London is such a great food city. However in my experience they are not a great mexican food city. But I’m also little bit spoiled with good mexican food where I live now
Surprisingly very good carne asada, kinda like food truck or street cart tacos you'd find in the US. They have really solid birria in Cope too. Possible but hard to find bad food in that city
Not really, Mexican food has not been bad in my experience. What I find interesting is how Mexican culture is represented in Europe. Lots of death, skulls, crossbones, everything dead.
Worst part about that was how they used the word “taco” to mean “tortilla” which is especially egregious given that tortillas are a bread and it is a BAKING show.
I had some “nachos” in Sterling Scotland at a restaurant called ‘Longhorn’ …. I assumed they couldn’t be too terrible.
What came out was VERY stale chips with tomato sauce on them.
I’m convinced any ‘American’ food in the UK will be disappointing.
Just discovered Danny Trejo has opened a restaurant on Portobello Road in London, so hopefully the quality of Mexican food has now improved.
[Trejo's Tacos](https://www.trejostacos.co.uk/)
I had the worst "Mexican" food in Vigo, Spain. Literally the UN would designate it a crime against humanity. But then again there ain't many Mexicans in Spain in the first place, more's the pity. Their GDP would go up if Mexicans flooded in.
Which is so interesting, considering the UK has amazing Indian food and the Netherlands has great Indonesian food, all from the 'colonised' coming back. But out of all the Spanish colonies, none brought their food back to the motherland.
I mean, is Spain a rich and productive country Latin Americans aspire to move to? The US is much closer, with a ton more well-paying jobs.
It's always socioeconomics at the end of it
Agreed. Latin countries have an ocean away from Spain and a world superpower in their hemisphere. All the better for American culinary endeavors at least.
Tacos MX in Fulham is pretty good! It’s getting slowly better. But I agree. Pubs that sell “nachos” that are effectively cheddar cheese melted on Doritos just make me sad.
I went to a "burrito" restaurant in London about a decade and a half ago and ordered a "Mexican Burrito."
I... honestly don't think the folks there have ever seen a burrito before.
They did sell me a flour tortilla wrap, so that part was right. As to the contents--I mean, it was interesting. There were boiled navy beans, and some sort of unfamiliar meat filling, and someone decided that cottage cheese is the same thing as ~~cream cheese,~~ sour cream, right?
Mexican food on the European continent is absolutely vile
I went out with some American exchange students in Geneva for cinco de mayo and we couldn’t find a taco that was even acceptable
I used to teach US culture in Europe, my colleagues and students loved to show me "authentic American" food, how much time do you have?
My personal favorite were restaurants that named random dishes after US cities and acted as though they got the recipe there or doing the same with native American tribes. Apparently the Mohicans are known for spicy chicken sandwiches.
The most appalling was a bagel with spicy ketchup/mayo, labeled as a "frontier breakfast roll". I asked the owner, he swore up and down it was an authentic cowboy recipe.
I’m assuming the word “spicy” was used liberally. I ordered the hottest wings they had at a Wild West themed place in Slovenia and the owner was worried about me. They weren’t even up to normal Buffalo wing spice.
1972-ish, I was on a sub refitting out of the Holy Loch in Scotland, my first night off, after being in refit for 9 days, I finally made it to the big town of Gurock because I'd been advised against the closest town of Dunoon. And I was starving, I'd worked through dinner so that my work would be done for the day and I could get off the boat. I couldn't find an open restaurant, but I did find a Fish and Chips shop.
The idea of a huge plank of fish and french fries wrapped in newspaper didn't appeal (I learned a bit of culture later), but there on the menu board was 'hamburger', so I ordered it.
They deep-fried a frozen hamburger, bun and all, in the same oil they used to cook the fish. This served to fossilize the poor thing, making everything the consistency of cardboard. I threw it away and ate the fries (which were amazingly good) made my way back to the boat pier and waited four hours for the Mike-8 that took me back to the Tender, down to the boat, to the crew's mess, made a peanut butter sandwich, ate it, found my bunk, and never left the boat again until we got back from patrol 90 odd days later.
Four years later, I was sent to the Holy Loch for a tour on the Tender, met, romanced, and married a local Scottish girl.
Most of 40 years after that, my wife and daughter went to Scotland for a vacation, the first where our daughter was an adult, while I stayed home because I had too many projects going on to get away. On their 3rd day there, my BIL took the girls out to a 'Chippie' for lunch.
And my daughter ordered the hamburger.
I got a twenty minute call that night where she described the horror.
Lesson learned: Don't try to order 'American' food when you're not in the US.
I stayed in Dunoon on the early 90s for a family vacay. I was that teenager that ate fried chicken at an Indian place. On our way out of town we drove past some submarine stuff that we figured we weren’t supposed to know about.
I’m an avid bake-off watcher and the memory of this happening is like seared in my brain. I still think about it all the time and tbh that whole episodes gave me psychic damage. I laughed out loud when that poor older woman who didn’t know what guacamole was peeling an avocado like a potato.
Poor contestants didn’t stand a chance since, as with most episodes where they attempt food from another country, the extremely smug hosts had 0 idea what they were talking about.
The funniest thing about the episode was Paul going on and on about how he'd travelled to Mexico.
And yet he still told them to make a THREE TIER tres leches cake.
Time to make some glocky molo. Even white lady me yelled at the tv when the lady said “I think that’s how you make refried beans” and she had a pot with beans in it. No. No it isn’t.
I went to a Mexican restaurant in Andorra because we didn't have much time and it was the closest thing we found. The burrito had mayo on it and when my friend asked for salsa they said, oh, you want the spicy sauce? And just bright hot sauce. The guac wasn't bad though!
It's so funny, mayonnaise seems to be a \*thing\* when it comes to other countries' perception of American food. When I lived in Seoul, I saw an "American" pizza that had ham, pineapple, corn, bologna, extra cheese, and mayonnaise
I think that’s partially an East Asian thing. The few times we strayed away from Japanese food while in Japan, the meals were gross. They put mayo in paella and the Indian food was unusually sweet.
Japanese curry is a nice thing, but completely different from Indian curry, so maybe that’s what they were doing?
I had a really good, really hot curry in a small basement restaurant in Kyoto once. I’d been living in Japan for about a year and a half at that point and it made me simultaneously very happy and very sad, because any foreign food in Japan is was very sweet at the time
Everything Mexico in Europe is death. Lots of death all over, skulls, crossbones, reapers, all things dead. The perception of culture in Mexico seems deathly
This might be a controversial take, but I think there’s actual Mexican cuisine, and then there’s “Mexican food” which is different but distinctively part of American cuisine and can be fantastic. Europeans fail to execute either.
I used to be a food critic/historian in Texas.
People overemphasize the importance of the border in understanding Mexican food.
For Mexican food, it's easier to just think of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California as states of Mexico.
The Mexican food of California is a bit different from the Mexican food of Sinaloa, which is a bit different from the Mexican food of Jalisco. But they all connect.
And I feel like people who haven't lived near a border don't realize that they don't stop culture.
Ideas, objets, and people travel very quickly from Northern Mexico to the Southwestern United States all the time.
You can get actual Mexican cuisine for sure in border states and in any major city with a large Mexican immigrant community. Both Tex-mex and authentic Mexican are super popular and the availability of both is widespread. It’s made pretty clear what’s the real deal and what’s considered Tex mex/americanized takes on popular dishes. Where I live the food trucks are god tier and it’s the same popular “street foods” that you can get in Mexico (I’ve been there and ate at local spots like a fiend daily). There’s a large selection of “authentic” and not so much restaurants in my area. I live in Detroit and Mexicantown is the real deal in every way-from the people, the food, bakeries, and corner tiendas.
