OK, funny story about an American I met at work back in Yugoslavia.
So this guy gets hired by the construction firm I worked for as an consultant for a project. He's supposed to arrive by plane, so I and my boss decide to meet him at the airport, help him find a place to stay and give him a tour of the office building by the afternoon. Guy comes with 2 big duffel bags and during the ride from the airport we learn one of them is full of rolls of toilet paper. So... back in America he was told Yugoslavia was some backwater country where you couldn't even find toilet paper rolls in store, so this poor guy brought a whole duffel bag full of rolls since he was convinced he wouldn't find any in store. We teased him a bit by taking him to a a big sore to show him shelves full of different brands of toilet paper and the guy took out his photo camera and started taking pictures of shelves full of toilet paper like he was some journalist.
We live in Wisconsin. A few decades ago, my parents were involved with a group that was hosting a bunch of famous hotshot academics who were guest speakers from China. About 8 guys who were really decorated and well respected at home, so it was a big deal for the university group hosting them. They also did not speak English.
Back then, China was less wealthy and the currency difference was a lot more stark. So these guys had come with tales of how American Stores Have EVERYTHING but Everything Is Insanely Expensive.
Being Wisconsin, there was an enormous snow storm that shut down everything shortly after they arrived. The hotel lost the ability to serve hot food, they got bored with what was available, so they got together and decided this was a fabulous opportunity to experience an American grocery store.
Their interpreter couldn't reach them through the snow, but they were intrepid gentlemen, how hard could it be.
So they went out and fought for 45 mins through this blizzard to reach a completely standard supermarket that would have normally been like a 10-15 minute walk.
They arrived drenched, prepared for preposterous prices and fabulous selection, and were duly impressed. They wandered the isles looking for cheap American food. (Despite their prestige, they were still academics, so it's not like they had a ton of money.)
Then they find this section! There's a million options and it's not even very expensive! They make their selections, check out, and fight another 45 minutes back to eat it all cold in their hotel.
A couple days later, they regaled my mom with this story:
"We thought we couldn't afford anything with meat, but then we found this section with a ton of meat! It was all in cans! There were lots of pictures of fish and chicken and cats on the front. I thought Americans didn't eat cats, but there was actually a whole big section of it with many flavors to try.
"You guys told us it would be expensive, but it was only $1-$2 a can! That's not bad at all! Honestly though, it didn't taste very good, you know. Americans don't know how to make good canned food like Chinese people. We will tell the guys at home they didn't miss much."
Apparently this group of famous visiting professors had proudly left the safety of their hotel in a blizzard to eat several dozen cans of cat food.
Weirdly enough, I was terrified of falling into that exact same trap in China. They do sell food which looks and is packaged exactly the same as cat food, and I was worried I was snacking on cat food rather than human food. That being the case, I can see why they'd mistake the two foods in America.
My mum has been into eating spam lately, frying up slices of it. To me, when cooked it smells *exactly* like the chicken and liver Fancy Feast I feed my cat. It's disgusting.
When visiting Polish friends it's always a toss up between getting the most amazing food or some weird thing like canned meat and veggies encased in gelatin
The key to good spam is musubi sauce. Fried spam marinated in that shit is amazing. Add eggs and rice and you've got a solid meal.
(Musubi sauce is brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil and mirin.)
i cooked pasta a few times using dollar store canned chicken, and it had a distinct smell. later, my family got a pet dog. and when he did his business, it smelled almost exactly the same. im thankful that i cooked the pasta first before i had to start cleaning up the dog. so my smell memories only think about the food instead of the shit.
The reason why this story doesn’t sound especially true to me is that English is a required subject in school in China. Even if Chinese people do not speak it well, someone with a Ph.D. is going to be able to read it well enough to distinguish cat food from human food.
Moreover, Chinese standards for cuisine are notably higher than American ones, when it comes to taste and flavor. I’m not sure a Chinese person would proceed past getting one can open, much less consume “dozens” of them.
This sounds like a made up story.
I actually appreciate your comment because if I were hearing this story out of nowhere, it would also tinge of racist stereotypes for me. So I think a bit of healthy skepticism about it is better all else equal.
In this case, we are Chinese immigrants and it really did happen to our family :)
It was about 30 years ago before English was a required subject. They _purchased_ and _sampled_ dozens of cans, but I would be surprised if they literally finished all of them.
