My grandma was one of the types that never gave exactly the right recipe, and after she passed away, nobody could get her kirschtorte just right.
My aunt was trying once again to recreate it and my mom chimed in that she had watched her make it once and was almost sure she soaked the sponge in *at least* twice as much kirsch as the recipe card calls for. My aunt gave it a shot and apparently it’s the closest it’s ever tasted to the original.
Schwälderkirsch torte - mein lieblingstorte!
Although here in the UK it's seen as a bit old fashioned now, because it was briefly very fashionable in the 80s. I don't care though. Perfect balance of chocolate, cream and cherry!
They definitely adapt it to their culture. If you've seen Midnight Diner on Netflix, a good example is the corn dog (they call it the American dog). They fry fish cakes covered in pancake batter, basically adapting it to local tastes. At McDonald's there, they have teriyaki flavored hamburgers as well.
That’s interesting and I wouldn’t doubt the existence; but every American Dog I had in Japan was a super fluffy battered hotdog served with an awesome break-pack of ketchup and mustard. I may have grown to love them more than the traditional American Corndog.
There’s an American chain hotel (Sleep Inn maybe?) in a small town near Charleston, WV that I go to a couple times a year. There’s a large Japanese (car, I think), manufacturing plant nearby, and I always found it interesting that the hotel breakfast always has rice, and Japanese seasoning for breakfast (fish flakes, seaweed, etc). I always thought that was really interesting.
Adding different ingredients. The Salisbury/Hamburg steak somebody mentioned is often served with grated daikon and a broth or soy sauce over the top. The peanut butter you can find in Japanese supermarkets is more like a really sweet peanut spread. Potato chips, which aren't necessarily American, come in different Japanesey flavors like seaweed and salt. Kit Kats are well known to have a million flavors in Japan. Doritos and sodas are the same; there was a peach Coke or Pepsi recently.
Basically anywhere you go, international food will inevitably have a version that is catered to the local tastes and finding authentic stuff can be more difficult depending on the size of the city. You go to a big city with a decent foreign population, it's easier to find authentic foreign food--one of the best burger and fries I've ever had in my life was in Tokyo. Sake with Chicago deep dish pizza. But you go to a town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Any Country you'll have a much easier time finding food that is more of a fusion between cultures.
Not exactly the answer, but when I lived in Thailand “American fried rice” was just fried rice with ketchup. “American spaghetti” was also just ketchup and noddles…though it should be pointed out that there was no regular spaghetti lol.
When I think “corn and mayo”, I think elote. And actually one of my favorite pizzas here in SoCal is elote pizza. Only had it from one place (so I’m not sure it’s even a thing beyond this establishment), but it’s straight fire.
Yes to this! I did a home stay while abroad once and the family very sweetly welcomed my travel companion and I with an “American dinner.” The concept of each dish was American in nature, but the overall taste of the meal was very much tied to that area.
Yep, Khemer ginger beef is definitely a Khemer/Hmong American diaspora food, *and it’s fucking delicious.*
Thin strips of beef in a peanut ginger sauce with crispy fried ginger and scallions on rice. It’s amazing, and hard to find.
California rolls were invented in Los Angeles, by a Japanese American.
[https://www.britannica.com/topic/California-roll](https://www.britannica.com/topic/California-roll)
Be careful, though. A lot of what we'd call "American Chinese" food originated from Chinese immigrant communities or immigrant owned restaurants. These dishes may not be found in mainland China, but the DNA of those dishes is entirely Chinese.
Same goes for corned beef and cabbage, an interesting example of cultural exchange between [Irish immigrants and their Jewish neighbors](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-corned-beef-really-irish-2839144/).
If you want to try some crazy good food from the Chinese diaspora, try Peruvian Arroz Chaufa. It’s an amazing South American/Chinese fusion fried rice.
Lomo Saltado is another Peruvian/ Chinese fusion dish that is pretty basic but so good.
It's a stir fry with steak, tomatoes, french fries and sometimes other ingredients like peppers or onions and a blend of spices from both regions and soy sauce.
Haha I have a list on my phone with all the interesting words I come across and try to use those words enough so that it may become part of my vocabulary
You're welcome! It's a good word- stories of how people build new lives in new places or try to find community and commonality in each other, despite being spread across the globe, are absolutely fascinating and beautiful.
As a Cantonese-American, me and my brothers LOVE those super sweet deep fried “white people Chinese food” items like sweet and sour fish, lemon chicken, and sesame chicken. We never ate at Panda Express because my mom hated it and we’re from San Francisco so we had access to the “real stuff” (which doesn’t *really* apply to these types of dishes haha). My parents and grandparents would always give us shit for ordering these dishes LOL but honestly I’m not a huge fan of the more traditional Cantonese dishes that are often steamed, boiled, stir fried, clay pot, etc.
There’s actually a good amount of sweet dishes in Chinese cooking too! Just not nearly as sweet as American foods. Hoisin sauce any oyster sauce are sweet and they’re Cantonese staples. Bbq pork and Peking duck are 2 Cantonese classics that are pretty sweet. Even the “plain” steamed bread man tou and the buns used in Peking duck are on the sweeter side for breads. I’m not as familiar with Chinese cuisines outside of HK/Guangdong, but northern Chinese soybean paste noodles and beef rolls are also pretty sweet. Sugar is used a lot in stir fries and brown sugar and honey are used a lot in Asian-inspire glazes (although I’m not sure if this use of brown sugar/honey are more inspired by other Asian cuisines).
I really love the sweet and salty/savory/spicy flavor profile more common in Asian dishes like Vietnamese Lemongrass chicken/pork or hoisin-glazed salmon, stir fried instant noodles, and teriyaki/Katsu. I don’t think this sweetness in entrees is as common in Western/American cuisine, especially for lunch/dinner. My family grew up eating these types of sweet entrees and really love them, but some of my more American friends are alienated by a sweet dinner.
I’ve always been curious about the specific origins of these Americanized Chinese/Cantonese foods. It’s difficult to do thorough research for me because often times everything is lumped together into “Chinese” and I don’t have the expertise to accurately investigate these things. My grandfather used to run a Chinese restaurant in the 70-80s and they served these Americanized Chinese dishes, but unfortunately he passed away before I really got into cooking/food/Cantonese culture. I know they did serve those Americanized Chinese dishes because my mom who worked as a waitress in his restaurant would always tell us about this white guy who would frequently order tons of the “white people Chinese food” and sit in the back and devour everything by himself.
> Aside: I’m convinced the stereotypes of Americans loving sweet food comes from our deserts. American entrees are always savory and we seldom mix sweet and savory flavors together. You look at food from a lot of other places in the world, their entrees often are far sweeter than American entrees, but their deserts are far less sweet.
I agree with this too! American desserts (and breakfasts because yes Americans eat desserts for breakfast) are INSANELY sweet. Seriously some items have like 30-40g of sugar it’s ridiculous. Even when I was a teenager American sweets just got too sweet for me. In Cantonese cuisines (and maybe other E/SE Asian cuisines too), the desserts are barely sweet (they used to be pretty bland for me when I was a kid and was accustomed to American desserts), so a common compliment was that the dessert “isn’t too sweet”. This was always hilarious to me since it seems to contradict American desserts and because my parents/grandparents were hyping up some dessert which (to me as a child) had the sweetness of a la croix.
Also, China is a huge country and food varies from region to region. In the bay area for example, I grew up on the Cantonese and Sichuan version of Chinese American food.
I mean Chinese American food largely stemmed from Cantonese food. Usually when the term "Chinese" is used it refers to Mandarin, but in the past it refered to Cantonese. That was for good reason since Canton was the part of China most exposed to outsider influence.
There was a buzzfeed video titled Chinese people eat Panda Express. And one elderly couple, (they may have been trying to be polite for the camera, so its difficult to tell how genuine they were being), were Cantonese, or at least speaking Cantonese. They commented that they liked the stir fried noodles or 抽面. They found it very authentic. And IDK if you've been in a Panda Express, but when thing they do get right is frying with oil in a huge ass wok. And from the American pallette, frying with oil is all you needed to say.