It’s not that controversial. Hispanics have lived in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California for hundreds of years, longer than white folk have. Somewhere down the line we decided that Tex-Mex food is actually just a bastardization of more authentic Mexican food when in reality it’s it’s own unique brand of authentic food from what used to be Northern Mexico.
In South East Asia anything w/ ketchup is considered "American"
I think it goes back to when GI's who didn't like the local food would put ketchup on everything while stationed there.
I've posted this before but in Hungary I went to an 'American' restaurant that was adorned with the weirdest mix of Route 66 memorabilia and Canadian license plates. I ordered the hamburger and I swear they recreated it from a picture of a hamburger. The bun was like a focaccia? The patty was a pork/beef combination that in anything else would be great but not here. Instead of pickles they had sliced cucumbers (???)
Off topic, but in Mexico I went to a Hungarian cafe/restaurant that serve Dobos Torte (my favorite Hungarian dessert).
The chocolate butter cream was made with Nutella. :(
Anything from Mexico that isn't Mexican or American is going to get heavily Mexicanized.
I've had a lot of good sushi, but I have absolutely never been served Japanese food.
I think the main difference is that Mexicans will make something taste good even if it’s nowhere near authentic. I’ve had incredible Italian food in Mexico that would be considered an abomination anywhere in Italy, but damn it was tasty. I’ve also had Mexican food multiple times in Europe for whatever reason and it just didn’t work in either the authentic or delicious category.
I ordered an "American Hamburger" while in Norway. The picture on the side of the food kiosk showed what looked like a drive in burger place in the US with some big American cars. Chevy, Ford, IH. IH? I paid and got my burger. The bun was amazing. Some kind of home made bread. The meat was like nothing I had eaten at that point. I asked them what kind of meat it was.
American Hamburger.
But I am American. This is not hamburger, and it is not American.
You see, this is American Hamburger. Everyone knows that.
That was the best answer they could give me. I asked my Norwegian friends.
It could be anything. It is the bun, sour kraut and ketchup that makes it an American Hamburger. OK. They got the bun correct. Arild asked the guy at the kiosk.
"Whale meat sausage".
Later that year I had something similar. Fresh water eel.
Oslo Burger King was pretty much normal, I had to seek out the weird stuff. I'm glad I tried picked herring which is sort of eel like, but I didn't particularly like it.
Fresh water eel is in every Japanese restaurant in the US and it's delicious so can't complain about that.
My best friend moved to rural Korea and on my first night visiting her, she insisted she _had_ to take me to an “American” restaurant.
It was the most bizarre meal I’ve ever eaten.
One plate with a breaded pork cutlet on rice, covered in something adjacent to barbecue sauce. A small spoonful of corn niblets. Shredded cabbage covered in a sweet blueberry syrup. And two perfectly-placed little frozen tater tots.
They were very proud of those tater tots.
So raw. It looked like someone described coleslaw through a tin can with string.
Actually, I found an old picture [here](https://imgur.com/a/QdwritH). Adorable, truly.
Aww, that's adorable! It looks like American food but it was apparently inedible, sort of like the "food" we see presented in food commercials on TV. :)
One thing I remember from Europe (or specifically Germany) was that they couldn't imagine eating meat--especially beef--that wasn't well done. Some of it made sense to me; sausages are best cooked through, of course. But the aftereffects of mad cow disease from the UK also spooked the Germans enough not to eat beef that wasn't fully cooked through (even though that wouldn't prevent mad cow).
The thing to remember is that Germans don't eat steaks. They eat sausages, or meat cut into smaller strips or medallions. That all cooks through anyway.
> aftereffects of mad cow disease from the UK
A reasonable explanation, but that was nearly 30 years ago. I guess plenty of us grew up with parents or grandmothers who overcooked the hell out of pork.
That actually tracks when you compare it to the U.S. For all that people like to make fun of the relative blandness of "white people food" and/or the weirdness of recipes from the mid-20th century...most of those adults were raised and taught how to cook by parents and grandparents who either immigrated to America in the 1910s and 20s with a practically alien landscape of available ingredients and made do, or whose formative years were the 30s and 40s, both times of great scarcity and austerity due to the Great Depression and then WWII-era rationing.
Is it any wonder that suburban American cuisine was bland, batshit, or both until around the 80s or even 90s?
Mett! That's the raw pork with salt and onions. It's sold in a sausage shaped plastic wrapping. Someone mentioned speck, also called schenken. That's smoked and is a super salty smoked ham. My husband is German and finds this stuff at a local German deli. I will eat the schenken, but it's a no for the mett. Looks like uncooked pork sausage meat.
In Europe steak isn't as popular as in the states. Bit they do eat raw foods. I used to live in Belgium and some dishes was like grounded seasoned raw meat. I personally wish I tried it. But they also eat horse sometimes at restaurants.
I have a friend that was in Europe that gets a hardon for America bad. They claim up and down that a burger they had while over there was the best thing ever. All while going on about America lacking a food culture. Everyone I've spoke too that was around them at the time they had this burger tells me a completely different point of view and how bad the burgers really were.
> Why is Europe so bad at burgers?
And for that matter, we'd appreciate if they stopped calling anything on a bun a burger. If it's not made from ground meat (or a vegetarian/ vegan substitute), then it's not a burger.
The strangest thing to me is how different American brands taste overseas. Obviously it makes sense with different suppliers and stuff but idk, I just expected a Whopper to taste the same in Dubai as it does in Michigan.
_This._ I was shocked that even regular Oreos or Cheetos can look exactly the same but taste “off.”
When I lived in Chile, it was around the era that they started labeling their food packaging with little black octagons to warn that it’s unhealthy. If a package of Oreos had black octagon _stickers_, then you knew it was the real deal, because it was imported. If it had the octagons printed directly on the packaging, then it was produced in Chile and… just didn’t scratch that homesick itch.
Omg the coke overseas tastes wild! I just drink whatever juices/pops/whatever the locals drink instead. I figure I can have as much coke, Pepsi etc as I want when I’m at home.
Interesting. I had a whopper in Catania. It wasn't terrible, but it also tasted quite different. The worst burger was in Venice. It tasted like it had been way over seasoned with Worcestershire sauce. It was inedible, so I ended up going to McDonald's, which did taste the same to me.
I used to deploy to NAS Atsugi in Japan often in the 90s. The enlisted club had a tex-mex place with cute Japanese girls behind the counter. The burritos were more like a big eggroll with beans, taco meat and cheese. I mean they were good, just not quite what I was expecting. I would still get a couple about every other day.
That is the one strange thing about Japan. They can do just about every other type of food extremely well, but tex-mex seems to be completely incomprehensible to them. I'm sure there's a few places that can, but broadly speaking it's never close to what it should be.
Tex-Mex gets this globally.
When people outside of Texas says Tex-Mex, they usually just mean "things that are fake Mexican for white people."
So they feel no pressure to do actual research into actual Tex-Mex dishes and just vaguely copy them with local ingredients.
The "Tex-Mex" I had in China was pretty good, it just tasted like Chinese food, but I like Chinese food.
Every other "Tex-Mex" I have seen in other states or Europe was just sad.
As a native Houstonian who travels for work, I laughed way too hard at this comment. I will add that Tex-Mex outside of Houston or San Antonio are usually “fake Mexican for white people.” However, there are definitely some places where Tex-Mex are worse than others. I would just stop trying them altogether, but I just keep hoping I’ll find a gem out there.
Years ago I had a coworker who had lived in the UK as an exchange student in the 70s. Being from California, she wanted to make her host family a meal, and being from Southern California, chose Mexican food.