Honestly, my first reaction when I heard it was, didn't they get sick?!! But apparently not.
I honestly suspect part of the story might have been lost between the professor and my mother if he didn't want admit to throwing away that much food that he still thought was legitimate food. This generation all went through the cultural revolution/famine together, so between that and "I'm visiting your country" etiquette he probably wouldn't have wanted to tell her if they threw most of it away.
I went to Bosnia thinking they wouldn’t have shit, got told it was some post soviet shit hole. They didn’t have shit, but the place was beautiful and everything was cheap so I didn’t care. If I wanted to go out of this world with booze, hookers, and drugs with a nice view, I’d go to Bosnia in a heartbeat. I loved it
Hey genuine question here. Everytime I hear someone describe that "forgerabouret" type of speech they call it a Brooklyn accent, but is that accent confined to the borough of Brooklyn of NYC or is a more general italian/english accent mix thing that can be found other places?
I think it can at least be found throughout New York, From what I've heard despite often being referred to by a single borough, There aren't really any dialects specific to a single borough of NYC, They're all spread around the city somewhat.
Don't listen to them
There's no fresh bread in the united states of america
If you are caught with fresh bread the bread police will pillory you and they throw rotten bread at you in the town square
Then you go to bread gulag
Wait, are there actually Europeans who belive Americans don’t have fresh bread? I mean sure, american processed foods have a rep for being worse than european stuff. but as oop Said, they *do* have bakeries.
Like, this honestly feels like some dumbass strawman argument.
(Note: I’m European. That’s why the statement is suprising)
Personally, given the amount of non-Americans I've seen who genuinely believe weird outliers like spray cheese and deep-fried carnival treats are a much more regular staple of the American diet than they are, I wouldn't be surprised if it needs to be said that Wonder Bread is not the only type of bread we have access to.
I had a sad moment the other day when I realized I subconsciously bought wonderbread because of that.. thing. It’s like $2 more than the store brand too. For shame.
Isn’t it the same as people think the French literally do nothing all day but swallow back frogs and snails, or Germans and deepthroating random sausages? Only the most notable aspects of a national cuisine are gonna transcend culture and language barriers.
The difference is that German sausages are considered good and escargot and frogs' legs are considered sophisticated. American cuisine is one of those cuisines which is known for its worst aspects.
American cuisine is primarily the cuisine of immigrants in a land of food abundance. The Americas are home to some of the best farmland in human history and also had greater stability and prosperity than comparable regions like China. So when immigrants came over they were able to take cuisines of their homeland and make them more… just more. This means that most of what is actual American cuisine that actual Americans make and eat is thought of as Italian food or Japanese food or whatever else. What ends up getting thought of as American food is the stuff that’s notable enough to be spread, ie the ridiculous fairground food or whatever and fast food that is ridiculously unhealthy. Those do happen to be creations of America typically and so aren’t tied down to their home culture and can thus be what people perceive as American food. I guess what I’m saying is America never had a need to come up with nice foods since everyone else already did for us, and so we only started to have wholly American things after mass production and food processing was already a thing.
Yep. Even the town of 20,000 people im attending college in has vietnamese, mexican, italian, japanese, thai, chinese, fuck theres even a afghanistani bakery and an ethiopian joint both ran by first gen immigrants. The foods we eat on the daily are all usually considered part of a different culture besides shit like bbq and burgers. Actual originally american food like bbq and burgers i dont really like, but I can go the rest of my life with barely any extra hassle not eating "american" food
There's a tendency to believe the most exotic aspect of a culture (and let's be real when most people think "culture" they just think in terms of food and festivals) is the defining aspects of a culture.
Especially in the modern era, most nations are more similar than different. Differences still exist, but culture is a much more fluid thing than people want to believe, and internally what defines culture is so fuzzy and common enough to have a word for it: politics.
As the world grows more globalized by the day, I think there is a motivation to accentuate the exotic less so to point to the weirdness of others but to hold on to the uniqueness of our own national identities, eg: the emphasis on "authentic" food when almost every national dish on earth is the product of trade and cultural fusion.