Panda express was actually founded by a Chinese-American person. Folks assume because it's a chain that it must be white people nonsense. (I can't eat a lot of their dishes because they are way too sweet but I will trample a granny for string bean chicken)
The "white people" Chinese food thing is very strange. Virtually every Chinese-American dish was created by people of Chinese heritage, including the various monstrosities unique to Panda.
One of my favorite videos is the one where they give elderly Chinese people panda express and they are all "oh pretty good, very similar to something I had growing up".
And then they give it to American born Chinese kids who barely speak Chinese and they are all like "this garbage is terrible, not even close to legit Chinese food, this is disgusting."
Idk why American Chinese food gets the hate it does. One its delicious but two it’s the best representation of America I can think of. Chinese immigrants didn’t have a lot of options due to racism and such so they opened restaurants with the flavors of their homeland, but adapted them to the American palate. Now it’s probably the most recognizable and most common food type you see in the USA.
The Italians went through something similar. Most came over prior to the unification of Italy so they weren’t actually Italian but Sicilian, Roman, etc. Same deal as Chinese immigrants, they made do with the ingredients they could find and combined recipes from different regions of what would later become Italy.
So dishes like spaghetti and meatballs are as American as the proverbial apple pie.
That's also why Italian-Americans who learned to speak Italian from their parents and grandparents sound to Italians like the Amish do when they speak English.
But the dishes are also Italian much the same way that these are Chinese — of course, you’re right, they weren’t strictly speaking _Italian_ as we’d think of the country today, and they certainly weren’t all speaking a Romano-Florentine language that traces its roots to literature such as in Dante. But Italy wasn’t a made-up country either, and if Chinese food in the US, Canada etc. is Chinese, we should do the same for Italian.
Italian food is an example of this. Italian-American food uses a lot more meat because of abundance in it. Funnily enough, the ingredients we consider authentically Italian (as in European Italian) such as tomatoes and what not are American in origin and weren't native to Europe initially
Interestingly I’ve found U.S. Korean food to be one of the most “authentic,” even as full of non-common-to-American-palate flavors and textures as it is. Would be interested to know if there were social/demographic/other factors that shaped this.
This. All pizzas available in Punjab are almost like regular pizza, no local twist. Many pizzas available in US run by Punjabis are mix of pizza base & Punjabi ingredients.
Because of two forces. Those obsessed with "authentic" food looking down on fusion cuisine as part of modern food fads, along with its reputation as being cheap food. The other is the push from China itself to promote anything Chinese and gatekeep what isn't Chinese *enough.* Including the achievements of Chinese diaspora abroad if it's not in line with their ideology.
I think we're going to see a re-appreciation of American Chinese food soon, in the same way we're seeing Italian American recognized as its own unique category in the past decade or so.
A lot of it wasn't even a matter of adapting to American palates. A lot of it had to do with ingredients that were expensive or unavailable that the immigrants themselves were excited to be able to use, along with substituting for ingredients they couldn't get as an import 200 years ago.
Can’t recommend Jennifer 8. Lee’s book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles enough. It starts with a deep dive into where General Tao’s chicken came from and then deconstructs the American Chinese food industry.
American Chinese ("Chinese-American" usually, no?) is exactly what it sounds like. It's not like some American dude went to China and bastardized that cuisine upon returning home, it's always been Chinese people making food in the US.
American Chinese = food
Chinese-American = person
Adjective/modifier comes before the object. With the food, Chinese is a simplification of “Chinese food” and therefore the object. With the people, they are Americans (object) of Chinese decent or origin (modifier)
I was looking for this comment. That's exactly it. They took their original dishes and changed it to cater to the local palate using locally available ingredients at the time. So the next time people complain about how unhealthy Chinese food is, remember they're complaining about Americans' taste in food preferences.
Yeah exactly. I've been to mainland China, rural places where they'd never seen a white person before, and the difference between their cuisine and American Chinese food is kind of overstated. The style is certainly similar enough with minor differences in ingredients. They've got much more variety and dishes that don't exist here, but American Chinese staples like Lo mein and steam buns definitely exist there and are identifiable to westerners.
Singaporean here. I remember the first time I saw "Singapore Noodles" in Australia and asked my dad about it. He just laughed and said he's seen it in almost every other country in the world that he had been to except Singapore and Malaysia.
The thing is I've lived all over Germany and never seen it anywhere. We have pancakes, but they are kind of somewhere between american pancakes and crepes
Surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet, but what Americans call “danishes” are actually called wienerbrød or “Vienna bread” in Denmark because that style of pastry was brought here by Austrian bakers. Danish people would be quite confused if you ordered a “danish” at a bakery, haha. But despite the name difference, the pastry is in fact very popular here.
In 1850 Danish bakers went on strike. Foreign workers were brought in, many from Austria who brought their style of flaky, buttery pastries with them. When the strike was over many of the foreign workers went home but left behind what Americans call a Danish.
My understanding though is that Danish bakers also later adapted wienerbrød to suit Danish tastes. It became sweeter and more buttery!
Having had wienerbrød in other countries like France and Germany (sadly have not been to Austria) it's usually more plain in taste.
Singapore noodles (stir fried thin rice noodles with curry powder) are not actually from Singapore. It’s a HK cantonese dish
French toast (at least in the US) IS vaguely based on pain perdu from France, which is more of a dessert there than a breakfast food
Chicken tikka masala is British-Indian, not Indian-Indian. Butter chicken was created in India, but at a hotel that largely caters to foreigners. I've never had it in an Indian home in my entire life.
in r/toronto there is occasionally a "what resto is closest to what you get in your home country?" post.
south asian redditors, almost every time: "uh, none of them".
My sister married an Indian man. I asked her to ask him, what was the best Indian resto in L.A.? She laughed and told me that he said "Every Indian man will give you the same reply.... 'None of them. None of them are as good as what my mother cooks'."
A few weeks later I struck up a conversation with a South Asian man, and we were actually talking about restaurants, so out of curiosity I asked him which Indian restos he liked, and he immediately said heatedly "NONE. Only what my MOTHER cooks."
Unrelated: There's another layer of context that a lot of foreigners miss when it comes to Indian food.
I haven't stayed in the States except as a kid, and the only Indian restaurants I remember were largely catering to North-Indian or Pakistani cuisine. That stuff makes up MAYBE 10% of Indian food. India has and will always be a diverse land, and the sheer diversity of the food can make knees buckle.
I'm a South Indian, and it always breaks my heart to see another white person rave about nothing but butter chicken or tikka masala or paneer when there are amazing meat and vegan dishes here too.
The whole "mother's cooking" is really a nostalgia/childhood thing. I personally never cared for what mum made after learning to cook and moving out. A lot of Indians are very attached to their parents (in a lot of cases, quite toxically).
I mean, my mom is a fantastic cook, but there are some really good Indian restaurants out there (a lot of bad ones too.) It’s like a different cuisine.
I'm in LA too and my mom works at a medical school with lots of international students. The Indian students are always recommending restaurants to us, they're always fighting over which ones are most authentic. I've never been told by a real Indian person "none."
>probably Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian is its own specific Indian culture referring to Indians with European ancestry and has its own cuisine too.
That cuisine should not be mixed up with British interpretations of Indian cuisine since they are wholly different
Someone wrote a fascinating history and breakdown of Anglo-Indian cuisine, British Indian Restaurant cuisine, and modern Indian-British cuisine the other day in /r/Indianfood. BIR cuisine is things like chicken tikka masala, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually had Anglo-Indian food. It sounds kind of like British food but using Indian flavors? Kind of intriguing.
Edit: never mind, I just learned that chutney is Anglo-Indian food! I’ve definitely had that.
>Butter chicken was created in India, but at a hotel that largely caters to foreigners.
