Welcome to YUROP
The Ultimate Eurozone of Culture, Chaos, and Continental Excellence
A glorious gathering place to celebrate (and lovingly roast) the lands, peoples, quirks, and contradictions of Her Most Magnificent Europa. From the fjords to the Med, the steppes to the Atlantic spray, this is a shrine to everything that makes Europe gloriously weird, wonderfully diverse, and occasionally passive-aggressive in 24 languages.
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πͺπΊ The progressive Union of Peace (and paperwork)
π§ The freest of health care
π· The finest of foods
π³οΈβπ The liberalest of liberties
π The proud non-members and honorary cousins
πΆ And the eternal dance of unity, confusion, and cultural banter.
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On the one hand, we really do have a rich culinary tradition that has some real high points that are only overshadowed by our neighbours like France and Italy because those countries are (rightly) regarded as being at the global pinnacle of food culture
On the other, when I went to the supermarket yesterday, some of the options on the shelves included ketchup-flavoured pasta sauce and "guacamole-inspired topping" with 3.5% avocado
and βguacamole-inspired toppingβ with 3.5% avocado
Came here to say that being in a shelf is not a sign of bad national cuisine, as we have that here as well. Then again, being German I probably ought to keep hush on that topic..
I have really enjoyed visiting your country every time I've had the chance, but I'm afraid you're definitely down here with us on culinary matters
Your bread deserves to be better-known though, that stuff is great
I have really enjoyed visiting your country every time Iβve had the chance
So did I in yours!
And tbh I have some very fond culinary memories from my times there: be it a well-made shepherd's pie after a wet autumn day or the probably best dessert I have yet eaten, some sort of trifle or similar that still regularly visits me in my dreams up until today.. but yeah, it's also been Britain that made me finally appreciate German bread. :)
I love eating in German restaurants, hearty, delicious food at reasonable costs, served with dirt cheap beer, what's not to like?
I would like to disagree in the name of Maultaschen, SpΓ€tzle und KloΓ mit SoΓ....
France and Italy because those countries are (rightly) regarded as being at the global pinnacle of food culture
This is hella subjective.
There are extremely few French restaurants in our quite multicultural city (Melbourne), and almost no one citing it as their favourite cuisine (to eat out at restaurants, because it's usually expensive as fuck and a waste of money for most people)
They have absolutely cornered the bakery market though haha
To be fair, the French mostly only come here on working holidays.
There's a huge difference with french cuisine available abroad and French cuisine at home (in the country itself). I found that abroad, it's always a luxury thing, seems just naming your restaurant something French justifies adding 50% to the bill regardless of the food actually being made there.
French cuisine is great not because of the top tier of it, but because of the extremely high standard even at the lowest rungs of the ladder (in the country itself). You can eat at a truck stop and get a three course meal for 10 bucks and it'll be delightful (talking about the few actual truck stop restaurants left, not the corporate highway shit which does exist too). It's also about home cooking and the way normal families cook. Also it's about the culture around food, sitting together for long meals and sharing a good time.
I'm sure it's lovely, just softly disagreed with calling it the pinacle of food, when it's just personal opinion
And also because I wanted to get in a few jabs at french "fine dining" hehehe. Though, my dislike of overly expensive food is also just my opinion
Perhaps I'll get a chance to experience down to earth French cooking overseas, but not here
I appreciate the response though, it was a good read :)
As I grew up in France, I assumed that our reputation for good food abroad was probably just good marketing by our food industry, but grossly exaggerated.
After having traveled a bit though, I now realize that not a lot of cultures takes food and cooking as seriously as we do. There is really a cultural thing here.
I mean, I'm sure it's nice in general. But because of economics it's not desirable here (for dining out)
I think that's at least partly explainable by how French cooking was so thoroughly adopted by European haute-cuisine in general - there are fewer specifically French restaurants because huge amounts of French cuisine became known as just general fancy cooking instead. I will say that when I have visited France, I have eaten exceedingly well without having to spend a lot of money
But yes, it is subjective. I do think it's reasonable to say that France has a good reputation for food, though
Oh for sure, they have a very good reputation
I think the "joke" about bad British food has less to do with random crap in supermarkets and more with dishes that people consider weird or unappealing like jellied eels.