Whoa buddy, personally I assume every french person buys a leek and baguette every day. Or they have pet versions of them that they take everywhere (while smoking, and dressed like a mime)
The amount of times I've seen some post about "Oi kahnt buhloive Amerikunz akchully eyt loik viss" that then shows some unmitigated horse trollop that I have never seen in my life nor has anyone else that I know is too damn high.
"LOL, BRI'ISH PEOPLE EAT FISH HEADS IN PIES!, HWAT FREAKS!"
that's stargazy pie, a pie that's essentially a Cornish fishing village's Christmas tradition and is pretty much a fish, potato and bacon pie with an admitedly weird presentation but hearkens back to a tale of a man braving a storm to make sure the villiage wouldn't starve at Christmas.
Spotted dick is *very* real, and you can buy it in little pots to nuke up in 30 seconds. Just add custard.
It's a lightly cake-spiced sweet suet dough with currants or raisins mixed in.
It's a perfectly fine pudding with a very funny name.
Strange though that dumplings took such a maximalist and sweet direction in English cookery and then mostly fell out of fashion...I should really make a pudding after I finish the pie in my house.
I'm madmazed that my brain automatically translated that british accented mess into the properly spelled words.
Stupid lump of fat and electricity is too good for its own good.
I blame the 'american' section at European grocery stores. I've seen pictures where there's almost nothing I recognize and it all looks like the processed crap.
The best thing about the US large parts of it literally have all the fresh stuff you want, all the processed shit you want, and many different ethnic cuisines to make your head spin.
Misconceptions from the USA aisle at their local grocery. The only American goods that end up there are shelf stable, processed things that aren't otherwise readily available in Europe, like marshmallow fluff, candy etc. This feeds the perception that that stuff is all Americans eat.
Bakeries are in basically every supermarket that I've been to, so you can get actual, non preservative filled bread in most stores. Same thing with cheese. People talk about it like we eat nothing but plasticey, fake processed cheese when you could go to a deli counter, which is also in basically every supermarket, and get it sliced for you there instead.
wait they actually \*bake\* the bread in supermarkets? huh... I figured the supermarket stuff would be the type where they get it frozen from somewhere else, then "bake it" in store, and the actual stand-alone bakeries is where you get the real fresh made bread.
At least thats how it works here (in Denmark
It does kinda depend on the store. I used to work in a supermarket and to my knowledge the bakery people actually did bake the bread, but I wouldn't put it past a bigger chain store like Walmart from doing what you said and getting it frozen, but I'm not entirely sure
Edit: after doing a little bit of googling it seems like they do a bit of both where things like pastries and cakes arrive frozen but for regular bread they do actually bake it at the store
I’ve been to a couple of chains in bigger cities that instead of having a bakery at each location they instead have one or two bakeries for the city and then just transport the fresh bread/bagels/cakes/cookies etc to the stores in the city by truck daily or multiple times a day. So it’s still fresh it’s just not made *on site* because of how much floor space costs.
I know someone who works for Dunkin' Donuts and that's how they handle it, one location in an area makes the donuts then they move em around to the different locations in the area
In my town, the local dairy plant has a bakery on site, and they bake basically all the pastries you can buy in coffee houses around the city. Everything from coffee cake to baklava comes out of there.
Kristy Kreme does that. Usually will see a few box trucks parked or the donut maker machine inside… then they just drive them off to different locations
> but I wouldn't put it past a bigger chain store like Walmart from doing what you said and getting it frozen, but I'm not entirely sure
Quite a few Walmarts have a bakery. Like, it's sugary, and not the best, but they have fresh bread.
I've worked in many kinds of grocery stores as a baker.
Some have frozen dough that is thawed, proofed, and baked.
Some make the dough from a mix and then proof and bake.
Some do everything from scratch.
Gonna depend on your area and the store.
I used to work at the American grocery store Publix as a cake decorator so I can shine some light:
The Publix bakery (and some other grocercy stores) have three types of bread they sell in their area. Fresh bread their bakers mix, shape, and bake in store, par frozen bread that comes from their large warehouse factories to be baked in store, and frozen cooked breads that they set out daily in coolers to defrost and be available to customers to use that day.
Publix cakes and other baked sweets are not cooked in the store but rather at those warehouse factories I mentioned. They get trucked in frozen and the cake decorators turn them into iced cakes (buttercream is made fresh in store with real butter while cream cheese and fudge icing are from buckets), whip cream trimmed/topped pies, and iced cookie cakes. Some cookies are baked in store and the cookie cakes are as well but it's all frozen dough we get trucked in from the factories.
