Come on. Germany has good wursts, cakes, and pastries. It has an abundance of bakeries with good bread. It has excellent beer. But seriously, as a national cuisine, it doesn't rate much above Eastern Europe. You can't compare it with French or Czech or Hungarian bakeries, aside from the cakes. Slathering thick sauces over meat so that you can't taste the meat, German cuisine is hearty, not palatable. Glühwein is absolutely disgusting and they love it. German Turkish food has some small virtues, namely, price and ubiquity, and I don't mind the occasional falafel im Brot with vegetables, but the Döner kebab and box mit Pommes make you sick. They are manufactured products shipped around entire regions by one or a few companies, not cooked individually. There is a variety of Indian and even Himalayan food. The hamburgers tend to be disgusting and the hamburger meat in the grocery stores, like the grocery store ice cream, is terrible. Fruits and vegetables are decent. German cooking may not be inferior to British but I'd take fish and chips and British Indian food over German any day.
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I was in Tokyo last year. I had sushi, wagyu steak, pizza, tacos, McDonald’s (per my kids’ request), a lot of good, fresh ramen. Many consider it to be the best food city in the world.
I don’t know if it’s the best, but it was really good. You can get many different cuisines. I will say the Western style restaurants are kind of weird. The high end restaurants are amazing, and you can have street food or good ramen for the equivalent of less than $10.
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If you spend multiple weeks a country with the largest city in the world and a food culture that's spawned the 2nd highest number of Michelin starred restaurants in the world as well as imported a lot of its regular food as international sensations (ramen, sushi, etc.) and can't find any good food, then you're the problem.
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zxcvzcx wrote:
Come on. Germany has good wursts, cakes, and pastries. It has an abundance of bakeries with good bread. It has excellent beer. But seriously, as a national cuisine, it doesn't rate much above Eastern Europe. You can't compare it with French or Czech or Hungarian bakeries, aside from the cakes. Slathering thick sauces over meat so that you can't taste the meat, German cuisine is hearty, not palatable. Glühwein is absolutely disgusting and they love it. German Turkish food has some small virtues, namely, price and ubiquity, and I don't mind the occasional falafel im Brot with vegetables, but the Döner kebab and box mit Pommes make you sick. They are manufactured products shipped around entire regions by one or a few companies, not cooked individually. There is a variety of Indian and even Himalayan food. The hamburgers tend to be disgusting and the hamburger meat in the grocery stores, like the grocery store ice cream, is terrible. Fruits and vegetables are decent. German cooking may not be inferior to British but I'd take fish and chips and British Indian food over German any day.
Glüwein was created back in the days as a civilized dining table alternative for glü huffers.
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Check the stats
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food eater wrote:
gaijin man wrote:
Yakitori Alley in Shinjuku for sure.
This is exactly the part of Japanes cuisine I don't understand. What is the particular appeal of un-spiced grilled meat? The yakitori I was getting was primarily either only seasoned with salt or seasoned with sweet miso. A couple that I went out of my way to look for were extremely lightly spiced. The miso version would be decent but not great if not for the fact that miso was the only other flavor I was running into besides plain fat, salt, and sweet.
You also get foods with plenty of soy in the good Chinese and Korean I've tried, but the difference being that in those cuisines it's one part of the flavor, not the star of the show.
The appeal is to taste the meat itself, and not the condiments. If this minimalist approach does not appeal to you, then Japanese food is not for you. Many of the Japanese dishes are prepared with the same idea.
The most extreme example of this is probably sushi. We have a lot of special sushi rolls with multiple ingredients and multiple condiments in the US. While I don't necessarily dislike them, I like simpler stuffs like salmon rolls or tuna rolls better. (They are also much cheaper.)
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Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:
The appeal is to taste the meat itself, and not the condiments. If this minimalist approach does not appeal to you, then Japanese food is not for you. Many of the Japanese dishes are prepared with the same idea.
The most extreme example of this is probably sushi. We have a lot of special sushi rolls with multiple ingredients and multiple condiments in the US. While I don't necessarily dislike them, I like simpler stuffs like salmon rolls or tuna rolls better. (They are also much cheaper.)