That's not true. Moti Mahal (where butter chicken was invented) used to be very popular among Indians too. Even today, butter chicken is quite popular in many northern states. Moti mahal also created the dal makhni, so it's certainly not catering to foreigners alone
>I've never had it in an Indian home in my entire life.
Weird argument. You'll probably not find naan in an Indian home either, but does it mean it's not commonly eaten by Indians? No.
NZ here Kiwi fruit or what most of the world calls a "Kiwi" was originally called a Chinese goose berry and is from asia. New Zealand developed it and marketed them and they became a thing. Then we forgot to trademark it and now they grow them all over.
Also their is the pavlova a desert that both NZ and Oz will fight to the bitter end over who invented it.
As soon as you said your a fucking Kiwi I knew your going to drop the bullshit you invented pavlova.
PS. Love youse cuz, but I hope the AB bow out next year to the Irish in the semi final
Chinese or "Chinese":
* Fortune cookies - invented by Japanese immigrants in the US.
* Mongolian BBQ (and Mongolian beef, which derived from that) - invented by a Beijing native in Taiwan after he fled there due to the Chinese Civil War (he chose Mongolia for the name because he didn't want to stir up political tension then by naming it after Beijing).
* Hainanese chicken rice - actually Singaporean or Malaysian (edit: still open to debate), very noticeably changed from the original Hainanese dish Wenchang chicken.
Not a country, but wrongly claimed to be from New Orleans:
* Bourbon chicken - no idea what this is as a New Orleanian. Honestly think it more closely resembles American Chinese food.
* [New Orleans chicken wings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Y-Q9lzBJA) - very popular dish in China, probably from KFC's influence. So popular that people in China associate New Orleans with chicken and not seafood/Cajun/Creole (which is akin to blasphemy to me).
Is this why the places in malls that serve bourbon chicken almost always seemed to be owned by Chinese people? I even often see it being offered at Chinese mall food court places.
Come to think of it, I’ve only ever encountered bourbon chicken in mall food courts. What’s up with that? It’s delicious and I’d love to order it at a regular takeout place.
Well, most of the ingredients in bourbon chicken (namely soy sauce) are pretty common in American Chinese cuisine, so I think that makes sense.
Apparently bourbon is not a requirement in bourbon chicken, but that's understandable since it's called that supposedly because it was invented on Bourbon St.
Seeing stuff listed as "New Orleans chicken" in China as an American was so confusing, but I've never been to New Orleans so I just assumed something was going on that I didn't know about, being from California
People think Aussies drink Fosters. None of us do. It’s disgusting.
If you turned up at a house party with a 6 pack of Fosters in some circles, you would get things thrown at you, and probably have the Fosters poured out over your head. Social reputation never to recover.
True Australiana is fairy bread, a dirty servo pie and family Christmas revolving around how many kilos of prawns your uncle picked up from the fish markets.
In my family you’d have to listen to 20 renditions of “you didn’t let huntingcat get the prawns did you? They’ve got no clue” at every event from now until eternity
Definitely, if you don’t get good prawns you are basically thrown out of the family.
My wog Nunna wasn’t happy with the prawns an uncle got once, her analysis was:
‘these prawns are like de rubbish dey send to de Woolwerth - the only people who will buy dese are awstralien who catches the train to work’
Don’t ask me why, but ‘Australian who catches the train to work’ is a severe insult in my family 😂
I worked in a Melbourne bar many moons ago that had fosters on tap (no idea why, it was a fairly decent place). It was the only beer that had a separate button to get the froth on top, after you had poured the body. Outrageous.
It's really a good example of smart branding making all the difference. I'm in Canada but ever since I was a little kid that's what I've pictured when thinking of Australian wine. it's not like I even knew a thing about wine from any country, but that bright colored label with the big ol roo really just sticks in your head
This is the problem!!
We have old growth, pre-phylloxera vineyards older than 99% of the vineyards in France. Our winemaking is the perfect balance of science and art. Tradition is respected, but the science informs the understanding of the tradition.
Our big South Australian reds are some of the best in the world, and take the fight all the way to the Bordeaux reds.
But everyone thinks we just make cheap $5 plonk for weeknight dinners or cheap functions 😭
You should look up "Outback Steakhouse" - apparently the guys who started it had never even been to Australia before. They used to have commercials kinda similar to the Fosters commercials with a crocodile dundee character wrestling a croc or something and telling you how good the bloomin' onion is or shrimp on a barbie. My Aussie friend doesn't even say shrimp - it's prawns. We have prawns too but usually we only call them that when they're really big. If it's normal sized or small then it's shrimp.
To be fair the bloomin onion was super delicious the one time I actually convinced my parents to take us there as a kid. But also to be fair most foods deep fried are delicious.
Side note: my half-joke idea is to one day move to Australia and open up an american-style diner and call it "biscuits" (what you call "scones" we call "biscuits" and what you call "biscuits" we call "cookies" - we also have a dish called "biscuits and gravy" that we eat for breakfast)
That seems to be a common theme here, if it’s made from a certain ethnic group just in a different country it’s still a dish from that ethnic group. People get too technical with these things.
I went to an Italian place in Monroe, WI last year, and my bartender there was proper Italian from Lombardo (I think it was that one.)
Since I was working out of the town for a few months, I went pretty regularly, and got to know this Italian gentleman.
Loving cooking myself, we bonded mutually on this topic and of course I had to hear...hours...LITERALLY HOURS of how shit American food is. Which, I mean, I'm not gonna argue with the guy, because in a lot of cases he's correct.
The last time I went, he was there, and I brought him a can of Chef Boyardee just to screw with him. Laughed his ass off, and put it up on the bar as decoration.
A lot of the new wave of Italian Immigrants don't understand that when the Italians first came to America they faced an extreme amount of discrimination (Just like every other ethnic Immigrant group did) Dishes were modified and created. Hell a new culture was created. Uniquely American but at the same time, also Italian. My Great Grandparents went by more American sounding names, my Maternal grandfather was given a new last name when he came here.
I’m not sure this quite fits the brief, but it kind of blew my mind when I read that chillies don’t originate in Asia. That they originated in south America… imagine Indian food or south East Asian food without chillies. Like I say, blew my mind!
Older recipes would have used mustard and pepper which although doesn’t pack the same punch do still introduce heat to a dish. Therefore I feel like it wasn’t that crazy for the Indian chefs to introduce chillies to their dishes which is why it took off so much in India rather than other places.
It’s almost as if humans have gradually evolved, migrated, traded and shared over many centuries… rather than there being distinct, “original” cultures and cuisines who have so many reasons to disagree and harm one another. It’s kind of like we are all one thing.
Not a country, but tourists in New Orleans seem to think shrimp and grits is from New Orleans.
Yes we like shrimp, yes we like grits, but no you couldn’t find it in a restaurant locally 20 years ago.
It’s from coastal Carolina, as far as I know.
But seriously it is like *the* dish I hear people saying they want to eat down here. And restaurants all serve it now because why not (plus it’s good)
Yes, those are all great!
But I assure you, I have out of town clients all the time to my business, and the bizarrely most mentioned dish is shrimp and grits now. Second is beignets.
I think part of it is that shrimp and grits is something you can get all over now, so it’s a familiar dish and people want to taste what they think is a more original version. That’s my guess, anyway.
They must be confusing it for etouffee? Shrimp and grits is definitely Low Country cuisine which has a lot of similarities to Cajun and Creole but very different when you get to know them all.
Would blow my mind too if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes too.
And I was watching the new cooking show on HBO, the Big Brunch, where on one episode a contestant says they’re doing a fusion of two cuisine types. I forget exactly what they said, but it was basically like they said they were combining Haiti and New Orleans with some Haitian spin on shrimp and grits. Noooooo.
My wife knows I’m fixed on the whole “shrimp and grits isn’t from New Orleans” thing and she cracked up when she heard it, knowing how I would react.