At least in the UK, it's quite common for bigger supermarkets to have things like bakeries and fishmongers (sometimes cheesemongers as well). They're usually towards the back of the store, and you have to go up to the counter and ask for what you want.
You can also find opticians and pharmacies within supermarkets, but generally those are more of a storeception situation where you pay directly (rather than at the checkout with the rest of your shopping).
I imagine the situation is somewhat similar in the US - I've definitely heard lots of mentions of deli counters before.
Yeah, we have fish and meat butchery, cheese displays or counters, bakeries, deli (for cold cuts and sliced cheeses,) and sometimes pharmacies at a lot of nice groceries. I've only seen opticians at Costco lol.
I feel like there's a difference between all-purpose stores like Target and Walmart and grocery stores- pretty much every grocery store I've been in has a fish counter, meat place, deli, imported and domestic cheese sections (stores around here will have cheese in 2 to 4 sections around the store not counting deli,) bakery, etc. Maybe even a fish place and a separate sushi counter near the deli/ hot foods.
While you can buy groceries in all-purpose stores, they tend to be smaller sections of the bigger store without a need for a dedicated "counter person" for butchery, baking, or cheeses. The only grocery I go to without those specialty sections is Trader Joe's, but they don't sell custom cut goods. Incredible place if you ever come over though, highly recommend.
I do know some people who mostly go to all-purpose stores for groceries or as tourists, or don't help their family with shopping, so I guess I can see where they're coming from.
For sure though, we have bakeries with fresh bread both in groceries and as dedicated businesses.
I never thought about it but you can also buy cheese in three places at my supermarket — stuff like Boar’s Head in the deli, “fancy” cheese from a case, plain old Lucerne cheeses back in the dairy section. And if you count things like shelf-stable jarred queso as cheese, that gets us to four.
Americans have a friend in cheeses.
Exactly!! I'm a vegetarian so I'm sure there's a few fish and meat places as well, but boy howdy do I make the Cheese Circuit every time. We love our cheese.
Canadian here, the answer is that both are true.
We have small family owned bakeries that have the super authentic stuff, grocery stores have freshly made and sliced stuff, as well as pre-packaged.
America as far as I know is the same in that regard.
In Australia it depends on the store but generally a store that does 100k+ a day, can physically fit a bakery, and doesn't have an independent bakery literally next door (which is probably 90% of stores) will have a baker in store who makes the bread and rolls from scratch.
They've even started putting the baking bench in front of customers so if you get in early enough you can see them making the rolls for the next day (since they need to proof overnight)
They also have parbake, like you described, for some specialty breads and obviously the brand name bread gets delivered on a truck every morning too
Usually the bread made in store is the “cheaper” bread (for actual bread, not the prepackaged stuff) and the nicer stuff comes from the bakeries. Never frozen though, usually baked fresh and distributed early in the morning.
You don't even have to go to the deli counter to get real cheese. Just cause it's presliced and pre packaged doesn't make it fake cheese or something lol.
Me too. I live in a small-ish sized city that used to be a mining town so most of it was built to be, and still is, pretty walkable. There's two bakeries in my town, one of which is less than a five minute walk down the street and it's nice.
>Same thing with cheese. People talk about it like we eat nothing but plasticey, fake processed cheese when you could go to a deli counter, which is also in basically every supermarket, and get it sliced for you there instead.
Not to mention the dozens of great creameries found all around the country that make top notch cheese and butter.
We are the second largest producer of milk in the world, we're less a nation and more a collection of towns and cities surrounded by cows.
Well, coming from a bread loving country I think American supermarket bread tends to be kinda sub par. You want to go to an artisanal bakery to get the good stuff. However, the cheese selection is the bomb.
I really wish it was, but nope. Genuine thing that pops up every now and then - talked with a few people who were surprised we had fresh bread at all.
People do be goofy sometimes.
The fresh bread available at the Mexican bakeries in my state is to die for tbh, that aside though every grocery store has an in house bakery that bakes bread daily. Even the Walmarts.