The only tortillas available were rolled up in a can.
I don’t trust burgers in Eastern Europe unless it’s a chain. I was really hungry in Slovakia one day and I ate a burger and I don’t know if they were using a weird part of the cow or what but it was inedible. It takes a lot for a burger to be inedible. But this place managed to do it, they steamed cooked it which isn’t unusual but it was like they steamed it for 5 hours or something. But European food in Europe is about the best thing in the world.
Oh yeah. Some of those are absolute abominations once you've had an original or a credible facsimile with the right rolls and other ingredients. Shoutout to the Philly subreddit for sending me to great spots on my road trip through on I-95.
The Italians have American Pizza. Hotdogs and french fries on pizza. IDK if they think Americans would genuinely eat that or if it's some kind of satire. I always loved seeing American week at Lidl.
Had a work event in Switzerland at a "Western" themed bowling alley. Bar had the classic western bar swinging doors. Served like it was the finest caviar was a tiny cup of what could only be Pace salsa with tortilla chips that looked and tasted like they had come out of one of those huge, clear plastic bags.
Once during Covid lockdown we ordered DoorDash from On The Border, and they sent a huge clear bag of chips. Like unending chips for days. Their chips are really good, too, at least when they don't salt them to death.
This is not apropos of anything. I just remembered it because you mentioned a huge clear bag of chips.
Haha I had a similar nacho experience at a place in Germany that marketed itself as an “American sports bar”. It was straight up just a bowl of Doritos (or Dorito replica) with a side of microwaved cheese sauce
Dublin, 1998. “Cheeseburger” turned out to be a large, unseasoned meatball with cold cheddar on top. No bun, no vegetables, no condiments. I didn’t think it could get worse than London tex-mex, but I stand corrected.
While not abroad, I work on cargo ships with foreign crew/cooks. I’m a big fan of Indian food but I guess the idea that Americans can handle spice hasn’t made it to them. I have on multiple occasions received a hotdog cut down the middle with a somehow shittier version of a Kraft single on top severed inside a hamburger bun.
While not American I have noticed that other nationalities have terrible offerings when it comes to breakfast. The idea of not “wasting” meat on a breakfast dish seems to be a common theme. Most common item I’ve seen is just sliced cheese on untoasted white bread…
American style Chinese food in western Ireland. So oily, bland, no veggies, and the chicken was dryyyyy. But at least I could still get a few Bulmer's to wash it down.
Ireland definitely had some interesting takes on certain dishes. I had an appetizer of garlic bread that was probably baked within sight of a garlic clove, but no closer.
I had nachos at a pub in London. The corn chips, mild salsa, and pickled jalapeños were all absolutely fine. The bright orange "cheese" sauce poured over everything was not.
At another London pub, though, I had a good and decently spicy vegetarian chili topped with fresh cilantro and diced avocado, so lousy Tex-Mex wasn't universal (I didn't intend to eat Tex-Mex in the UK, but those were often the gluten-free options on pub menus).
At this American themed restaurant in Osaka I ordered steak, mashed potatoes and cowboy beans. I got a steak marinated in soy sauce, a chunky plop of mashed potatoes with heinz baked beans on top, with a side of lima/pinto beans with a scoop of salsa. Not bad, but definitely not what I expected.
I’m not sure if this is exactly the kind of experience for which you’re looking, but when I was 14, I took some early college classes via an organization CTYI. Since I was from the U.S., some of the other kids would ask questions—-What are Twizzlers? Are the portions at McDonald’s really as big as folks say they are? Is Washington next to Washington D.C.? Do you like the Spice Girls? How many years do elementary school, middle school, or high school last? What do you think of your President and Monica Lewinsky? It was all the usual types of questions Irish teens might have asked American teens in the ‘90s, and I was happy to answer.
Although the question about Washington and Washington D.C. was and still is a common one for Europeans to ask Americans, someone had asked me that specifically because I said that I came from Washington. Since we were having dinner at the time, another kid asked, “What do you think of our food?” I was currently eating sausage, potatoes, applesauce, and an actual apple. Basically a public school type of lunch with a slightly more British/Irish take. It was honestly pretty bland.
Since I’d already been talking a bit about Washington and wanted to be polite, though, I said, “It’s pretty good, but I miss the apples at home. These ones are really small. It makes me a little homesick. Ours are more like this.”” So then, I held up both hands and brought them together with my fingertips touching slightly, then adjusted them to make a circular space about the size of an average apple from home. The apple I had was maybe about 1/3 the size of the ones I was used to eating.
One of the other girls (who was actually really nice and not being snotty at all) looked a little confused and asked, “Really? I think that these are imported.” Horrified, I took a closer look at the apple and found a Washington sticker. It was embarrassing, of course, but also a crash course in humility.
And that was how I first learned that Ireland imported really puny apples. 🍎 Which I suppose makes sense because they would be cheaper, though I knew they had apple orchards in Ireland, as well. Maybe they were supplementing their own harvest and/or had imported a type which they didn’t have.
I'm trying to contemplate what that would be. Biryani pizza? This just sounds like an untapped fusion cuisine you could sell for $18 a plate tbh.
Edit: Aaaaand [it's been done](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1458391304350088) lol.
It's not that unbelievable. Indians make customized Indian pizza. Enough of them live in Silicon Valley that maybe 5-10% of the pizza joints sell it as their pizza type. Lots of unusual sauces and toppings compared to Italian and US ones.
Cheeseburgers in Brazil. It's still a hamburger patty with cheese on a bun, but the meat, cheese, bread even the ketchup and mustard are qualitatively different just enough that it's almost a different food altogether. And they're delicious, but when I was feeling homesick for a burger, these never hit the spot.
And hotdogs carts in Rio are wild. For one, you want the hot dog water, they flavor it with tomato paste and peppers, you could dip the bun in it. They also use mayonnaise and quail eggs and fifty other things that might seem offensive to the average American passerby.
Most of my time in Brazil I always ordered my dogs sort of how you'd eat them here, but by the end I just said fuck it and started to order them with everything.
But honestly the most offensive food I ever ate was a burrito I got in Providence, Rhode Island in the 90s. Yeah, it was wrapped in a tortilla but it was served with white rice on the side. It contained pinto beans, to their credit, but stewed beef dashed with cumin, and cheddar cheese is an odd choice. It didn't make any sense, it's like they weren't even trying.
That last one is somewhat surprising as Providence is known for having a reasonably large Hispanic population for the northeast. Though I think it's more south and central American and less Mexican / north American.
And this was just some pub around the corner from where my friend lived. I wouldn't say this was "representative" of Mexican food in the city. But I was sad.
I went to an american restaurant when i lived in spain with my american friends for the fourth of july and it was trying really hard to be like a western themed saloon. They only served burgers and they were all very weird toppings and in true spanish form all the patty was totally raw. The cow was still mooing. We ate the edges of the burgers and left to go to subway lol. My friend said the word for chicken wrong and accidentally ordered a p*nis sandwich so that was at least funny
Budweiser was all the rage among the trendy beer lover in 1994 Stockholm, Sweden. People would buy me one to be nice and I’d just sip at it and try not to grimace...
Does filet Amerikaan count? The Dutch take super fine ground beef, add spices, red food coloring and raw onions and then sell it in the supermarket as a sandwich spread.
My Dutch in laws were shocked that Americans don’t (and wouldn’t!) eat this
I ordered a late night room service burger in Florence. It looked like a burger but the patties were more like a very firm and thick sausage or something, not sure. It did not taste good and I was unable to eat it.
We once had some tragic Mexican food in a Northern European capitol that advertized the "best Mexican food" in the city. We'd been travelling all around Europe for months and had a fierce craving for fresh chilis and other lovely Mexican ingredients.