I have been saying all along that Japanese food is not for me because the flavors are too simple.
Now as a follow up question: why is the un-seasoned grilled chicken that is commonly eaten here in the UK (I would say rightly) derided for being bland, while the very comparable un-seasoned grilled chicken in Japan is held up as some sort of amazing dish?
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Giving the US an A+ based on international cuisines is hilarious.
Chicken fried steaks, ribs, and mac and cheese lots of grease and oils and a serious lack of spices is more the reality of American food.
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sleeeper wrote:
Check the stats
How does Indian food not make the top 5???
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Tommy2Nuttz wrote:
Giving the US an A+ based on international cuisines is hilarious.
Chicken fried steaks, ribs, and mac and cheese lots of grease and oils and a serious lack of spices is more the reality of American food.
The complaint seems to be that the US realizes that these traditional foods are bad and thus knows to go the the migrants in their cities for good things, while the tastes in Japan are similar but people think it's good.
There is a fair amount of crossover between American and Japanese tastes. Japanese is the preferred international cuisine among my suburban parents who won't really touch much else that seems exotic, while many people in this thread have talked about how popular chains like KFC and 7-11 are in Japan.
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I am Sam wrote:
Another brilliant rojo post, one of the top ranked posters.
Every supermarket here in Australia and I am sure in USA have these pre packed plastic sealed meals simply requiring reheat , from pulled pork to rogan josh to lasagne and stir fry. You have them even in South Africa
Get out more. You had to travel to Japan and visit a 7 eleven to know those items exist throughout the world.
Nice try buddy. You don't get what I'm saying.
Yes, if I go to a super large superamarket out in the suburbs I can get a an amazing salmon salad for $15 in a plastic box. I can't get that in a 7-11 in the middle of the city for $8 like I can in Japan.
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Few topics are as subjective as food. The data company Statista ranks Japan and Italy number #1 in the world, based on 271,819 dish ratings and 80,863 food product ratings over 2023-2024.
Whereas, US News & World Report surveyed about 17,000 individuals from 36 nations last year and Japan ranked only #13 out of 89 nations (the U.S. didn't make the Top-10 in either survey; in the US News survey, we only scored #28th).
Next up, you've got the 2024 World Population survey, based on about 400,000 responses, which again ranked Japan and Italy tied for #1 food nation among 108 total (U.S. ranked #16).
I haven't been able to dig deep into these surveys to compare methodologies, and the details matter. But all in all, it appears folks around the world really like Japanese food; more than American food (or what they perceive as American food, at least).
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food eater wrote:
I have been saying all along that Japanese food is not for me because the flavors are too simple.
Now as a follow up question: why is the un-seasoned grilled chicken that is commonly eaten here in the UK (I would say rightly) derided for being bland, while the very comparable un-seasoned grilled chicken in Japan is held up as some sort of amazing dish?
I don't know about UK, but I don't find grilled chicken "bland." At least I like it better than typical fried chicken in the US. When I have to eat at a burger place out of convenience, that's usually my choice.
Having said that, like most other dishes, not all grilled chickens are made equal.
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Here is an interesting story on Japanese curry-chain in India.
“Before tasting the food, I thought the taste would be bland but to my surprise, I found it very flavourful,” he said. “I think they [Ichibanya] are using a different spice mix than the ones in India, but I like mild food, so it suited my taste.”
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"ethnic" food is subject to these undeniable FACTS:
1. it is never what you eat in a RESTAURANT. That's not the country's real food. It's some professional chef's interpretation of it, usually to impress foreigners. Ever wonder why most restaurants are about foreign food? The con doesn't work on the natives.
2. spices came into use to stop food from spoiling, or to cover the terrible taste of bad food. food that needs spices to be good is inherently bad.
3. the people eat what you find in the grocery store. There you will find the staple and the appropriate accessories.