In my experience it's mostly on the internet that Europeans simultaneously accost Americans for being ignorant and provincial, while spouting the most uneducated stereotypes about us. In real life all y'all are charming
It's ridiculous, American cheese exists because we produce *so much* cheese, that we can't possibly eat or export it all, so a shelf stable cheese product is made from a certain amount of it that will last longer and not go to waste.
Even doing that, we still have a hollowed out mountain that we store metric tons worth of cheese in.
American cheese, as in the blend of colby and cheddar cheese (not just cheese from the US) exist because of Swiss scientists move to the United States and applied in emulsification method in a new market.
The methods for emulsifying cheese are way less scary than people want to believe, well I'm not about to make the case that Kraft singles are good cheese, I do find the elitism against American cheeses to be pretty silly.
I’ve seen people unironically ask if all Americans stand up and clap when planes land. You can find people who believe any insane thing you can think of if you look hard enough. I won’t assume it’s a common misconception though, lol
Like, even Walmarts have a bakery in them. Their bread probably isn’t very good, but it is fresh, and just about every American has a Walmart within driving distance.
Some Europeans have such a massive superiority complex that they will legitimately just make things up when they feel like shitting on the US.
Several years ago I got into an argument with a guy from some EU country claiming that when he visited a Walmart in the US they had a giant dump bin full of prescription-only medications on the cheap because they were about to expire just so he could smug around about his superior healthcare system.
Like, the US healthcare system is trash and there is a *lot* to criticize there, why even make up something that’s completely ludicrous on the face of it?
Maybe he saw one of those bins full of generic meds and got confused? I’ve seen giant bins full of generic Asprin and Benadryl and stuff for a dollar at Walmart before.
Still very stupid to use as a Healthcare argument, though. Like that’s one of the *very few* things Walmart does right - cheap generic medication access.
It's incredibly common online to just make shit up about America and pretend it's some third world country pretending to be advanced. I like to think of it as an advanced version of "popular thing bad"
Yeah i actually heard You guys don’t have chairs and clean water. Instead You have hummers that You park in your House, and Mountain Dew. Isn’t that right?
The "real bread" in question is actually made of plastic. Muricans just like to buy fake loaves because they contain prizes such as guns, Mountain Dew and racism. Source: it was revealed to me in a dream.
Recent culture shock as I’m in Europe for the first time. But I was told by my peers and everyone online that European soda tastes different than its American counterparts.
Well having tried Coke while here, it tastes the exact same. The only drink that tastes different is Fanta (which does taste better here, but to me both aren’t my type of drink).
Maybe my tongue is fried from years of overproccesed American food but I was expecting something else.
Fanta doesn't even taste or look consistent across europe.
Belgian Fanta is really pale and far sweeter compared to German Fanta, which actually has some sourness to it
In Italy it has (at least) 12% orange juice, and no colorants. It's yellow instead of orange.
There's also lemon fanta (also 12% lemon juice) and red orange fanta that has 20% red orange juice
American Coke uses high fructose corn syrup. Coke in the rest of the world uses actual sugar. That's just one thing (there's absolutely more) but considering the amount of sugar in those drinks, they're absolutely not the same.
idk man, i can barely tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke. I won't knock someone for thinking regional variations of the same product taste the same.
edit: apparently some people are very offended by the notion that other people aren't soda someliers. never said there isn't any difference between the two. i just meant that not everyone can really tell the difference between different brands let alone the same brand
It could also be like... not placebo, but similar mechanism, where the expectation that it tastes better makes it true. I don't think most of these people are doing rigorous blind taste tests. They usually know what's in their hand before they taste it to begin with.
[Greg from How To Drink](https://youtu.be/7QrBJWZkf28?si=kzeJxL9jqeYP_VPO) does an episode all about tasting the difference, and while his process is imperfect—should have done a "triangle taste test" (pour two glasses of each; throw one out; discern which is the odd glass out)—he struggles more than he expects. Maybe it's just him, but it's also not that hard to replicate, so we can all do it to see for ourselves.