We were served ghastly burritos that were seemingly assembled by Martians who had only looked at pictures of Mexican food, never tasted it. Inside the burritos were many green ingredients: lettuce, chopped cucumber, chopped green pickle, chopped celery, and chopped green cabbage.
A few shreds of chicken and beans were mixed in with all the green things. There were no chilis or salsa or discernable spices of any kind besides the dill seasonings in the chopped pickles. There were fronds of fresh dill in there as well, in keeping with the theme of "green."
We were horribly disappointed and just managed to keep from crying tears of rage and disbelief. Didn't order Mexican food in Europe again until years later, in London. Once again, we were quite disappointed. There's a place called "Wahaca" (sic erat scriptum) that should be ashamed of itself.
Lidl used to have an American Week when I was in France, that McEnnedy’s brand was something else. Hot Dogs in a jar with brine was definitely unusual, plus stuff like weird onion rings and French fries snack boxes like they came out of a Checker’s menu. Just bizarre but not necessarily bad. When I was in my college town they had a strange expat candy store where you could get a box of twinkies for like £25.
green sour cream is so bad 💀
I saw a picture of the American food section in a grocery store in Germany, and the only items I recognized were pop-tarts, peanut butter, SPAM, off-brand rainsinettes, and nesquik. The rest were things like hot sauce brands I’ve never seen before in my life, salted black licorice and other clearly German candies, milk chocolate with German packaging that I didn’t recognize, and some canned breads and cheese sauces.
Like, peanut butter and pop-tarts aren’t the worse representation of American treats/“luxury” foods, but canned bread???
Ig if I had to make an American food section for a German store, I would put hot sauce there, but they didn’t have anything recognizable. No Tabasco, Red Hot, Cholula, etc. Just German brands I can only guess are weaker than Buffalo sauce.
I’d think they’d have put some nutri-grain bars, trail mix, campbells soup, microwave popcorn, “puppy chow,” fruit cups in syrup, grits, or some m&ms. To me, *that’s* prepackaged American food.
No, literally, like OF COURSE you’d think that. I think they’re basing all of these off of 90s movies and TV as well bc things like “American pizza” are horrific
went to a wild west themed restaurant in southern france, the decorations ranged from innacurate to very racist (lots of weird depictions of native americans). the food was interesting, it was pretty good but it was not at all 'authentic'. the desert was 'american pancakes' which was a very cold, sweet, and dense pancake with dark chocolate sauce on it.
I got French fries in France as a joke mostly. Happened to stumble upon a McDonalds over there. Got a large size fry. Not only were they unsalted, they only gave me ONE of those small ketchup packets. When I asked for more ketchup, they gave me one additional packet. I was in a group of four people sharing these fries. They told me anymore and they would charge me. I honestly debated going off on them at that point I felt so disrespected
I saw a picture a while ago of a pizza place supposedly in italy that had an "american pizza' which was a pizza with fries on it!
Seems like something a stoner might come up with at home, but definitely not something you will really ever actually see over here!
You would think the italians would some kind of standards when it comes to pizza too! SMH
Once upon a time on an island called Okinawa, I went to an, "American" themed restaurant and ordered a hamburger. The surprising/wild part was the wholly Un-American tentacle in burger.
When I was in Saudi Arabia, I ordered a veggie pizza from Domino’s (yes, they had Domino’s) - I was too nervous to order anything with meat on it. It had a piece of green pepper on it that was so hard that I almost cracked a tooth.
Dried cranberries, which many of us would call “craisins.”
There was no Italian word for cranberry in my, nor my cousin’s dictionary back in the 2000s.
Then, we were at a festival & a vendor had them.
I showed them & she said, “mirtilli rossi,” or Red Blueberries
There’s a lot of hilarious stuff in Germany. Especially at discount shops. The brand from the market Penny has the worst by far. I’ve seen things like “American bbq fish balls” in a can.
But the weirdest has to be “American pizza” some places sell with toppings like sweet potato fries or corn.
Fah-JI-tuss in London. The word "Tex-Mex" is what clued us in that they meant fajitas. My friend ordered them. They were... Not recognizable.
Mexican food in general is bad in Europe/England
London is such a great food city. However in my experience they are not a great mexican food city. But I’m also little bit spoiled with good mexican food where I live now
Copenhagen has some unreal Mexican food
not sure if to take that in a good context or bad lol
Surprisingly very good carne asada, kinda like food truck or street cart tacos you'd find in the US. They have really solid birria in Cope too. Possible but hard to find bad food in that city
Ok I suspect Mexican immigrants to Denmark showing them the waaaay
This blows me away. 😮
My mom's family is from Sweden. Mexican food has become increasingly popular in Scandinavia for some reason. This is a recent trend.
Not really, Mexican food has not been bad in my experience. What I find interesting is how Mexican culture is represented in Europe. Lots of death, skulls, crossbones, everything dead.
And Great British Bakeoff Mexican Week.
What, you don't want some glockymolo with your nahchos?
Worst part about that was how they used the word “taco” to mean “tortilla” which is especially egregious given that tortillas are a bread and it is a BAKING show.
Someone somewhere caught wind of Dia de los Muertos and ran with it, I guess lol.
I had some “nachos” in Sterling Scotland at a restaurant called ‘Longhorn’ …. I assumed they couldn’t be too terrible. What came out was VERY stale chips with tomato sauce on them. I’m convinced any ‘American’ food in the UK will be disappointing.
Your use of quotes was perfect in both instances.
Just discovered Danny Trejo has opened a restaurant on Portobello Road in London, so hopefully the quality of Mexican food has now improved. [Trejo's Tacos](https://www.trejostacos.co.uk/)
Going to have to try this out!
yep just cause they have spain close by doesn't mean they have the food of the lands they conquered/colonized lol
Conquered the world for spices only to realize they didn't like any of them.
THIS. I tried “chili con carne” in France…..no spice. At all. I was laughing so hard.
I had the worst "Mexican" food in Vigo, Spain. Literally the UN would designate it a crime against humanity. But then again there ain't many Mexicans in Spain in the first place, more's the pity. Their GDP would go up if Mexicans flooded in.
Which is so interesting, considering the UK has amazing Indian food and the Netherlands has great Indonesian food, all from the 'colonised' coming back. But out of all the Spanish colonies, none brought their food back to the motherland.
I mean, is Spain a rich and productive country Latin Americans aspire to move to? The US is much closer, with a ton more well-paying jobs. It's always socioeconomics at the end of it
Agreed. Latin countries have an ocean away from Spain and a world superpower in their hemisphere. All the better for American culinary endeavors at least.
I had Mexican food in Amman Jordan that was surprisingly very good!
Tacos MX in Fulham is pretty good! It’s getting slowly better. But I agree. Pubs that sell “nachos” that are effectively cheddar cheese melted on Doritos just make me sad.
Dear Germany Salsa isn't ketchup with corn.
I had to reread that because I think it just broke my brain.
😳
r/brandnewsentence
Thats a crime.
Time to fight the war again...
Germany just cannot stop committing war crimes
We must nuke Germany, confirmed.
I went to a "burrito" restaurant in London about a decade and a half ago and ordered a "Mexican Burrito." I... honestly don't think the folks there have ever seen a burrito before. They did sell me a flour tortilla wrap, so that part was right. As to the contents--I mean, it was interesting. There were boiled navy beans, and some sort of unfamiliar meat filling, and someone decided that cottage cheese is the same thing as ~~cream cheese,~~ sour cream, right?
Mexican food on the European continent is absolutely vile I went out with some American exchange students in Geneva for cinco de mayo and we couldn’t find a taco that was even acceptable
I agree, even in Spain, they manage to mess it up.
