What culture has the worst cuisine?

[mindlessobserver]

I have to second the motion for Indian Food. Spiced slop on rice. Every single dish.

 

[Untrue and Dishonest]

American cuisine.

 

[I.B. Niggin]

So I ran into this online today.
View attachment 3145470

Edible bird's nest - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Apparently the Chinese eat these birds' nests which are literally made from birds' spit.

Only reason I know of this is because I remember Anthony Bourdain trying this on No Reservations and he proceeded to become sick as fuck for the rest of the night. No surprise there.

Actual Vietnamese food from Vietnam is super overrated and basically amounts to herbs floating in water with overcooked rice noodles. Super boring and unvaried compared to other SEA cuisines like Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian.

I remember the first time I had phô and I was pretty fucking disappointed. I mean, I've managed to have an appreciation for it and it's decent but I'd much rather have almost anything Asian.

While I don't agree with Indian food being disgusting like some here do, I can admit that almost everything tastes identical from what I've had.

 

[GoPro]

In Europe it has to be Netherlands. Most of their national foods seem to be a random vegetable and potatoes boiled into a mush and mashed together. Blands sausage on the side if you are lucky. Bread there is somehow worse than cheapest, mass produced American bread. It's almost as if the only people able to cook there are immigrants. It's bizarre that country with a grip on most spice trade for so long never learned to use them. Sweets are the only thing Dutch can do right, but Belgians do that and normal cooking much better anyway.
Overall Ethiopian is probably my least favorite.

Other countries that do not have particularly good cuisine in my opinion:
- Most subsaharan African food I tried, with exception of chackalaka - that was actually good
- British isles
- Sweden
- Norway
- Philippines
- India aside from the Northern and Southernmost regions
- Pakistan
- About half food served in Southeast Asia
- Traditional Jewish cuisine

The rule of the thumb in most developed countries is that if it is easier to find restaurants serving foreign cuisine than local, then that country's cuisine is not very good.

WW1 and WW2 did a number on trad Brit food. Especially after the rationing of WW2, a lot of Brits simply didn't have access to anything other than processed garbage, supplemented with the most basic vegetables (peas, cabbage, carrots and potatoes).
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and River Cottage opened my eyes to pre-rationing style trad British food.
People have horror pictures of jellied eels and pie, mash and liquor, but nobody remembers the amazing cakes and baked goods, proper Cornish pasties, roast venison, rabbit casserole, game hens, not to mention Britain's highly underrated seafood. Hell, roast beef and the very concept of 'steak' are British.

If all you choose to eat is monster munch and angel delight don't go about claiming Brit food is shit, because you come across as never having had any.

I am not buying that excuse. Eastern Europeans, Germans, and Chinese somehow managed to preserve much of their cuisines despite having even worse food supply issues due to communism. Italy went through rationing and post war hardships much worse than UK did and their cuisine is among the best despite that.

Heres a genuine question, why do Americans shit themselves whenever they have anything like taco bell, curries ect? Are your food safety standards poor or is your diet not very diverse? People shit on British food, but ours is very safe and our colonial nature has given us the privilege of having a pretty diverse diet, so having such a sensitive stomach is rare.

It's fiber. Many Americans eat very little of it. Handful of beans causes their digestive system to freak out.

 

[SenorCurditos]

Icelandic food. Fermented Shark, Ram Testicles, and fucking Sheep's Head. I had Minke Whale there and it sucked too but its not really traditional there.

 

[Helvítis Túristi]

Only reason I know of this is because I remember Anthony Bourdain trying this on No Reservations and he proceeded to become sick as fuck for the rest of the night. No surprise there.

I remember the first time I had phô and I was pretty fucking disappointed. I mean, I've managed to have an appreciation for it and it's decent but I'd much rather have almost anything Asian.

While I don't agree with Indian food being disgusting like some here do, I can admit that almost everything tastes identical from what I've had.

Is pho really so bland? I've never had it. I see that it has spices to the beef broth, but people dump hoisin sauce and sriracha into it. So I'm not sure what to think.

On the subject of curries, I think Indian food tasting the same is because they use the same spices. Despite using Indian spices in yellow Thai curry, it tastes different with the other spices being used. I just now got this Japanese curry powder that has star anise, fennel, orange peel, thyme, and sage. So I'm curious how different it will taste to the Indian curry. However, I can see why people would hate Indian food from restaurants. I won't go into fine details, but they do some nasty practices.