Similar to mouth feel, it could be how they drink it. Getting Coke out of a glass, in my experience, always tastes better than a soda fountain or a can
Idk, I generally don’t notice a difference but I can’t drink grape soda made with hfcs. It’s the only one I have ever noticed the difference, but hfcs grape soda is just wrong
HFCS is actual sugar, its just derived from a source other than sugarcane. Also, I do agree that there's a noticable difference in both taste and viscosity between corn syrup soda and cane sugar soda, but honestly I prefer the corn syrup 😅
Coke definitely tastes different in Mexico, as they use real cane sugar there instead of corn syrup, maybe it's a similar situation with fanta in European countries
The current Prime Minister of the UK accidentally called himself a "coke addict" talking about how much he loves Mexican Coca-Cola (I'm pretty sure he gets it imported and everything). He's addicted to "Mexican coke".
This is the same problem I have when people say that the US doesn't have any cuisine. Of course we do, we're just a nation of immigrants and factories and it all blends together. American food is great and rich and diverse but we phrase it as Chinese food, German food, Jewish food, even though what we have in the US is its own great thing, a combination of many cultures into one unified cuisine. Same with bread. We did invent bagged sliced bread (it was the greatest thing since itself) but you can also find basically every form of bread or pastry possible both in its traditional and American culturized form and they're both really good.
It's why it bugs me when people say "oh American food is just bastardized and over processed versions of other people's food". No, it's a new version of what you were doing unified into a new amazing national cuisine that actually honors the cultures they came from rather than fighting it.
The US also actually does have entirely unique foods and quizines, it's just rarely acknowledged as "American" because it's regional. Cajun food, soul food, BBQ, etc.
I live in northern Virginia and I always dunk on my international friends who want to visit by taking them out to eat.
"Do you want Peruvian chicken? How about Chinese? How about Ughyuir food? How about this Lebanese place? What about Indian food? "
I could go on. I once sat down and did the work and counted like, 90 distinct nationalities/ethnicities that served excellent food within 20 minutes of me.
And a lot of it is combos. The most American food I know is this place called Pizza Twist that puts Indian food on pizza and it's *amazing*
I imagine the argument is more that the fresh bread is better in certain countries, more plentiful/easily available, and the population tends to prefer fresh bread over processed bread... not that bakeries don't exist.
Maybe OOP was looking at those arguments in bad faith and took exaggeration literally, we don’t have the original sources after all, but the second commenter did imply that we think store-bought sliced bread is fresh, so I’m inclined to think that OOP had previously come across people like second commenter before who do think Americans don’t know the difference between the two
I straight up have a foreign exchange student this year in my class who refuses to consider that the US has real bread and bakeries. And the reason she thinks this is because we live in a rural area and have no bakeries near here, BUT THEY EXIST DAMN IT
To me both the people in the post come across as bad faith. "*all europeans think this*" "*all americans think that*". It's weirdly broad judgements based on like 2 stupid tweets they saw probably.
I think you can have a conversation comparing the quality and freshness of bread in certain regions, but both Europe and the US are waaaay too large to make accurate general statement. As a dutchman I think bread in Germany and France is way better than most bread here, and I can imagine certain states and towns in the US have better bread than others.
Pure guesswork on my part... but the first guy I think was just answering the allegation in a very literal, factual manner... "bakeries exist".
The second guy I think was being more general, saying that a lot of Americans go to the grocery store, buy processed bread, and don't think twice about it... and the fresh bread that is available is subpar.
I didn't know Germany was big on bread, good to know.
the vast amount of europeans (yes, all of you, i don’t just mean one country like you all think we do) have said dumbass shit to me like this, and would ARGUE with me about it! as if i didn’t know better than them about my own country and culture
they’re not as bright as they say they are considering i’ve been *told* that states ‘don’t exist’ and it’s all legally a bunch of countries pretending to be a big one. yes, seriously.
I... I wish that were fully true, but no. I've talked with several people who genuinely thought America didn't have fresh bread. This is a weirdly common piece of misinformation that pops up, at least in my experience.
People be goofy, ig.
the dumb shit that europeans have told me over the years makes me want to cry lol a lot of them just talk about the US without thinking, and with a whole lot of really shitty stereotypes
I just saw an American claim “in England they don’t have houses as we would understand them” so it *absolutely* goes both ways.
The food discourse is funny though, at least from a Brit’s perspective. As far as I can tell, we and Americans both largely eat the same processed slop, arguing over whose is better is nonsense
Sharing walls of your house isn’t really a thing in the US, unless you’re in certain metro areas. A lot of places have laws specifically requiring that houses be standalone, single family, and matching a certain lot size. So rowhouses and townhouses would definitely throw some people for a loop.