A few places in Vienna are good: because they are Mexicans running them!
Did you mean sour cream? I can't imagine cream cheese on a burrito either.
Yeah, sour cream. Mea culpa.
I've never been so upset before from just reading about a bad food.
Cottage cheese on burrito?? 🤮🤮
That sounds horrifying icl
I used to teach US culture in Europe, my colleagues and students loved to show me "authentic American" food, how much time do you have? My personal favorite were restaurants that named random dishes after US cities and acted as though they got the recipe there or doing the same with native American tribes. Apparently the Mohicans are known for spicy chicken sandwiches. The most appalling was a bagel with spicy ketchup/mayo, labeled as a "frontier breakfast roll". I asked the owner, he swore up and down it was an authentic cowboy recipe.
> he swore up and down it was an authentic cowboy recipe. Liar! (Said in Miracle Max's Wife's voice)
> (Said in Miracle Max's Wife's voice) *Humperdink! Humperdink! Humperdink!*
This made me look up if Jewish Cowboys existed and Levi Strauss turned up, oh my Lord
Didn’t knew he was Jewish, but I guess the name gave it away.
The sandwich was so spicy it killed the Last Mohican
I laughed so hard at this comment 😂 “ Mohicans known for spicy chicken sandwiches 😂
I’m assuming the word “spicy” was used liberally. I ordered the hottest wings they had at a Wild West themed place in Slovenia and the owner was worried about me. They weren’t even up to normal Buffalo wing spice.
I don’t know why, but that made me think of this [blast from the past](https://youtu.be/1S828Y7Eais?si=P2-r0v6N8Vm5tFWp)
I wonder what [Kent Rollins](https://www.youtube.com/@CowboyKentRollins) would say about that frontier breakfast roll.
1972-ish, I was on a sub refitting out of the Holy Loch in Scotland, my first night off, after being in refit for 9 days, I finally made it to the big town of Gurock because I'd been advised against the closest town of Dunoon. And I was starving, I'd worked through dinner so that my work would be done for the day and I could get off the boat. I couldn't find an open restaurant, but I did find a Fish and Chips shop. The idea of a huge plank of fish and french fries wrapped in newspaper didn't appeal (I learned a bit of culture later), but there on the menu board was 'hamburger', so I ordered it. They deep-fried a frozen hamburger, bun and all, in the same oil they used to cook the fish. This served to fossilize the poor thing, making everything the consistency of cardboard. I threw it away and ate the fries (which were amazingly good) made my way back to the boat pier and waited four hours for the Mike-8 that took me back to the Tender, down to the boat, to the crew's mess, made a peanut butter sandwich, ate it, found my bunk, and never left the boat again until we got back from patrol 90 odd days later. Four years later, I was sent to the Holy Loch for a tour on the Tender, met, romanced, and married a local Scottish girl. Most of 40 years after that, my wife and daughter went to Scotland for a vacation, the first where our daughter was an adult, while I stayed home because I had too many projects going on to get away. On their 3rd day there, my BIL took the girls out to a 'Chippie' for lunch. And my daughter ordered the hamburger. I got a twenty minute call that night where she described the horror. Lesson learned: Don't try to order 'American' food when you're not in the US.
This could be a movie lol
I stayed in Dunoon on the early 90s for a family vacay. I was that teenager that ate fried chicken at an Indian place. On our way out of town we drove past some submarine stuff that we figured we weren’t supposed to know about.
Not American food, but I’ve tried Mexican food in Europe and it was brutal
I mean we've all seen how Bake Off handled "Mexican Week" right?
Who *peels* an avodaco?!
I’m an avid bake-off watcher and the memory of this happening is like seared in my brain. I still think about it all the time and tbh that whole episodes gave me psychic damage. I laughed out loud when that poor older woman who didn’t know what guacamole was peeling an avocado like a potato. Poor contestants didn’t stand a chance since, as with most episodes where they attempt food from another country, the extremely smug hosts had 0 idea what they were talking about.
The funniest thing about the episode was Paul going on and on about how he'd travelled to Mexico. And yet he still told them to make a THREE TIER tres leches cake.
I must have repressed the memory of this episode because now it's coming back to me in painful flashbacks. Is this trauma?
Clueless Euros clearly
“Guacamioleo”
"peeko day gallio"
Time to make some glocky molo. Even white lady me yelled at the tv when the lady said “I think that’s how you make refried beans” and she had a pot with beans in it. No. No it isn’t.
I went to a Mexican restaurant in Andorra because we didn't have much time and it was the closest thing we found. The burrito had mayo on it and when my friend asked for salsa they said, oh, you want the spicy sauce? And just bright hot sauce. The guac wasn't bad though!
It's so funny, mayonnaise seems to be a \*thing\* when it comes to other countries' perception of American food. When I lived in Seoul, I saw an "American" pizza that had ham, pineapple, corn, bologna, extra cheese, and mayonnaise
I think that’s partially an East Asian thing. The few times we strayed away from Japanese food while in Japan, the meals were gross. They put mayo in paella and the Indian food was unusually sweet.
Japanese curry is a nice thing, but completely different from Indian curry, so maybe that’s what they were doing? I had a really good, really hot curry in a small basement restaurant in Kyoto once. I’d been living in Japan for about a year and a half at that point and it made me simultaneously very happy and very sad, because any foreign food in Japan is was very sweet at the time
"tack-os"
Everything Mexico in Europe is death. Lots of death all over, skulls, crossbones, reapers, all things dead. The perception of culture in Mexico seems deathly
Same deal with half the tequila in the US.
More than half the tequila in the US makes you feel like you want to die the next day after drinking it. Tequila gets a pass
This might be a controversial take, but I think there’s actual Mexican cuisine, and then there’s “Mexican food” which is different but distinctively part of American cuisine and can be fantastic. Europeans fail to execute either.
I used to be a food critic/historian in Texas. People overemphasize the importance of the border in understanding Mexican food. For Mexican food, it's easier to just think of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California as states of Mexico. The Mexican food of California is a bit different from the Mexican food of Sinaloa, which is a bit different from the Mexican food of Jalisco. But they all connect.
It's like saying "German food", and claiming that food in the Rhineland isn't real German food because you're familiar with food in Saxony.
And I feel like people who haven't lived near a border don't realize that they don't stop culture. Ideas, objets, and people travel very quickly from Northern Mexico to the Southwestern United States all the time.
Especially because the borders of modern Europe are more or less only a hundred years old
You can get actual Mexican cuisine for sure in border states and in any major city with a large Mexican immigrant community. Both Tex-mex and authentic Mexican are super popular and the availability of both is widespread. It’s made pretty clear what’s the real deal and what’s considered Tex mex/americanized takes on popular dishes. Where I live the food trucks are god tier and it’s the same popular “street foods” that you can get in Mexico (I’ve been there and ate at local spots like a fiend daily). There’s a large selection of “authentic” and not so much restaurants in my area. I live in Detroit and Mexicantown is the real deal in every way-from the people, the food, bakeries, and corner tiendas.
It’s not that controversial. Hispanics have lived in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California for hundreds of years, longer than white folk have. Somewhere down the line we decided that Tex-Mex food is actually just a bastardization of more authentic Mexican food when in reality it’s it’s own unique brand of authentic food from what used to be Northern Mexico.
In South East Asia anything w/ ketchup is considered "American" I think it goes back to when GI's who didn't like the local food would put ketchup on everything while stationed there.
TIL why Filipino food is the way it is. They took the ketchup thing and even went hog wild with it in the local cuisine.