4. The staple should be both high quality and easily prepared. Japan's staple, rice, is neither, and they can't even maintain their own supply of it, instead importing it. Italy's staple, durum semolina wheat, is processed and dried for long-term storage, very low quality. Russia's staple is lots of meat, dairy and small loaves of very fresh bread.
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food eater wrote:
I recently got back from my first visit to Japan (10 days in Tokyo for work followed by a few weeks of visiting old friends and tourism during the holidays) and was pretty amazed by how hard it was to find decent things to eat.
I had always heard about how good and healthy the Japanese diet was, but when following my local hosts or friends around it was rare to come across foods that didn't have pretty overwhelming quantities of salt, fat, or sugar. Even when I sought it out, it was also pretty rare to find anything with much spice (especially heat), and even the well reviewed Korean and Chinese places I tried seemed to have their flavors pretty toned down. Western food was also very bizarre, with staples like cheese and bread somehow being even worse versions of the stuff you typically get at US or UK supermarkets. The curry also seems to have been inspired by the worst versions of the dish you can find in the UK instead of the delicious varieties you find across the rest of east Asia.
My personal evaluation for the foods in the countries I've visited:
A+: USA (almost entirely due to their good access to international cuisines in big cities)
A: Italy, Turkey, Mexico, London (for similar reasons to the US).
A-: Hong Kong, Egypt, Canada (similar to US, but noticeably worse).
B: Germany.
B-: France, Switzerland.
C: Hungary.
C-: Japan.
D: Rural parts of the US and UK.
I also have an extremely high opinion of Indian/Pakastani food, although have never made it out to either region.
you're kidding right?
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Maybe the OP should go to Korea and China so he could eat Japanese food.
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food eater wrote:
This is exactly the part of Japanes cuisine I don't understand. What is the particular appeal of un-spiced grilled meat? The yakitori I was getting was primarily either only seasoned with salt or seasoned with sweet miso. A couple that I went out of my way to look for were extremely lightly spiced. The miso version would be decent but not great if not for the fact that miso was the only other flavor I was running into besides plain fat, salt, and sweet.
You also get foods with plenty of soy in the good Chinese and Korean I've tried, but the difference being that in those cuisines it's one part of the flavor, not the star of the show.
Why are you faulting Japanese food for not being spicy? Do you think all Asian food is supposed to be spicy? I like spicy food but that's not equal to having flavor. Yeah, Japanese flavors are more delicate. Did you try cheap, comforting rice bowls like chicken and soft custardy egg with the sweet salty liquor of dashi and onions? Or tempura served over the bar immediately after fried? Fishcake in broths cooked all day with just a little dab of hot mustard? Street snacks like takoyaki and okonomiyaki have stronger, less pristine flavor. That grilled chicken is different from unseasoned grilled chicken in London because it's not from a frozen product. You're supposed to taste the chicken and it's entire family's bloodline not to mention the smoke of the charcoal and the caramelization of the miso or whatever it's marinated in.
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barbarian wrote:
Why are you faulting Japanese food for not being spicy? Do you think all Asian food is supposed to be spicy? I like spicy food but that's not equal to having flavor. Yeah, Japanese flavors are more delicate. Did you try cheap, comforting rice bowls like chicken and soft custardy egg with the sweet salty liquor of dashi and onions? Or tempura served over the bar immediately after fried? Fishcake in broths cooked all day with just a little dab of hot mustard? Street snacks like takoyaki and okonomiyaki have stronger, less pristine flavor. That grilled chicken is different from unseasoned grilled chicken in London because it's not from a frozen product. You're supposed to taste the chicken and it's entire family's bloodline not to mention the smoke of the charcoal and the caramelization of the miso or whatever it's marinated in.
I'm talking about spices in general, not necessarily just heat. Some of the sweet and salty foods are good at first, but they weren't something I could enjoy for more than a few days before it got old. I'm also not so into deep fried foods in general, and typically found that the batters used in the takoyaki, tempura, etc., that I tried overwhelmed the rest of the flavor. The less fatty seafoods I tried were certainly the highlight, but even those had very large quantities of salt and weren't things I came across as often as anticipated.
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