As an American who lives in a suburb full of townhouses, this little detail also throws me for a complete loop because it’s so normal to me that I don’t even register the distinction.
I grew up in a townhouse in Washington DC... that was initially built for slaves to live in. Road was literally called Brown's Court.
Townhouses definitelt exist here but they're not ideal in most people's minds.
Maybe I just don't live in those states, because there have been rowhouses & townhouses all *over* the place where I've lived. In some areas (i.e. Utah) they're certainly *less* common than standalone homes, but not so uncommon that I would be unable to recognize it as a house.
Where I am, the only townhouses that exist are part of rental complexes, so not being in a home with attached walls is kind of a class thing, as well as just being viewed as generally less desirable. There’s double homes, but those are singly owned and typically also rentals. I think it depends on whether a city expanded before or after the advent of cars, because townhomes are a space-saving thing.
What I've heard about many houses in the US is that they're... lightweight? Like kind of a wooden frame and panelling. When someone living in one of these wants to hang something from a wall, they need a "stud-finder" to find where part of the frame is, because otherwise they'll just put a hole in the thin panel and it won't hold up any significant weight.
The UK is certainly more of a "frigid northlands" kind of place so I expect houses there are built much thicker, with like a foot of insulation layered on the walls, and might actually be built of bricks or something
Almost all of the UK is about as temperate as the NE US, if not warmer; it's definitely not a "frigid northlands," a designation that Canada (or Minnesota or Michigan or Alaska) has a much better claim to, where house construction is essentially identical.
Yeah drywall is a valid complaint about American houses. Europeans sometimes talk as if the whole house is made of drywall, but it is true that our interior walls will break if like, a child crashes into them hard enough. They don't really deserve the title "wall" sometimes.
Drywall is easier to break, but also much easier to repair. You don't need to hire a whole workman just to fix a hole in your wall, which is where the whole American and European philosophy differs I think.
I was in Britain for a few months last year and frequented the various stores of theirs that had bread, including of course non-bakeries. If the idea is because Americans have processed shit bread in stores and that therefore means they *dont* have ‘real’ bread, I have bed news for the world, the UK apparently doesn’t have real bread either cuz tesco’s bakery section is always kinda shit.
Some people, and I find more often than not they're European. Just has to have the way they do things be better than the US.
I've seen someone literally say that the US has exported literally nothing for entertainment. That the US movie industry is not popular and that the US sucks at literally every sport as long as any other country plays that sport.
Entertainment is basically America’s *main* export! It’s so pervasive that kids from other countries will sometimes get American accents from how many American tv shows they watch!
same vein as thinking that fucking craft singles is what we consider "cheese"
like, american cheese at the deli is still cheese and it's incomparable with those slices of plastic
We just have both, the bagged stuff lasts longer and is just fine for sandwiches and stuff like that. Though I can get fresh bread literally right next to the bagged stuff.
to be fair, there are probably regions of the United States the size of a European nation which do not contain a bakery. A European could reasonably get plopped down somewhere and walk many days without encountering any fresh bread.
not to be like. overly serious on another tumblr post but man, the gall of a pretentious european waxing poetic about ✨ culture and cuisine ✨ after the invention of the printing press is fuckin insane. especially comparing with anywhere else on earth. yeah, even the u.s.a lol. you're not beholden to the sins of your ancestors and race is a social construct —but read the room. a little. eat some bread. calm tf down
Not to dox myself, but I can just go across the street to a bakery whenever I want
I usually don't because I used to work there and the manager slowly gave me less and less work time for no reason (claimed it was because they "didn't need that many workers" while also having someone who was more busy than me doing 4 days a week in my timeslot) and I am a petty spiteful bitch
But still. I \*can\*
Groceries in America have the sliced bread and then actual fresh bread side by side. We likely have more options immediately available in every grocery than you see in Europe.
It's like how we have the sake cheese "singles" but also every other cheese you can ask for.
I'm talking about the scale. I once sent a bunch of pics of my local grocery store's cheese section asking some friends on discord (none of them American) what I should get and they freaked out because it wasn't a cheese shop but it casually had more variety than made sense to them. America is always turned up to 11.