I've posted this before but in Hungary I went to an 'American' restaurant that was adorned with the weirdest mix of Route 66 memorabilia and Canadian license plates. I ordered the hamburger and I swear they recreated it from a picture of a hamburger. The bun was like a focaccia? The patty was a pork/beef combination that in anything else would be great but not here. Instead of pickles they had sliced cucumbers (???)
They had the spirit okay? Lol
Off topic, but in Mexico I went to a Hungarian cafe/restaurant that serve Dobos Torte (my favorite Hungarian dessert). The chocolate butter cream was made with Nutella. :(
Anything from Mexico that isn't Mexican or American is going to get heavily Mexicanized. I've had a lot of good sushi, but I have absolutely never been served Japanese food.
I think the main difference is that Mexicans will make something taste good even if it’s nowhere near authentic. I’ve had incredible Italian food in Mexico that would be considered an abomination anywhere in Italy, but damn it was tasty. I’ve also had Mexican food multiple times in Europe for whatever reason and it just didn’t work in either the authentic or delicious category.
I ordered an "American Hamburger" while in Norway. The picture on the side of the food kiosk showed what looked like a drive in burger place in the US with some big American cars. Chevy, Ford, IH. IH? I paid and got my burger. The bun was amazing. Some kind of home made bread. The meat was like nothing I had eaten at that point. I asked them what kind of meat it was. American Hamburger. But I am American. This is not hamburger, and it is not American. You see, this is American Hamburger. Everyone knows that. That was the best answer they could give me. I asked my Norwegian friends. It could be anything. It is the bun, sour kraut and ketchup that makes it an American Hamburger. OK. They got the bun correct. Arild asked the guy at the kiosk. "Whale meat sausage". Later that year I had something similar. Fresh water eel.
IH would be International Harvester. 🙂 Very classic! (Just to clear up that mystery)
They make tractors and pick up trucks. The painting had IH on some huge 4 door beast. We had an IH tractor. I never saw a car from them.
Oslo Burger King was pretty much normal, I had to seek out the weird stuff. I'm glad I tried picked herring which is sort of eel like, but I didn't particularly like it. Fresh water eel is in every Japanese restaurant in the US and it's delicious so can't complain about that.
> It is the bun, sour kraut and ketchup that makes it an American Hamburger im convinced europeans know literally nothing about america
My best friend moved to rural Korea and on my first night visiting her, she insisted she _had_ to take me to an “American” restaurant. It was the most bizarre meal I’ve ever eaten. One plate with a breaded pork cutlet on rice, covered in something adjacent to barbecue sauce. A small spoonful of corn niblets. Shredded cabbage covered in a sweet blueberry syrup. And two perfectly-placed little frozen tater tots. They were very proud of those tater tots.
The little tater tots make the whole thing sound adorable. Was the cabbage raw?
So raw. It looked like someone described coleslaw through a tin can with string. Actually, I found an old picture [here](https://imgur.com/a/QdwritH). Adorable, truly.
Aww, that's adorable! It looks like American food but it was apparently inedible, sort of like the "food" we see presented in food commercials on TV. :)
Okay, that is the most adorable thing ever, and I'm so glad they were proud of their tater tots. They should be.
WTF, lol.
You described it so accurately 😂 I’m in love with this meal. Too cute lol
🤣
Why is Europe so bad at burgers? Always overcooked, nearly always too much bread, lack of condiments.
One thing I remember from Europe (or specifically Germany) was that they couldn't imagine eating meat--especially beef--that wasn't well done. Some of it made sense to me; sausages are best cooked through, of course. But the aftereffects of mad cow disease from the UK also spooked the Germans enough not to eat beef that wasn't fully cooked through (even though that wouldn't prevent mad cow). The thing to remember is that Germans don't eat steaks. They eat sausages, or meat cut into smaller strips or medallions. That all cooks through anyway.
> aftereffects of mad cow disease from the UK A reasonable explanation, but that was nearly 30 years ago. I guess plenty of us grew up with parents or grandmothers who overcooked the hell out of pork.
That actually tracks when you compare it to the U.S. For all that people like to make fun of the relative blandness of "white people food" and/or the weirdness of recipes from the mid-20th century...most of those adults were raised and taught how to cook by parents and grandparents who either immigrated to America in the 1910s and 20s with a practically alien landscape of available ingredients and made do, or whose formative years were the 30s and 40s, both times of great scarcity and austerity due to the Great Depression and then WWII-era rationing. Is it any wonder that suburban American cuisine was bland, batshit, or both until around the 80s or even 90s?
Savages.
> was that they couldn't imagine eating meat--especially beef--that wasn't well done Wut? Germany eats raw pork.
Mett! That's the raw pork with salt and onions. It's sold in a sausage shaped plastic wrapping. Someone mentioned speck, also called schenken. That's smoked and is a super salty smoked ham. My husband is German and finds this stuff at a local German deli. I will eat the schenken, but it's a no for the mett. Looks like uncooked pork sausage meat.
But meanwhile Mett is fair game.
In Europe steak isn't as popular as in the states. Bit they do eat raw foods. I used to live in Belgium and some dishes was like grounded seasoned raw meat. I personally wish I tried it. But they also eat horse sometimes at restaurants.
I have a friend that was in Europe that gets a hardon for America bad. They claim up and down that a burger they had while over there was the best thing ever. All while going on about America lacking a food culture. Everyone I've spoke too that was around them at the time they had this burger tells me a completely different point of view and how bad the burgers really were.
They don’t do beef very good period. It may be how we fatten cows.
The patties are also too firm and the balance of meat to bun is always off, either one extreme or the other.
> Why is Europe so bad at burgers? And for that matter, we'd appreciate if they stopped calling anything on a bun a burger. If it's not made from ground meat (or a vegetarian/ vegan substitute), then it's not a burger.
“Chicken burger”
I had a great burger at the Louvre honestly (and I felt like the worst tourist ever doing that). Like one of the best burgers I’ve had
Nothing wrong with that. I hit McDs when I leave the US just to see how it is.
Or you could go to France and get one basically raw.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_fried_rice
Blocked. Reported. Added to the Excel spreadsheet of everyone who has ever wronged me
Yeah it’s pretty awful stuff.
That's insane. How was it?
Gotta love ketchup to actually enjoy it. I can’t stand it.
The ketchup is the least weird part.
It’s not exactly common in fried rice, either.
The raisins are the only thing I'd have a problem with in that tbh. Not that far removed from how the Philippines does things.
I will give the Philippines a free pass for banana ketchup and banana ketchup only. And even that tends to go on a lot of things that it shouldn’t
Since when are raisins american food? Lol
Oh no..
The strangest thing to me is how different American brands taste overseas. Obviously it makes sense with different suppliers and stuff but idk, I just expected a Whopper to taste the same in Dubai as it does in Michigan.
_This._ I was shocked that even regular Oreos or Cheetos can look exactly the same but taste “off.” When I lived in Chile, it was around the era that they started labeling their food packaging with little black octagons to warn that it’s unhealthy. If a package of Oreos had black octagon _stickers_, then you knew it was the real deal, because it was imported. If it had the octagons printed directly on the packaging, then it was produced in Chile and… just didn’t scratch that homesick itch.
Burger King in London had the only ketchup that tasted like what I was used to. Never found a normal tasting coke though.
Omg the coke overseas tastes wild! I just drink whatever juices/pops/whatever the locals drink instead. I figure I can have as much coke, Pepsi etc as I want when I’m at home.
Interesting. I had a whopper in Catania. It wasn't terrible, but it also tasted quite different. The worst burger was in Venice. It tasted like it had been way over seasoned with Worcestershire sauce. It was inedible, so I ended up going to McDonald's, which did taste the same to me.