Probably not mentioned yet in this thread is Buddhist monk food. Not only do they refuse to use spices, but they refuse to use onions and garlic. Supposedly it's because said food is too stimulating and interferes with their meditation. Most of the food people shit on in this thread at least has onions and/or garlic to their food. I can see why they eat like that, but it's not something I could do for my entire life.

 

[SITHRAK!]

Eastern Europeans, Germans, and Chinese somehow managed to preserve much of their cuisines despite having even worse food supply issues due to communism.

You‘re right, in that rationing alone wasn’t to blame. Postwar food culture in the UK was also tied in to industrialization, feminism, convenience food etc,

The countries you mention reverted to their traditional food sources and recipes right after the war, whereas many Anglo countries went down the processed-food route.

The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand never had a particularly strong ‘traditional’ or peasant-style food culture to revert to once the speed and convenience of processed, instant and packaged foods was promoted.

The UK did have a strong traditional food culture but was under rationing for something like five or six years after the war, and as urbanization increased, and women refused to be ‘chained to the kitchen’, many of the more labor-intensive dishes fell out of popularity.

In the case of Eastern Europe, I’d argue that communism helped, as many of their traditional foods were quite simple and heavily vegetable based. Vegetables are one thing that it’s hard to fuck up growing, no matter how stupid the kolkhoz system was.

But basically my opinion is that the things that were most damaging to UK food culture postwar were processed foods, urbanization, and the rapid disintegration of traditional gender roles, as well as rationing. These are all factors which were not present to such a great extent in Italy, China, Eastern Europe (no matter how hard the commies tried) or Germany.

 

[thrasymachus]

In Europe it has to be Netherlands.

There is some good food...I like the herring and cheese and cookies.

 

[I NEED Cock Kornilov]

British or Scandinavian "food"

 

[Cow-Lovin' Fool]

Have you ever watched a grown man eat fistfuls of sloppy rice with his bare fucking hands at a nice restaurant before?

I am that man...and I'm not even Indian

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

Every culture has it's culinary abominations. In America we had the jello craze of the 1950s that still haunts dinner tables whenever Grandma insists on cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

We also have burgers, barbecue, the rest of that Thanksgiving meal, and a great deal more.

If your culture is more aspic salad than barbecue perhaps it's a shit cuisine.

 

[April1st]

Norwegian, just because of this:

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

To further reinforce my argument for the Chinese having the worst cuisine:

Found in the frozen food section of a Chinese food market.

 

[Elbow Greased Strength]

Icelandic looks pretty horrible in every way, the kind of stuff that could only be conceived by people who thought it was a good idea to settle on Iceland to begin with.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

Icelandic looks pretty horrible in every way, the kind of stuff that could only be conceived by people who thought it was a good idea to settle on Iceland to begin with.

Even the Icelanders themselves say their food is shit, lmao. Niggas had to eat fermented shark meat dried-out over a period of six months, because Iceland couldn't grow shit in terms of crops

 

[Elbow Greased Strength]

Even the Icelanders themselves say their food is shit, lmao. Niggas had to eat fermented shark meat dried-out over a period of six months, because Iceland couldn't grow shit in terms of crops

NGL I do want to try hakarl some time. That and a proper surstromming sandwich.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

NGL I do want to try hakarl some time. That and a proper surstromming sandwich.

Surstromming is Swedish, but it may as well be Icelandic, with how cursed it is

 

[The Ugly One]

There's no such thing as American food. Smoked brisket with creamed corn and cole slaw on the side and pecan pie for dessert is just universal human food, like how English is the universal human language, rock 'n' roll is universal human music, the dollar is the universal human currency, and the Nimitz-based carrier group is the universal human naval strike fleet.

British food being bad is a meme. The entire time I was in England, I was full and happy. It was in many ways nothing special, but the dishes were all hearty and satisfying, unlike France, where three snails, a crust of bread, and some runny goat cheese is considered a meal.

I feel bad shitting on African food, because they didn't even have cities until recently. But yeah, it's bad.

Indian food gets my vote for the worst food produced by an actual civilization. It's just awful. The stuff in the states is bad enough, but the food that an actual Indian cooks in his home smells like feet and tastes like the 7th circle of Hell.

 

[Wormy]

British food being bad is a meme. The entire time I was in England, I was full and happy.

What'd you have while you were there?

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

Nothing in specific, but I don't like cultures that eat tortoises



Look at this cute little guy and tell me he deserves to be eaten

I have a live and let live attitude toward cultural cuisines, and what you do in your host country is ultimately whatever, and I can't stop you, but don't expect me to join in