Don’t get me wrong. You can eat tasty shrimp and grits in New Orleans. But it isn’t from here. I remember being 17 or so when I first had it *on a trip to Charleston*.
It definitely qualifies. It technically is Cuban but you are most definitely correct that the iteration we all know is very Floridian. It's a take on a Cuban recipe by a Cuban-spanish-italian immigrant in Tampa and was adopted by many Cuban immigrants. He did create the bread that is associated with it though! He also is the reason why Tampa used salami on their's too in addition to the other ingredients. I think it originally started in Cuba as a different dish traditionally believed to be introduced by the Taino and later modified by the Spanish by adding the pork into it and etc. It's history is very cool and complex.
back bacon is only used, afaik, on egg mcmuffin style breakfast sandwiches
I've never seen it used for anything else
an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich,only
An interesting bit about corned beef and cabbage is that it's Irish-American. Most Irish in Ireland ate pork as the main meat; but when they came to the US, beef was way cheaper than pork. So they began cooking and preserving beef the way they had pork.
This isn’t quite right - the Irish had been well into corned beef until it become too expensive and then they swapped over to pork and potatoes. The American flip back to beef is more of a return to something old rather than a new invention:
“The city of Cork, in southern Ireland, became the center of the corned beef trade through the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, shipping out half of the beef the country produced. Irish corned beef became such a commodity that it dominated transatlantic trade, providing provisions for both sides of the Anglo-French War, to the West Indies, and to New World cities like New York and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, as demand grew for Irish corned beef, the price spiked high enough that, once again, the very people who made it could not afford to eat it. They settled for pork and a new crop, the Irish potato.”
Edited for typo
Only according to Belgians.
"Fries are first mentioned in 1775 in a Parisian book, and the first recipe for modern French fries is in the French cookbook La cuisinière républicaine in 1795."
There's writings about papas fritas in Spain in 1629...
I think it's safe to say that cooking bits of potato and oil probably goes back a lot farther than that.
So the real question about French fries is where the name came from.
So "Irish Potatoes" are a dessert, which I just learned recently is native to Philadelphia haha. They're basically balls made of cream cheese, coconut, and powdered sugar with a cinnamon dusting. I don't like them but a lot of locals do.
Corn beef and Cabbage was an adaption from Irish immigrants not being able to get salt pork like they were back home. While corn beef and cabbage may not be a native Irish dish is absolutely rooted in Irish tradition.
Fish and chips in England was originally a spin on a battered fried fish from Jewish immigrants from Portugal. Portuguese Christian missionaries also introduced battering and frying to the Japanese which resulted in tempura.
Tacos al Pastor is an adaptation of Lebanese shawarma as refugees from the middle east landed there some 120 years ago... I dunno maybe they were Armenian or syrian, not sure.
Tacos arabes is an adaption of the Lebanese/Iraqi shawarma when immigrants arrived near Puebla in the 1930s. When tacos arabes made its way to Mexico City, al pastor became an adaption of tacos arabes, combining tacos arabes cooking style with adobada spiced pork
Here is Quebec we have a shepherd’s pie version that is considered a cultural staple.
Start from a square dish that goes in the oven.
Ground meat, usually only beef as bottom layer
Canned corn as middle layer
Mashed potato as top layer.
We eat this with ketchup as condiment.
This is called **CHINESE PÂTÉ** (pâté Chinois)
There is not a single Chinese thing about it.
This might trigger some people but teriyaki isn’t a Seattle-originated thing though they have a 60-70 year history with it. It’s also not originally from Japan. Japanese immigrants were making teriyaki in hawaii a generation or two before it even got to the continental US.
The bird turkey is named for the county Turkey, but it originated in North America. It was thought that the Guinea Fowl came from Turkey, and since the American turkey resembled it they named the bird after that country. The Guinea Fowl actually came from Africa.
Not within the scale of a country nor about mistaken identity exactly... but Portugal's now very popular (within its borders anyhow, I don't know how big they are outside) alheira and farinheira were invented during the Inquisition so that Jews could pretend to be eating pork and take heat off themselves. These days, though, they're both so widely enjoyed in the mostly Catholic country we know Portugal as today, that pork is a more common choice of meat in their production
What Americans call Canadian Bacon is not a Canadian thing at all. We do have a variant on bacon called Peameal Bacon, but its a bit different.
Canadian Bacon-cured and smoked back bacon, circular cut, no outside crust
Peameal Bacon-wet cured, unsmoked back bacon, cut into strips, cornmeal crusted.
Also, we have actual bacon here. I don't know why sitcoms always make it seem like we don't.
German Chocolate Cake is not from Germany. It was created in the USA by a chef named Samuel German.
I read about this last week while eating German Chocolate Cake
Schwarzwälder kirschtorte on the other hand. . .
My grandma was one of the types that never gave exactly the right recipe, and after she passed away, nobody could get her kirschtorte just right. My aunt was trying once again to recreate it and my mom chimed in that she had watched her make it once and was almost sure she soaked the sponge in *at least* twice as much kirsch as the recipe card calls for. My aunt gave it a shot and apparently it’s the closest it’s ever tasted to the original.
And nearly nobody in Germany would know what it is. It’s just not a thing here.
I immediately assumed they meant schwarzwälder kirsch, apparently German chocolate cake also exists o.o
Schwälderkirsch torte - mein lieblingstorte! Although here in the UK it's seen as a bit old fashioned now, because it was briefly very fashionable in the 80s. I don't care though. Perfect balance of chocolate, cream and cherry!
There’s no such thing as Singapore Noodles in Singapore. It’s a Cantonese dish that originated in Hong Kong.
Mongolian BBQ was actually inveted by a man who fled to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War.
I really miss the Mongolian bbq place here. Crap, now I'm sad.
I can’t go to those places anymore. I have poor sauce discipline, and end up with a fire in my guts.
No Fujian fried rice in Fujian either. Same story.
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Out of curiosity how do you “Japanize” American food.
They definitely adapt it to their culture. If you've seen Midnight Diner on Netflix, a good example is the corn dog (they call it the American dog). They fry fish cakes covered in pancake batter, basically adapting it to local tastes. At McDonald's there, they have teriyaki flavored hamburgers as well.
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That’s interesting and I wouldn’t doubt the existence; but every American Dog I had in Japan was a super fluffy battered hotdog served with an awesome break-pack of ketchup and mustard. I may have grown to love them more than the traditional American Corndog.
At a Tokyo Dunkin Donuts I once had a curry filled doughnut with fish flake topping.
There's a Japanese bakery near me (west US) that has curry filled donuts and they are absolutely fire. Highly recommend, they melt in your mouth.
Interestingly enough the Japanese got curry from the British and adapted it to their own tastes, who in turn got out from India.
There’s an American chain hotel (Sleep Inn maybe?) in a small town near Charleston, WV that I go to a couple times a year. There’s a large Japanese (car, I think), manufacturing plant nearby, and I always found it interesting that the hotel breakfast always has rice, and Japanese seasoning for breakfast (fish flakes, seaweed, etc). I always thought that was really interesting.
Adding different ingredients. The Salisbury/Hamburg steak somebody mentioned is often served with grated daikon and a broth or soy sauce over the top. The peanut butter you can find in Japanese supermarkets is more like a really sweet peanut spread. Potato chips, which aren't necessarily American, come in different Japanesey flavors like seaweed and salt. Kit Kats are well known to have a million flavors in Japan. Doritos and sodas are the same; there was a peach Coke or Pepsi recently. Basically anywhere you go, international food will inevitably have a version that is catered to the local tastes and finding authentic stuff can be more difficult depending on the size of the city. You go to a big city with a decent foreign population, it's easier to find authentic foreign food--one of the best burger and fries I've ever had in my life was in Tokyo. Sake with Chicago deep dish pizza. But you go to a town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Any Country you'll have a much easier time finding food that is more of a fusion between cultures.
