What culture has the worst cuisine?

[lurk_moar]

As a Scandinavian person, we eat rancid and rotten fish. Not to mention fish soaked in lye and decayed, poisonous shark.

 

[ñññ]

I cringe every time I see a gringo munching on a gigantic piece of barely cooked beef with hardly any garnishes. But hey, I've been told by professional chefs that my country's food is objectively terrible and peasant-grade in its complexity, so who am I to judge?

 

[snailslime]

either British, Slavic or American

 

[deso2y]

I despise Greek food. Nothing good has come out of Greece.

Opinion discarded

There’s a special place in hell for the person who first thought of canned dolmades. The only things Greeks do well are olive oil, some cheeses, octopus and lamb, everything else is garbage.

I would say it heavily depends on the brand though.

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

Malaysian food. While not 'bad' in the sense that it tastes bad, every traditional Malaysian Chinese/Malay dish is so overpumped with sugar that it leaves you feeling shitty and bloated.

I probably had 40+ unique dishes when I visited, some multiple times in different states - same result. Nice food, but shockingly unhealthy and makes you feel shitty.

German antipasti and other finger foods taste like feet.

 

[SITHRAK!]

I would say it heavily depends on the brand though.

Well then recommend me a good brand, because every kind of dolmades I’ve tried has tasted rancid, stale and awful, and has had a texture and consistency very close to what I’d imagine a grainy turd might have.

 

[Haint]

The British, Shepard’s Pie is merely the exception that proves the rule.

From following Chantal’s thread, her ex was from Nigeria, all of the dishes he made seemed to look like various forms of diarrhea.

This is true. Have had some decent Ethiopian dishes, tasty yet looked horrifying. Mostly red and green pastes, and the texture of sloppy Joe mix.

 

[Mojo Thief]

I can't think of an ethical cuisine I've tried that I wrote off completely.

• Northern Germanic cuisine is pretty much breaded meat, fish, and potato dishes and it's often overcooked.
• Traditional Slavic food is bland, unless we're talking about pierogis and borscht.
• Indian food can be good, but it can just as often be way too dry and spicy.
• Irish food is also kinda bland. Basically meat pies, mashed potatoes, and stews.
• American-style Italian food that's basically just pasta, thin sauces, pizza, and meatballs. Traditional Italian food (especially in the south) is GOAT, but very difficult to replicate outside of Italy or places with similar climates like California.

That said, living in America means that traditional cuisines can pull from other cuisines to resolve their innate shortcomings, so I tend to like most of the ethnic restaurants I've been to. My favorite food tends to be French or Asian-infused American food, and I put a lot of value into the preparation of the protein.

Worst for me would honestly be "classic" American dishes that are about as organic as Teflon. Savory jellos, canned everything, cooking meat until it has the texture of a pencil eraser, adding sweet fruits where they shouldn't, it makes my stomach churn just thinking about it. Take a look at some of the abominations people prepared and ate in the 1950s. Thankfully, this style of cooking is mostly gone from restaurants outside of bottom-barrel chains like Applebee's and shitty diners in the heartland, but I have gone to a few dinners where the host prepared some of this garbage for entrees. Thank God they had plenty of bread and cheese, because that's what I ultimately ate for dinner.

 

[Chris Chad]

People shit on British cuisine too much, and I think that's because British cuisine is just so common everywhere across the world now that its contributions aren't even really considered "British cuisine" at this point, but just simply "food", like roast beef or sandwiches, the same thing happens to American cuisine as well now, though people still think of "burgers, fried chicken, fast food pizza" etc as American cuisine

As for worst cuisine, I don't think I've found a single culture where they didn't have at least one thing I didn't like, but I definitely think Ethiopian is probably the worst I've had. Just not for me

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Would it be off topic to suggest yuppy wheel-reinventions of basic dishes sold at a retardedly astronomical pricetag? It's plagued the globe for far too long.

 

[Bush King]

Reading this thread only proves that no country is the worst, only that every single culture has both amazing and terrible examples of food, mileage varies based on your taste with spices/ability to cook.