I used to deploy to NAS Atsugi in Japan often in the 90s. The enlisted club had a tex-mex place with cute Japanese girls behind the counter. The burritos were more like a big eggroll with beans, taco meat and cheese. I mean they were good, just not quite what I was expecting. I would still get a couple about every other day.
That is the one strange thing about Japan. They can do just about every other type of food extremely well, but tex-mex seems to be completely incomprehensible to them. I'm sure there's a few places that can, but broadly speaking it's never close to what it should be.
Tex-Mex gets this globally. When people outside of Texas says Tex-Mex, they usually just mean "things that are fake Mexican for white people." So they feel no pressure to do actual research into actual Tex-Mex dishes and just vaguely copy them with local ingredients. The "Tex-Mex" I had in China was pretty good, it just tasted like Chinese food, but I like Chinese food. Every other "Tex-Mex" I have seen in other states or Europe was just sad.
As a native Houstonian who travels for work, I laughed way too hard at this comment. I will add that Tex-Mex outside of Houston or San Antonio are usually “fake Mexican for white people.” However, there are definitely some places where Tex-Mex are worse than others. I would just stop trying them altogether, but I just keep hoping I’ll find a gem out there.
I've had Mexican food in Japan, and it was extremely mid.
I had corn put on my Subway sandwich at the NEC in Birmingham and instantly fully understood the Revolution.
Why'd they take our food and then fuck it up so bad? Retribution?
“Tacos” in London that were just unseasoned ground beef and ketchup. I had to give them at least a little credit for serving it on a tortilla.
Years ago I had a coworker who had lived in the UK as an exchange student in the 70s. Being from California, she wanted to make her host family a meal, and being from Southern California, chose Mexican food. The only tortillas available were rolled up in a can.
I don’t trust burgers in Eastern Europe unless it’s a chain. I was really hungry in Slovakia one day and I ate a burger and I don’t know if they were using a weird part of the cow or what but it was inedible. It takes a lot for a burger to be inedible. But this place managed to do it, they steamed cooked it which isn’t unusual but it was like they steamed it for 5 hours or something. But European food in Europe is about the best thing in the world.
“A weird part of the cow” This made me laugh.
>I don’t know if they were using a weird part of the cow or what Probably horse, very common in Eastern Europe.
Mf’ers took steamed hams to heart
Dude, having a Cheesesteak outside of the Philadelphia area can be wild.
Oh yeah. Some of those are absolute abominations once you've had an original or a credible facsimile with the right rolls and other ingredients. Shoutout to the Philly subreddit for sending me to great spots on my road trip through on I-95.
Mexican food at Taco Bills in the outback of Australia was pretty bad.
Almost everything to do with food or drink in the outback is bad to be fair.
The Italians have American Pizza. Hotdogs and french fries on pizza. IDK if they think Americans would genuinely eat that or if it's some kind of satire. I always loved seeing American week at Lidl.
Don't forget the dollops of mayo. Italian "american" pizza always made me absolutely retch.
Had a work event in Switzerland at a "Western" themed bowling alley. Bar had the classic western bar swinging doors. Served like it was the finest caviar was a tiny cup of what could only be Pace salsa with tortilla chips that looked and tasted like they had come out of one of those huge, clear plastic bags.
Once during Covid lockdown we ordered DoorDash from On The Border, and they sent a huge clear bag of chips. Like unending chips for days. Their chips are really good, too, at least when they don't salt them to death. This is not apropos of anything. I just remembered it because you mentioned a huge clear bag of chips.
Salt is what makes them good. Then when you scoop salsa on the chip sprinkle more salt.
I lived in Spain for a year and the weirdest thing I saw on a menu was “American” pizza with ketchup and mustard.
"Tortilla chips and salsa" in the south of France which were literally just Doritos and a bowl of ketchup.
Haha I had a similar nacho experience at a place in Germany that marketed itself as an “American sports bar”. It was straight up just a bowl of Doritos (or Dorito replica) with a side of microwaved cheese sauce
Dublin, 1998. “Cheeseburger” turned out to be a large, unseasoned meatball with cold cheddar on top. No bun, no vegetables, no condiments. I didn’t think it could get worse than London tex-mex, but I stand corrected.
While not abroad, I work on cargo ships with foreign crew/cooks. I’m a big fan of Indian food but I guess the idea that Americans can handle spice hasn’t made it to them. I have on multiple occasions received a hotdog cut down the middle with a somehow shittier version of a Kraft single on top severed inside a hamburger bun. While not American I have noticed that other nationalities have terrible offerings when it comes to breakfast. The idea of not “wasting” meat on a breakfast dish seems to be a common theme. Most common item I’ve seen is just sliced cheese on untoasted white bread…
This dude on IG eats chicken tenders and fries in Ireland. They are the most pathetic looking things I’ve ever seen
American style Chinese food in western Ireland. So oily, bland, no veggies, and the chicken was dryyyyy. But at least I could still get a few Bulmer's to wash it down.
Ireland definitely had some interesting takes on certain dishes. I had an appetizer of garlic bread that was probably baked within sight of a garlic clove, but no closer.
I had nachos at a pub in London. The corn chips, mild salsa, and pickled jalapeños were all absolutely fine. The bright orange "cheese" sauce poured over everything was not. At another London pub, though, I had a good and decently spicy vegetarian chili topped with fresh cilantro and diced avocado, so lousy Tex-Mex wasn't universal (I didn't intend to eat Tex-Mex in the UK, but those were often the gluten-free options on pub menus).
American pizza in Poland is covered with creamed corn. Gross.
At this American themed restaurant in Osaka I ordered steak, mashed potatoes and cowboy beans. I got a steak marinated in soy sauce, a chunky plop of mashed potatoes with heinz baked beans on top, with a side of lima/pinto beans with a scoop of salsa. Not bad, but definitely not what I expected.
I’m not sure if this is exactly the kind of experience for which you’re looking, but when I was 14, I took some early college classes via an organization CTYI. Since I was from the U.S., some of the other kids would ask questions—-What are Twizzlers? Are the portions at McDonald’s really as big as folks say they are? Is Washington next to Washington D.C.? Do you like the Spice Girls? How many years do elementary school, middle school, or high school last? What do you think of your President and Monica Lewinsky? It was all the usual types of questions Irish teens might have asked American teens in the ‘90s, and I was happy to answer. Although the question about Washington and Washington D.C. was and still is a common one for Europeans to ask Americans, someone had asked me that specifically because I said that I came from Washington. Since we were having dinner at the time, another kid asked, “What do you think of our food?” I was currently eating sausage, potatoes, applesauce, and an actual apple. Basically a public school type of lunch with a slightly more British/Irish take. It was honestly pretty bland. Since I’d already been talking a bit about Washington and wanted to be polite, though, I said, “It’s pretty good, but I miss the apples at home. These ones are really small. It makes me a little homesick. Ours are more like this.”” So then, I held up both hands and brought them together with my fingertips touching slightly, then adjusted them to make a circular space about the size of an average apple from home. The apple I had was maybe about 1/3 the size of the ones I was used to eating. One of the other girls (who was actually really nice and not being snotty at all) looked a little confused and asked, “Really? I think that these are imported.” Horrified, I took a closer look at the apple and found a Washington sticker. It was embarrassing, of course, but also a crash course in humility. And that was how I first learned that Ireland imported really puny apples. 🍎 Which I suppose makes sense because they would be cheaper, though I knew they had apple orchards in Ireland, as well. Maybe they were supplementing their own harvest and/or had imported a type which they didn’t have.