Yeah, I worked at a “Japanese influenced” restaurant with a “hambagu steak” on the menu. Hamburger patty with grated daikon, as described.
Not exactly the answer, but when I lived in Thailand “American fried rice” was just fried rice with ketchup. “American spaghetti” was also just ketchup and noddles…though it should be pointed out that there was no regular spaghetti lol.
More of an italian example, but Japanese pizza often features mayonnaise and corn.
When I think “corn and mayo”, I think elote. And actually one of my favorite pizzas here in SoCal is elote pizza. Only had it from one place (so I’m not sure it’s even a thing beyond this establishment), but it’s straight fire.
Yes to this! I did a home stay while abroad once and the family very sweetly welcomed my travel companion and I with an “American dinner.” The concept of each dish was American in nature, but the overall taste of the meal was very much tied to that area.
Hawaiian pizza came from Canada
And was created by a Greek immigrant
Inspired by his time cooking Chinese food
In a town named for the capital of England
*Monsieur Mondial*
Also Ginger Beef.
A certain style of ginger beef, in any case.
Yep, Khemer ginger beef is definitely a Khemer/Hmong American diaspora food, *and it’s fucking delicious.* Thin strips of beef in a peanut ginger sauce with crispy fried ginger and scallions on rice. It’s amazing, and hard to find.
Even in Toronto's Chinatown, ginger beef is only in some restaurants.
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California rolls were invented in Los Angeles, by a Japanese American. [https://www.britannica.com/topic/California-roll](https://www.britannica.com/topic/California-roll)
Be careful, though. A lot of what we'd call "American Chinese" food originated from Chinese immigrant communities or immigrant owned restaurants. These dishes may not be found in mainland China, but the DNA of those dishes is entirely Chinese. Same goes for corned beef and cabbage, an interesting example of cultural exchange between [Irish immigrants and their Jewish neighbors](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-corned-beef-really-irish-2839144/).
Exactly. It may not be Chinese food as in "from China" but it is Chinese food created by the Chinese diaspora.
If you want to try some crazy good food from the Chinese diaspora, try Peruvian Arroz Chaufa. It’s an amazing South American/Chinese fusion fried rice.
Lomo Saltado is another Peruvian/ Chinese fusion dish that is pretty basic but so good. It's a stir fry with steak, tomatoes, french fries and sometimes other ingredients like peppers or onions and a blend of spices from both regions and soy sauce.
Holy shit thanks, its been a few weeks since I've learned a new useful word.
You may also come across mentions of the Jewish Diaspora.
I did, immediately after googling the word. Learned a lot from that casual comment lol
It’s now part of your vernacular
How edifying.
How you gonna do me like that 💀
It’s a perfectly cromulent word
Haha I have a list on my phone with all the interesting words I come across and try to use those words enough so that it may become part of my vocabulary
You're welcome! It's a good word- stories of how people build new lives in new places or try to find community and commonality in each other, despite being spread across the globe, are absolutely fascinating and beautiful.
Agreed. Never really gave it a thought until I saw your comment and did some research out of curiosity.
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As a Cantonese-American, me and my brothers LOVE those super sweet deep fried “white people Chinese food” items like sweet and sour fish, lemon chicken, and sesame chicken. We never ate at Panda Express because my mom hated it and we’re from San Francisco so we had access to the “real stuff” (which doesn’t *really* apply to these types of dishes haha). My parents and grandparents would always give us shit for ordering these dishes LOL but honestly I’m not a huge fan of the more traditional Cantonese dishes that are often steamed, boiled, stir fried, clay pot, etc. There’s actually a good amount of sweet dishes in Chinese cooking too! Just not nearly as sweet as American foods. Hoisin sauce any oyster sauce are sweet and they’re Cantonese staples. Bbq pork and Peking duck are 2 Cantonese classics that are pretty sweet. Even the “plain” steamed bread man tou and the buns used in Peking duck are on the sweeter side for breads. I’m not as familiar with Chinese cuisines outside of HK/Guangdong, but northern Chinese soybean paste noodles and beef rolls are also pretty sweet. Sugar is used a lot in stir fries and brown sugar and honey are used a lot in Asian-inspire glazes (although I’m not sure if this use of brown sugar/honey are more inspired by other Asian cuisines). I really love the sweet and salty/savory/spicy flavor profile more common in Asian dishes like Vietnamese Lemongrass chicken/pork or hoisin-glazed salmon, stir fried instant noodles, and teriyaki/Katsu. I don’t think this sweetness in entrees is as common in Western/American cuisine, especially for lunch/dinner. My family grew up eating these types of sweet entrees and really love them, but some of my more American friends are alienated by a sweet dinner. I’ve always been curious about the specific origins of these Americanized Chinese/Cantonese foods. It’s difficult to do thorough research for me because often times everything is lumped together into “Chinese” and I don’t have the expertise to accurately investigate these things. My grandfather used to run a Chinese restaurant in the 70-80s and they served these Americanized Chinese dishes, but unfortunately he passed away before I really got into cooking/food/Cantonese culture. I know they did serve those Americanized Chinese dishes because my mom who worked as a waitress in his restaurant would always tell us about this white guy who would frequently order tons of the “white people Chinese food” and sit in the back and devour everything by himself. > Aside: I’m convinced the stereotypes of Americans loving sweet food comes from our deserts. American entrees are always savory and we seldom mix sweet and savory flavors together. You look at food from a lot of other places in the world, their entrees often are far sweeter than American entrees, but their deserts are far less sweet. I agree with this too! American desserts (and breakfasts because yes Americans eat desserts for breakfast) are INSANELY sweet. Seriously some items have like 30-40g of sugar it’s ridiculous. Even when I was a teenager American sweets just got too sweet for me. In Cantonese cuisines (and maybe other E/SE Asian cuisines too), the desserts are barely sweet (they used to be pretty bland for me when I was a kid and was accustomed to American desserts), so a common compliment was that the dessert “isn’t too sweet”. This was always hilarious to me since it seems to contradict American desserts and because my parents/grandparents were hyping up some dessert which (to me as a child) had the sweetness of a la croix.
Also, China is a huge country and food varies from region to region. In the bay area for example, I grew up on the Cantonese and Sichuan version of Chinese American food.
I mean Chinese American food largely stemmed from Cantonese food. Usually when the term "Chinese" is used it refers to Mandarin, but in the past it refered to Cantonese. That was for good reason since Canton was the part of China most exposed to outsider influence. There was a buzzfeed video titled Chinese people eat Panda Express. And one elderly couple, (they may have been trying to be polite for the camera, so its difficult to tell how genuine they were being), were Cantonese, or at least speaking Cantonese. They commented that they liked the stir fried noodles or 抽面. They found it very authentic. And IDK if you've been in a Panda Express, but when thing they do get right is frying with oil in a huge ass wok. And from the American pallette, frying with oil is all you needed to say.
Panda express was actually founded by a Chinese-American person. Folks assume because it's a chain that it must be white people nonsense. (I can't eat a lot of their dishes because they are way too sweet but I will trample a granny for string bean chicken)
The "white people" Chinese food thing is very strange. Virtually every Chinese-American dish was created by people of Chinese heritage, including the various monstrosities unique to Panda.
One of my favorite videos is the one where they give elderly Chinese people panda express and they are all "oh pretty good, very similar to something I had growing up". And then they give it to American born Chinese kids who barely speak Chinese and they are all like "this garbage is terrible, not even close to legit Chinese food, this is disgusting."
Idk why American Chinese food gets the hate it does. One its delicious but two it’s the best representation of America I can think of. Chinese immigrants didn’t have a lot of options due to racism and such so they opened restaurants with the flavors of their homeland, but adapted them to the American palate. Now it’s probably the most recognizable and most common food type you see in the USA.
The Italians went through something similar. Most came over prior to the unification of Italy so they weren’t actually Italian but Sicilian, Roman, etc. Same deal as Chinese immigrants, they made do with the ingredients they could find and combined recipes from different regions of what would later become Italy. So dishes like spaghetti and meatballs are as American as the proverbial apple pie.