One thing I can add however is just how fucking terrible Asian, and specifically mainland Chinese, restaurant staff are. No matter where you are, if you are able to search your city's food safety board for infractions, chance are that 9/10 will be Chinese (the 10% being generic Asian, leaning Indian/Pakistani) and probably close to half of the Chinese ones are on their second or third infraction. I don't know what the fuck it is but somehow cooking Kung Pao Chicken requires using an old wooden spoon coated in grease and a wok endlessly seasoned and never washed. Also Pakistani chefs wipe their ass with their left hands and then cook with it. Yummy.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Ethiopia. It sounds like a joke because they had no food but I'm serious. Injera not only looks disgusting it tastes like a hot wet spongy and sour dishrag.

Here's an American glamor shot of the LA variant.

Sure, it looks like someone took a hot shit in a nasty tacobowl but it is way worse than that and remember, you will be eating that brown sour towel underneath!

 

[Sithis]

I realize it's a meme and a dumb movie but I don't care, Temple of Doom cemented it in my head that poo in loo Indians eat the most godawful disgusting shit ever.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

At least we found out what to DO with SPAM:

View attachment 3108878

I learned how to make these from an ex of mine who spent some time in Hawaii where they are apparently everywhere. I have extolled the virtues of spam musubi on here plenty of times and If anyone needs my personal recipe just hit me up I know a special technique to ensure the best taste and candied-ness of your spams :}

According to that Joshua Weissman guy, actual cooks love the shit.

Granted his video was sponsored by Spam.

 

[Cats]

According to that Joshua Weissman guy, actual cooks love the shit.

Granted his video was sponsored by Spam.

not shilling for anything, I actually think spam by itself is pretty offputting especially just out of the can plain , but spam musubi are fucking heavenly.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

not shilling for anything, I actually think spam by itself is pretty offputting especially just out of the can plain , but spam musubi are fucking heavenly.

Oh no, he cooked the fuck out of it if I remember right.

 

[Nero You're DeadWeight]

There’s a special place in hell for the person who first thought of canned dolmades. The only things Greeks do well are olive oil, some cheeses, octopus and lamb, everything else is garbage.

Can agree the lamb and baklava was good. Nothing else really. What's greek octopus like?

 

[Audit]

The only ethnic cuisine I have ever written off in its entirety is Ethiopian. To put it bluntly, injera bread is amongst the most vile things I have ever eaten in my life. It is a nasty, wet piece of sponge bread that's been left to sit in some bitter brew and they bring it out in extraordinary quantities. The seasoned meat was alright on its own, if not excessively oily.

I can only conclude from my brief experience with Ethiopian food that the entire nation is beyond redemption and is better off with a famine than suffering life with a surplus of injera bread.

 

[SITHRAK!]

Can agree the lamb and baklava was good. Nothing else really. What's greek octopus like?

Tender and delicious. Traditionally the octopus is beaten against a rock a hundred times or so to break up the muscle fibres, then slow cooked.

 

[RainwaterDrop]

It mostly depends on two factors, cultural traditions (how well ingrained the culinary traditions are) and prosperity (influencing the quality of ingredients that can be sourced), an italian restaurant in a poorer country, relying on local ingredients of lower quality will probably be worse off than the same place in Italy or the U.S., where they would be able to source quality ingredients with much better ease. There are plenty of Cosmopolitan cities around the world, filled with immigrants from every continent that brought their own cuisines with them, how well can you replicate the food from home is something that varies wildly from place to place, saying that a certain cuisine from an entire region is horseshit because the only restaurant of that flag in your neck of the woods sucks isn't really clever, in my view, only a bit better than the works of MovieBob and Fatso Jack if you can pull off a better piece!

Personal tastes need to be taken into account as well. I, myself, am not fond of fish for example, but that doesn't mean that all British/Japanese cuisine sucks because of the heavy presence of seafood in these cuisines. Now, this does mean that I won't really have a good time if you take me out to a seafood restaurant, I would probably stick to the chips in that case lol!