and brown gravy over fries. Don’t go to a poutinerie for the first time ever and order some stupid shit like buffalo chicken poutine. And don’t order your first poutine from McDonald’s either.
The best is in Quebec. Ottawa is a good second best.
The best poutine I had was at the Montreal airport, no joke. Big ol pile of Smoked Meat on top!
I love poutine. The only reason it hasn’t caught on here south of the border is it’s Frenchy.
Ok so everybody is always about the stroopwafels, the fries with lots of mayo and the raw herring. And that’s all fine unique and dandy.
But the real thing that many food travelers miss is the smoked eel. They are delicious smokey fatty fishes, really unique to dutchland, Japanese unagi doesn’t hold a candle to it.
They are horrible looking, hard to peel (yup you peel the eel) but they are the best culinary thing our country has, and I’ll die on this hill. Goes with a korenwijn type (Dutch gin)
Bunny Chow! Chicken curry in a bread bowl
Bunny chow is so good. There’s a South African expat who runs a store/restaurant by my house here in Texas and makes what seems to be pretty authentic bunny chow and Vetkoek. Unfortunately, I found out that he and his wife are so aggressively MAGA that I legitimately wonder if he left S.A. because he was sad to see Apartheid go.
Seems far too common. My parents had a difficult time getting into the US so hearing about “all the illegals just strolling into the country” vitriol Fox spews seems to indoctrinate them
I was wondering what South African dish I would see here. Can’t go wrong with a Bunny Chow. But I would also mention Koeksisters, Melktert and our best braai meat, Karoo Lamb Tjops