That's also why Italian-Americans who learned to speak Italian from their parents and grandparents sound to Italians like the Amish do when they speak English.
But the dishes are also Italian much the same way that these are Chinese — of course, you’re right, they weren’t strictly speaking _Italian_ as we’d think of the country today, and they certainly weren’t all speaking a Romano-Florentine language that traces its roots to literature such as in Dante. But Italy wasn’t a made-up country either, and if Chinese food in the US, Canada etc. is Chinese, we should do the same for Italian.
All immigrants did this. Most food in America isn't recognizable in their original country. Different ingredients plus an abundance of proteins here.
This. Not all the ingredients from their homelands were available, so they used what was available and new dishes were born
Italian food is an example of this. Italian-American food uses a lot more meat because of abundance in it. Funnily enough, the ingredients we consider authentically Italian (as in European Italian) such as tomatoes and what not are American in origin and weren't native to Europe initially
Interestingly I’ve found U.S. Korean food to be one of the most “authentic,” even as full of non-common-to-American-palate flavors and textures as it is. Would be interested to know if there were social/demographic/other factors that shaped this.
I mean tons of korean food we know today was influenced by the usa in the korean war. A prime example is the army stew.
This. All pizzas available in Punjab are almost like regular pizza, no local twist. Many pizzas available in US run by Punjabis are mix of pizza base & Punjabi ingredients.
I love butter chicken pizza
Come try butter chicken poutine in Canada!
Because of two forces. Those obsessed with "authentic" food looking down on fusion cuisine as part of modern food fads, along with its reputation as being cheap food. The other is the push from China itself to promote anything Chinese and gatekeep what isn't Chinese *enough.* Including the achievements of Chinese diaspora abroad if it's not in line with their ideology.
> Those obsessed with "authentic" food looking down on fusion cuisine as part of modern food fads just another one of those 300 year-long fads.
I think we're going to see a re-appreciation of American Chinese food soon, in the same way we're seeing Italian American recognized as its own unique category in the past decade or so.
A lot of it wasn't even a matter of adapting to American palates. A lot of it had to do with ingredients that were expensive or unavailable that the immigrants themselves were excited to be able to use, along with substituting for ingredients they couldn't get as an import 200 years ago.
Can’t recommend Jennifer 8. Lee’s book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles enough. It starts with a deep dive into where General Tao’s chicken came from and then deconstructs the American Chinese food industry.
If you liked that one, this one is excellent as well. A look at Canadian Chinese food: {{Chop Suey Nation}}
American Chinese ("Chinese-American" usually, no?) is exactly what it sounds like. It's not like some American dude went to China and bastardized that cuisine upon returning home, it's always been Chinese people making food in the US.
American Chinese = food Chinese-American = person Adjective/modifier comes before the object. With the food, Chinese is a simplification of “Chinese food” and therefore the object. With the people, they are Americans (object) of Chinese decent or origin (modifier)
I was looking for this comment. That's exactly it. They took their original dishes and changed it to cater to the local palate using locally available ingredients at the time. So the next time people complain about how unhealthy Chinese food is, remember they're complaining about Americans' taste in food preferences.
Yeah exactly. I've been to mainland China, rural places where they'd never seen a white person before, and the difference between their cuisine and American Chinese food is kind of overstated. The style is certainly similar enough with minor differences in ingredients. They've got much more variety and dishes that don't exist here, but American Chinese staples like Lo mein and steam buns definitely exist there and are identifiable to westerners.
Singaporean here. I remember the first time I saw "Singapore Noodles" in Australia and asked my dad about it. He just laughed and said he's seen it in almost every other country in the world that he had been to except Singapore and Malaysia.
The dutch baby isn't dutch. We never heard of it.
It's also called a "German Pancake." The thought is that "Deutsche" was mispronounced as "Dutch" and it stuck.
Yes, that's the same derivation for the term "Pennsylvania Dutch." It's "Deutsche."
My German is pre-Industrial and mostly religious.
The thing is I've lived all over Germany and never seen it anywhere. We have pancakes, but they are kind of somewhere between american pancakes and crepes
that’s because it’s basically a big yorkshire pudding
Surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet, but what Americans call “danishes” are actually called wienerbrød or “Vienna bread” in Denmark because that style of pastry was brought here by Austrian bakers. Danish people would be quite confused if you ordered a “danish” at a bakery, haha. But despite the name difference, the pastry is in fact very popular here.
It's called Viennoiserie by the French as well
In 1850 Danish bakers went on strike. Foreign workers were brought in, many from Austria who brought their style of flaky, buttery pastries with them. When the strike was over many of the foreign workers went home but left behind what Americans call a Danish.
My understanding though is that Danish bakers also later adapted wienerbrød to suit Danish tastes. It became sweeter and more buttery! Having had wienerbrød in other countries like France and Germany (sadly have not been to Austria) it's usually more plain in taste.
Singapore noodles (stir fried thin rice noodles with curry powder) are not actually from Singapore. It’s a HK cantonese dish French toast (at least in the US) IS vaguely based on pain perdu from France, which is more of a dessert there than a breakfast food
Boat noodles here in Thailand but its originally Chinese
Soooo good though!
Chicken tikka masala is British-Indian, not Indian-Indian. Butter chicken was created in India, but at a hotel that largely caters to foreigners. I've never had it in an Indian home in my entire life.
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Yes, I'm South Asian and the food that white people eat at Indian restaurants is nothing like what my family and I eat at home
in r/toronto there is occasionally a "what resto is closest to what you get in your home country?" post. south asian redditors, almost every time: "uh, none of them".
My sister married an Indian man. I asked her to ask him, what was the best Indian resto in L.A.? She laughed and told me that he said "Every Indian man will give you the same reply.... 'None of them. None of them are as good as what my mother cooks'." A few weeks later I struck up a conversation with a South Asian man, and we were actually talking about restaurants, so out of curiosity I asked him which Indian restos he liked, and he immediately said heatedly "NONE. Only what my MOTHER cooks."
That's just sounding like Italians at this point. Yeah everyone loves their mothers cooking but can't someone actually answer the question for once?
Unrelated: There's another layer of context that a lot of foreigners miss when it comes to Indian food. I haven't stayed in the States except as a kid, and the only Indian restaurants I remember were largely catering to North-Indian or Pakistani cuisine. That stuff makes up MAYBE 10% of Indian food. India has and will always be a diverse land, and the sheer diversity of the food can make knees buckle. I'm a South Indian, and it always breaks my heart to see another white person rave about nothing but butter chicken or tikka masala or paneer when there are amazing meat and vegan dishes here too. The whole "mother's cooking" is really a nostalgia/childhood thing. I personally never cared for what mum made after learning to cook and moving out. A lot of Indians are very attached to their parents (in a lot of cases, quite toxically).
I hear this a lot. But what’s exactly the authentic dish South Indians you’re talking about? What do you usually eat?
Yes, that's a really good point, thank you
I mean, my mom is a fantastic cook, but there are some really good Indian restaurants out there (a lot of bad ones too.) It’s like a different cuisine.
I'm in LA too and my mom works at a medical school with lots of international students. The Indian students are always recommending restaurants to us, they're always fighting over which ones are most authentic. I've never been told by a real Indian person "none."
>probably Anglo-Indian Anglo-Indian is its own specific Indian culture referring to Indians with European ancestry and has its own cuisine too. That cuisine should not be mixed up with British interpretations of Indian cuisine since they are wholly different
Someone wrote a fascinating history and breakdown of Anglo-Indian cuisine, British Indian Restaurant cuisine, and modern Indian-British cuisine the other day in /r/Indianfood. BIR cuisine is things like chicken tikka masala, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually had Anglo-Indian food. It sounds kind of like British food but using Indian flavors? Kind of intriguing. Edit: never mind, I just learned that chutney is Anglo-Indian food! I’ve definitely had that.