British food got bad due to 13 years of rationing during and after WWII. It is hard to maintain a more than low level cuisine when food is rationed, and after 13 years habits have changed.
To continue to take a shitposty matter much too seriously for a while:
I think that's basically just the jellied eels and stargazy pie, isn't it? You'd have to really go looking to find anyone making or eating those nowadays, and they were always regional dishes in the first place (London for the eels, Cornwall for the pie). You could toss haggis in there too, but it doesn't have the same striking appearance as the other two, it's usually just the ingredients that freak folk out. Haggis actually still is popular in Scotland, and I can attest that it's excellent
The joke I usually hear is that way too much of our food is bland over-boiled under-seasoned mush. You know, "Britain conquered the world for spices and then refused to use any of them". That one does have a basis in modern reality. The amount of vegetables I ate growing up which were just boiled until they're barely holding together and then at most threatened with the mention of salt... it'd drive a Frenchman to madness, I swear it
As Kornblumenratte mentions, WWII rationing really did do a number on us whether it was the root of the joke or not. I personally find that explanation plausible because it comes with an explanation for why the reputation spread far and wide (soldiers from overseas being stationed here). I've read arguments for British food being bad pre-WWII, including early industrialisation and a poor climate for growing a lot of tasty ingredients. I don't know enough to comment on how true each one is. Whatever the case is, my experience of it is just that our culture lacks the deep love of food that some of our neighbours on the continent seem to have. Any serious exploration of the topic is left up to those that take a personal interest.
Entirely anecdotally it does seem to me like while there is great food to be had here, including very traditional stuff, the general baseline of quality is a lot lower than somewhere like France or Italy. You can't just walk into a random cafe and assume it'll be great and you can't just expect a random person to have a any sort of passion for food. There are plenty of people and establishments that do have that skill and passion, but the culture rarely gets anyone off to a good start on that journey
France has some rationing too during WWII.
Any serious exploration of the topic is left up to those that take a personal interest.
I may have the beginning of a lead, as I wondered where the French culinary culture came from. It seems to have become something different from our neighbors, around the rise of Louis XIV. See, at that time, meals you could serve to your guest was a real measure of your wealth. You would serve exotic spices, fresh fish, ingredients from far away.
As the international trade was getting more intense (yes, already at the time), having exotic spices and curry became accessible to more and more people, not just the top elite (fun to think that around Louis XIII, the pinacle of expensive French food was probably something full of spices similar to a curry) so the king invented a new league above these: "We are going to make tasty food like you have never tasted, only with local products. They all come from the royal gardens. My vegetables have bodyguards. Have yours?"
The nobility competed with each other by having the most elaborate meals, the best chefs. It was the time when bouquet garni, creme chantilly and many popular recipes were invented.
In modern terms, you would say that a lot of R&D was invested in that status item, that was "good food". After the Revolution, what did these cooks do? They opened restaurants.
The strong food culture, the idea of seeing good food as an important status item to check if you want to rise in the hierarchy, seems to come from that time.
I was extremely confused to be getting a reply to a comment this old, but it's an interesting reply so no complaints from me!
I do quite like that theory. It'd be interesting to compare the circumstances to other places that had revolutions at about the same time. The New World countries maybe aren't great comparisons since they didn't have the same centuries-old entrenched aristocracies, but there were a number of other revolutions in the same time period
Oh! I did not see the age! I forgot I sort my message by active discussions first!
When I was in the UK the British food was okay but usually had very little salt on it compared to what you'd get in other countries. Salt was readily available on the table though so it wasn't a big deal.
Japan or China do have a trove of weird food, yet despite rotten eggs or horse tongue barbecue, do not have the reputation the brit food has. And hell, in France we eat frogs and snails. Our specialty is a bacterial culture sitting under a fungus culture. Weird is not a problem when the food is good.
As someone who moved here more than a decade ago: yes. The two dominant flavours of British cuisine are black pepper and sugar, everything else is almost flavourless. Thank fuck for all the immigrant cuisines :D
What could possibly be wrong with Beans on Toast!?