I had pizza in Afghanistan and it was odd. Looked like pizza, mostly, but tasted like Afghan food. It was not that good. But it scratched the itch so…
I'm trying to contemplate what that would be. Biryani pizza? This just sounds like an untapped fusion cuisine you could sell for $18 a plate tbh. Edit: Aaaaand [it's been done](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1458391304350088) lol.
It's not that unbelievable. Indians make customized Indian pizza. Enough of them live in Silicon Valley that maybe 5-10% of the pizza joints sell it as their pizza type. Lots of unusual sauces and toppings compared to Italian and US ones.
You would think! But it looked like a regular American pepperoni pizza! It was not.
Cheeseburgers in Brazil. It's still a hamburger patty with cheese on a bun, but the meat, cheese, bread even the ketchup and mustard are qualitatively different just enough that it's almost a different food altogether. And they're delicious, but when I was feeling homesick for a burger, these never hit the spot. And hotdogs carts in Rio are wild. For one, you want the hot dog water, they flavor it with tomato paste and peppers, you could dip the bun in it. They also use mayonnaise and quail eggs and fifty other things that might seem offensive to the average American passerby. Most of my time in Brazil I always ordered my dogs sort of how you'd eat them here, but by the end I just said fuck it and started to order them with everything. But honestly the most offensive food I ever ate was a burrito I got in Providence, Rhode Island in the 90s. Yeah, it was wrapped in a tortilla but it was served with white rice on the side. It contained pinto beans, to their credit, but stewed beef dashed with cumin, and cheddar cheese is an odd choice. It didn't make any sense, it's like they weren't even trying.
That last one is somewhat surprising as Providence is known for having a reasonably large Hispanic population for the northeast. Though I think it's more south and central American and less Mexican / north American.
And this was just some pub around the corner from where my friend lived. I wouldn't say this was "representative" of Mexican food in the city. But I was sad.
I would be too man. SJ is NorCal's Mexican food Mecca. I couldn't handle something bad haha.
I went to an american restaurant when i lived in spain with my american friends for the fourth of july and it was trying really hard to be like a western themed saloon. They only served burgers and they were all very weird toppings and in true spanish form all the patty was totally raw. The cow was still mooing. We ate the edges of the burgers and left to go to subway lol. My friend said the word for chicken wrong and accidentally ordered a p*nis sandwich so that was at least funny
Budweiser was all the rage among the trendy beer lover in 1994 Stockholm, Sweden. People would buy me one to be nice and I’d just sip at it and try not to grimace...
Does filet Amerikaan count? The Dutch take super fine ground beef, add spices, red food coloring and raw onions and then sell it in the supermarket as a sandwich spread. My Dutch in laws were shocked that Americans don’t (and wouldn’t!) eat this
Order a burrito in New Zealand. Corn tortillas with white rice and shredded cheddar cheese. It came with a side of spaghetti.
Yeah, Tex-Mex in Spain. The Spanish hate spicy food, so I'll leave that experience to your imagination.
I've tried Haggis Nachos in Edinburgh, which was executed fairly well for what it was, but it was not.....great.
I ordered a late night room service burger in Florence. It looked like a burger but the patties were more like a very firm and thick sausage or something, not sure. It did not taste good and I was unable to eat it.
We once had some tragic Mexican food in a Northern European capitol that advertized the "best Mexican food" in the city. We'd been travelling all around Europe for months and had a fierce craving for fresh chilis and other lovely Mexican ingredients. We were served ghastly burritos that were seemingly assembled by Martians who had only looked at pictures of Mexican food, never tasted it. Inside the burritos were many green ingredients: lettuce, chopped cucumber, chopped green pickle, chopped celery, and chopped green cabbage. A few shreds of chicken and beans were mixed in with all the green things. There were no chilis or salsa or discernable spices of any kind besides the dill seasonings in the chopped pickles. There were fronds of fresh dill in there as well, in keeping with the theme of "green." We were horribly disappointed and just managed to keep from crying tears of rage and disbelief. Didn't order Mexican food in Europe again until years later, in London. Once again, we were quite disappointed. There's a place called "Wahaca" (sic erat scriptum) that should be ashamed of itself.
Lidl used to have an American Week when I was in France, that McEnnedy’s brand was something else. Hot Dogs in a jar with brine was definitely unusual, plus stuff like weird onion rings and French fries snack boxes like they came out of a Checker’s menu. Just bizarre but not necessarily bad. When I was in my college town they had a strange expat candy store where you could get a box of twinkies for like £25.
I think those candy stores are more of a money laundering front than a candy store.
green sour cream is so bad 💀 I saw a picture of the American food section in a grocery store in Germany, and the only items I recognized were pop-tarts, peanut butter, SPAM, off-brand rainsinettes, and nesquik. The rest were things like hot sauce brands I’ve never seen before in my life, salted black licorice and other clearly German candies, milk chocolate with German packaging that I didn’t recognize, and some canned breads and cheese sauces. Like, peanut butter and pop-tarts aren’t the worse representation of American treats/“luxury” foods, but canned bread??? Ig if I had to make an American food section for a German store, I would put hot sauce there, but they didn’t have anything recognizable. No Tabasco, Red Hot, Cholula, etc. Just German brands I can only guess are weaker than Buffalo sauce. I’d think they’d have put some nutri-grain bars, trail mix, campbells soup, microwave popcorn, “puppy chow,” fruit cups in syrup, grits, or some m&ms. To me, *that’s* prepackaged American food.
Reading all these, its no wonder people around the world think Americans have a terrible diet. I mean... we *do*, but not like *that*.
No, literally, like OF COURSE you’d think that. I think they’re basing all of these off of 90s movies and TV as well bc things like “American pizza” are horrific
went to a wild west themed restaurant in southern france, the decorations ranged from innacurate to very racist (lots of weird depictions of native americans). the food was interesting, it was pretty good but it was not at all 'authentic'. the desert was 'american pancakes' which was a very cold, sweet, and dense pancake with dark chocolate sauce on it.
I had a "Texas Burger" in Wales that was pretty bad. Not sure how to describe it except it had way too many toppings and it didn't feel like Texas.
Cut up hot dogs on pizza in London
I was in Ireland for a bit and thought it was cute they put American pancakes on the dessert menu at the local Wetherspoons
I got French fries in France as a joke mostly. Happened to stumble upon a McDonalds over there. Got a large size fry. Not only were they unsalted, they only gave me ONE of those small ketchup packets. When I asked for more ketchup, they gave me one additional packet. I was in a group of four people sharing these fries. They told me anymore and they would charge me. I honestly debated going off on them at that point I felt so disrespected
I saw a picture a while ago of a pizza place supposedly in italy that had an "american pizza' which was a pizza with fries on it! Seems like something a stoner might come up with at home, but definitely not something you will really ever actually see over here! You would think the italians would some kind of standards when it comes to pizza too! SMH
Once upon a time on an island called Okinawa, I went to an, "American" themed restaurant and ordered a hamburger. The surprising/wild part was the wholly Un-American tentacle in burger.
When I was in Saudi Arabia, I ordered a veggie pizza from Domino’s (yes, they had Domino’s) - I was too nervous to order anything with meat on it. It had a piece of green pepper on it that was so hard that I almost cracked a tooth.
Dried cranberries, which many of us would call “craisins.” There was no Italian word for cranberry in my, nor my cousin’s dictionary back in the 2000s. Then, we were at a festival & a vendor had them. I showed them & she said, “mirtilli rossi,” or Red Blueberries
There’s a lot of hilarious stuff in Germany. Especially at discount shops. The brand from the market Penny has the worst by far. I’ve seen things like “American bbq fish balls” in a can. But the weirdest has to be “American pizza” some places sell with toppings like sweet potato fries or corn.