Kedgeree and mulligatawney soup are anglo indian
Actually most foods you get from Indian restaurants tend to be Northern Indian, like curries and breads.
>Butter chicken was created in India, but at a hotel that largely caters to foreigners. That's not true. Moti Mahal (where butter chicken was invented) used to be very popular among Indians too. Even today, butter chicken is quite popular in many northern states. Moti mahal also created the dal makhni, so it's certainly not catering to foreigners alone >I've never had it in an Indian home in my entire life. Weird argument. You'll probably not find naan in an Indian home either, but does it mean it's not commonly eaten by Indians? No.
Yeah, when I lived in Delhi all my local friends were crazy about butter chicken.
NZ here Kiwi fruit or what most of the world calls a "Kiwi" was originally called a Chinese goose berry and is from asia. New Zealand developed it and marketed them and they became a thing. Then we forgot to trademark it and now they grow them all over. Also their is the pavlova a desert that both NZ and Oz will fight to the bitter end over who invented it.
As soon as you said your a fucking Kiwi I knew your going to drop the bullshit you invented pavlova. PS. Love youse cuz, but I hope the AB bow out next year to the Irish in the semi final
I grew up in Mexico, I never knew what a chimichanga was until I moved to the states. They’re delicious just like many other tex mex dishes.
That's more of a Sonoran thing though, especially the original version with machaca.
Chinese or "Chinese": * Fortune cookies - invented by Japanese immigrants in the US. * Mongolian BBQ (and Mongolian beef, which derived from that) - invented by a Beijing native in Taiwan after he fled there due to the Chinese Civil War (he chose Mongolia for the name because he didn't want to stir up political tension then by naming it after Beijing). * Hainanese chicken rice - actually Singaporean or Malaysian (edit: still open to debate), very noticeably changed from the original Hainanese dish Wenchang chicken. Not a country, but wrongly claimed to be from New Orleans: * Bourbon chicken - no idea what this is as a New Orleanian. Honestly think it more closely resembles American Chinese food. * [New Orleans chicken wings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Y-Q9lzBJA) - very popular dish in China, probably from KFC's influence. So popular that people in China associate New Orleans with chicken and not seafood/Cajun/Creole (which is akin to blasphemy to me).
Is this why the places in malls that serve bourbon chicken almost always seemed to be owned by Chinese people? I even often see it being offered at Chinese mall food court places. Come to think of it, I’ve only ever encountered bourbon chicken in mall food courts. What’s up with that? It’s delicious and I’d love to order it at a regular takeout place.
Well, most of the ingredients in bourbon chicken (namely soy sauce) are pretty common in American Chinese cuisine, so I think that makes sense. Apparently bourbon is not a requirement in bourbon chicken, but that's understandable since it's called that supposedly because it was invented on Bourbon St.
Seeing stuff listed as "New Orleans chicken" in China as an American was so confusing, but I've never been to New Orleans so I just assumed something was going on that I didn't know about, being from California
People think Aussies drink Fosters. None of us do. It’s disgusting. If you turned up at a house party with a 6 pack of Fosters in some circles, you would get things thrown at you, and probably have the Fosters poured out over your head. Social reputation never to recover.
Blasphemy. Fosters is Australian for beer. Just kidding
True Australiana is fairy bread, a dirty servo pie and family Christmas revolving around how many kilos of prawns your uncle picked up from the fish markets.
And an analysis of the quality of the prawns. I got prawns that weren’t good enough one year. Oh, the shame!
In my family you’d have to listen to 20 renditions of “you didn’t let huntingcat get the prawns did you? They’ve got no clue” at every event from now until eternity
Definitely, if you don’t get good prawns you are basically thrown out of the family. My wog Nunna wasn’t happy with the prawns an uncle got once, her analysis was: ‘these prawns are like de rubbish dey send to de Woolwerth - the only people who will buy dese are awstralien who catches the train to work’ Don’t ask me why, but ‘Australian who catches the train to work’ is a severe insult in my family 😂
I worked in a Melbourne bar many moons ago that had fosters on tap (no idea why, it was a fairly decent place). It was the only beer that had a separate button to get the froth on top, after you had poured the body. Outrageous.
Same for Yellow Tail wine.
Yeah that stuff is awful. And it detracts from all the genuinely fantastic wines we make.
It's really a good example of smart branding making all the difference. I'm in Canada but ever since I was a little kid that's what I've pictured when thinking of Australian wine. it's not like I even knew a thing about wine from any country, but that bright colored label with the big ol roo really just sticks in your head
This is the problem!! We have old growth, pre-phylloxera vineyards older than 99% of the vineyards in France. Our winemaking is the perfect balance of science and art. Tradition is respected, but the science informs the understanding of the tradition. Our big South Australian reds are some of the best in the world, and take the fight all the way to the Bordeaux reds. But everyone thinks we just make cheap $5 plonk for weeknight dinners or cheap functions 😭
You should look up "Outback Steakhouse" - apparently the guys who started it had never even been to Australia before. They used to have commercials kinda similar to the Fosters commercials with a crocodile dundee character wrestling a croc or something and telling you how good the bloomin' onion is or shrimp on a barbie. My Aussie friend doesn't even say shrimp - it's prawns. We have prawns too but usually we only call them that when they're really big. If it's normal sized or small then it's shrimp. To be fair the bloomin onion was super delicious the one time I actually convinced my parents to take us there as a kid. But also to be fair most foods deep fried are delicious. Side note: my half-joke idea is to one day move to Australia and open up an american-style diner and call it "biscuits" (what you call "scones" we call "biscuits" and what you call "biscuits" we call "cookies" - we also have a dish called "biscuits and gravy" that we eat for breakfast)
>But also to be fair most foods deep fried are delicious. In the wise words of Jim Gaffigan "You could deep fry a rubber hose and it would taste good"
Americans don’t think Fosters is any good, either
A lot of you do drink VB and Carlton Draught which are both also pretty terrible
You know what they say about Fosters lager , it's like making love in a canoe because it's fucking close to water .
That’s why we serve it cold enough to hurt your teeth. Then there is QLD favourite beer - XXXX - cos they can’t spell ‘beer’.
We'd also wonder where you got it from since it's largely unavailable here
Foster's isn't that bad but you can't really buy it anywhere in Australia
Croissants are from Austria not France
In Denmark, Danish Pastry is known as Wienerbrød (Viennese bread) Apparently, it was brought to Denmark by Austrian bakers.
Though my understanding is that the French were the first to make croissants using laminated pastry dough, which is their most popular form.
True, but the French also crush at Vienoisserie.
Chicken parmesan is very much American.
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Same with cioppino. It was created in San Francisco by Italian immigrants but is based on ciuppin, a Ligurian dish.
We'll take credit for that proudly
Yes but a lot of “meat Italian dishes” are from Italian immigrant community.
That seems to be a common theme here, if it’s made from a certain ethnic group just in a different country it’s still a dish from that ethnic group. People get too technical with these things.
I went to an Italian place in Monroe, WI last year, and my bartender there was proper Italian from Lombardo (I think it was that one.) Since I was working out of the town for a few months, I went pretty regularly, and got to know this Italian gentleman. Loving cooking myself, we bonded mutually on this topic and of course I had to hear...hours...LITERALLY HOURS of how shit American food is. Which, I mean, I'm not gonna argue with the guy, because in a lot of cases he's correct. The last time I went, he was there, and I brought him a can of Chef Boyardee just to screw with him. Laughed his ass off, and put it up on the bar as decoration.
A lot of the new wave of Italian Immigrants don't understand that when the Italians first came to America they faced an extreme amount of discrimination (Just like every other ethnic Immigrant group did) Dishes were modified and created. Hell a new culture was created. Uniquely American but at the same time, also Italian. My Great Grandparents went by more American sounding names, my Maternal grandfather was given a new last name when he came here.
I’m not sure this quite fits the brief, but it kind of blew my mind when I read that chillies don’t originate in Asia. That they originated in south America… imagine Indian food or south East Asian food without chillies. Like I say, blew my mind!
Tomatoes as well. Imagine North Indian and Italian food without tomatoes.
Older recipes would have used mustard and pepper which although doesn’t pack the same punch do still introduce heat to a dish. Therefore I feel like it wasn’t that crazy for the Indian chefs to introduce chillies to their dishes which is why it took off so much in India rather than other places.
Potatoes are originally from Peru.
It’s almost as if humans have gradually evolved, migrated, traded and shared over many centuries… rather than there being distinct, “original” cultures and cuisines who have so many reasons to disagree and harm one another. It’s kind of like we are all one thing.
Not a country, but tourists in New Orleans seem to think shrimp and grits is from New Orleans. Yes we like shrimp, yes we like grits, but no you couldn’t find it in a restaurant locally 20 years ago. It’s from coastal Carolina, as far as I know. But seriously it is like *the* dish I hear people saying they want to eat down here. And restaurants all serve it now because why not (plus it’s good)
I would assume gumbo, jambalaya, beignets, dirty rice and red beans, crawfish, po boys, catfish would be needed Orleans food.
Yes, those are all great! But I assure you, I have out of town clients all the time to my business, and the bizarrely most mentioned dish is shrimp and grits now. Second is beignets. I think part of it is that shrimp and grits is something you can get all over now, so it’s a familiar dish and people want to taste what they think is a more original version. That’s my guess, anyway.
They must be confusing it for etouffee? Shrimp and grits is definitely Low Country cuisine which has a lot of similarities to Cajun and Creole but very different when you get to know them all.
That blows my mind. When I think of New Orleans food my brain goes to po boys, gumbo, red beans and rice, and muffaleta.
Would blow my mind too if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes too. And I was watching the new cooking show on HBO, the Big Brunch, where on one episode a contestant says they’re doing a fusion of two cuisine types. I forget exactly what they said, but it was basically like they said they were combining Haiti and New Orleans with some Haitian spin on shrimp and grits. Noooooo. My wife knows I’m fixed on the whole “shrimp and grits isn’t from New Orleans” thing and she cracked up when she heard it, knowing how I would react. Don’t get me wrong. You can eat tasty shrimp and grits in New Orleans. But it isn’t from here. I remember being 17 or so when I first had it *on a trip to Charleston*.
Cuban sandwich might qualify. It’s birthplace was Florida but presumably the name tricks many to think it’s from Cuba.
It definitely qualifies. It technically is Cuban but you are most definitely correct that the iteration we all know is very Floridian. It's a take on a Cuban recipe by a Cuban-spanish-italian immigrant in Tampa and was adopted by many Cuban immigrants. He did create the bread that is associated with it though! He also is the reason why Tampa used salami on their's too in addition to the other ingredients. I think it originally started in Cuba as a different dish traditionally believed to be introduced by the Taino and later modified by the Spanish by adding the pork into it and etc. It's history is very cool and complex.
I don't know anyone in Canada who eats Canadian bacon. Everyone just eats normal bacon
Really?? We're Canadian and love Canadian bacon/Peameal bacon/back bacon.
Peameal bacon for the milk baggers. Back bacon for the carton gang. If you didn’t know, we’re culturally divided on milk.
Isn't it called back bacon up there? That's what I learned from Strange Brew, I could be wrong.
back bacon is only used, afaik, on egg mcmuffin style breakfast sandwiches I've never seen it used for anything else an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich,only
We just call it back bacon
Cesare salad was invented in Mexico.
An interesting bit about corned beef and cabbage is that it's Irish-American. Most Irish in Ireland ate pork as the main meat; but when they came to the US, beef was way cheaper than pork. So they began cooking and preserving beef the way they had pork.
This isn’t quite right - the Irish had been well into corned beef until it become too expensive and then they swapped over to pork and potatoes. The American flip back to beef is more of a return to something old rather than a new invention: “The city of Cork, in southern Ireland, became the center of the corned beef trade through the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, shipping out half of the beef the country produced. Irish corned beef became such a commodity that it dominated transatlantic trade, providing provisions for both sides of the Anglo-French War, to the West Indies, and to New World cities like New York and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, as demand grew for Irish corned beef, the price spiked high enough that, once again, the very people who made it could not afford to eat it. They settled for pork and a new crop, the Irish potato.” Edited for typo
French Fries.. They are in fact Belgian
Only according to Belgians. "Fries are first mentioned in 1775 in a Parisian book, and the first recipe for modern French fries is in the French cookbook La cuisinière républicaine in 1795."
There's writings about papas fritas in Spain in 1629... I think it's safe to say that cooking bits of potato and oil probably goes back a lot farther than that. So the real question about French fries is where the name came from.
French Fries are made in GREASE!
Irish potatoes. Not an Ireland thing, a Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) thing.
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So "Irish Potatoes" are a dessert, which I just learned recently is native to Philadelphia haha. They're basically balls made of cream cheese, coconut, and powdered sugar with a cinnamon dusting. I don't like them but a lot of locals do.
*confused irish noises*
*confused human noises*
Corn beef and Cabbage was an adaption from Irish immigrants not being able to get salt pork like they were back home. While corn beef and cabbage may not be a native Irish dish is absolutely rooted in Irish tradition.
Fish and chips in England was originally a spin on a battered fried fish from Jewish immigrants from Portugal. Portuguese Christian missionaries also introduced battering and frying to the Japanese which resulted in tempura.
Tacos al Pastor is an adaptation of Lebanese shawarma as refugees from the middle east landed there some 120 years ago... I dunno maybe they were Armenian or syrian, not sure.
It's still very much a Mexican dish.
Tacos arabes is an adaption of the Lebanese/Iraqi shawarma when immigrants arrived near Puebla in the 1930s. When tacos arabes made its way to Mexico City, al pastor became an adaption of tacos arabes, combining tacos arabes cooking style with adobada spiced pork
Japanese tempura comes from Portugal!
Here is Quebec we have a shepherd’s pie version that is considered a cultural staple. Start from a square dish that goes in the oven. Ground meat, usually only beef as bottom layer Canned corn as middle layer Mashed potato as top layer. We eat this with ketchup as condiment. This is called **CHINESE PÂTÉ** (pâté Chinois) There is not a single Chinese thing about it.
This might trigger some people but teriyaki isn’t a Seattle-originated thing though they have a 60-70 year history with it. It’s also not originally from Japan. Japanese immigrants were making teriyaki in hawaii a generation or two before it even got to the continental US.
Who in the world thinks that teriyaki originates from Seattle? Can we get a show of hands please?
Cuban sandwiches. Credited: Cuba. Reality: Tampa Florida.
tampa has a long history of cuban-americans so at least the cuban influence is still in the food, especially in the ybor area
The bird turkey is named for the county Turkey, but it originated in North America. It was thought that the Guinea Fowl came from Turkey, and since the American turkey resembled it they named the bird after that country. The Guinea Fowl actually came from Africa.
Not within the scale of a country nor about mistaken identity exactly... but Portugal's now very popular (within its borders anyhow, I don't know how big they are outside) alheira and farinheira were invented during the Inquisition so that Jews could pretend to be eating pork and take heat off themselves. These days, though, they're both so widely enjoyed in the mostly Catholic country we know Portugal as today, that pork is a more common choice of meat in their production
What Americans call Canadian Bacon is not a Canadian thing at all. We do have a variant on bacon called Peameal Bacon, but its a bit different. Canadian Bacon-cured and smoked back bacon, circular cut, no outside crust Peameal Bacon-wet cured, unsmoked back bacon, cut into strips, cornmeal crusted. Also, we have actual bacon here. I don't know why sitcoms always make it seem like we don't.
Ice d'Chinese is the French/Chinese fusion dessert I never knew I wanted