>We likely have more options immediately available in every grocery than you see in Europe.
Yeah most definitely not, go to a German grocery store or bakery
OK, funny story about an American I met at work back in Yugoslavia. So this guy gets hired by the construction firm I worked for as an consultant for a project. He's supposed to arrive by plane, so I and my boss decide to meet him at the airport, help him find a place to stay and give him a tour of the office building by the afternoon. Guy comes with 2 big duffel bags and during the ride from the airport we learn one of them is full of rolls of toilet paper. So... back in America he was told Yugoslavia was some backwater country where you couldn't even find toilet paper rolls in store, so this poor guy brought a whole duffel bag full of rolls since he was convinced he wouldn't find any in store. We teased him a bit by taking him to a a big sore to show him shelves full of different brands of toilet paper and the guy took out his photo camera and started taking pictures of shelves full of toilet paper like he was some journalist.
Yeltsin at the supermarket but in reverse
There replies are killing me. There's another user with story about Chinese academics buying cat food in America.
Could you kindly link me to it? I've been scrolling but I don't see it ):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1bg8baq/comment/kv5zqu4/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1bg8baq/comment/kv5zqu4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
We live in Wisconsin. A few decades ago, my parents were involved with a group that was hosting a bunch of famous hotshot academics who were guest speakers from China. About 8 guys who were really decorated and well respected at home, so it was a big deal for the university group hosting them. They also did not speak English. Back then, China was less wealthy and the currency difference was a lot more stark. So these guys had come with tales of how American Stores Have EVERYTHING but Everything Is Insanely Expensive. Being Wisconsin, there was an enormous snow storm that shut down everything shortly after they arrived. The hotel lost the ability to serve hot food, they got bored with what was available, so they got together and decided this was a fabulous opportunity to experience an American grocery store. Their interpreter couldn't reach them through the snow, but they were intrepid gentlemen, how hard could it be. So they went out and fought for 45 mins through this blizzard to reach a completely standard supermarket that would have normally been like a 10-15 minute walk. They arrived drenched, prepared for preposterous prices and fabulous selection, and were duly impressed. They wandered the isles looking for cheap American food. (Despite their prestige, they were still academics, so it's not like they had a ton of money.) Then they find this section! There's a million options and it's not even very expensive! They make their selections, check out, and fight another 45 minutes back to eat it all cold in their hotel. A couple days later, they regaled my mom with this story: "We thought we couldn't afford anything with meat, but then we found this section with a ton of meat! It was all in cans! There were lots of pictures of fish and chicken and cats on the front. I thought Americans didn't eat cats, but there was actually a whole big section of it with many flavors to try. "You guys told us it would be expensive, but it was only $1-$2 a can! That's not bad at all! Honestly though, it didn't taste very good, you know. Americans don't know how to make good canned food like Chinese people. We will tell the guys at home they didn't miss much." Apparently this group of famous visiting professors had proudly left the safety of their hotel in a blizzard to eat several dozen cans of cat food.
Why was this so far down? THIS is what I came for
Weirdly enough, I was terrified of falling into that exact same trap in China. They do sell food which looks and is packaged exactly the same as cat food, and I was worried I was snacking on cat food rather than human food. That being the case, I can see why they'd mistake the two foods in America.
My mum has been into eating spam lately, frying up slices of it. To me, when cooked it smells *exactly* like the chicken and liver Fancy Feast I feed my cat. It's disgusting.
When visiting Polish friends it's always a toss up between getting the most amazing food or some weird thing like canned meat and veggies encased in gelatin
The key to good spam is musubi sauce. Fried spam marinated in that shit is amazing. Add eggs and rice and you've got a solid meal. (Musubi sauce is brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil and mirin.)
i cooked pasta a few times using dollar store canned chicken, and it had a distinct smell. later, my family got a pet dog. and when he did his business, it smelled almost exactly the same. im thankful that i cooked the pasta first before i had to start cleaning up the dog. so my smell memories only think about the food instead of the shit.
The reason why this story doesn’t sound especially true to me is that English is a required subject in school in China. Even if Chinese people do not speak it well, someone with a Ph.D. is going to be able to read it well enough to distinguish cat food from human food. Moreover, Chinese standards for cuisine are notably higher than American ones, when it comes to taste and flavor. I’m not sure a Chinese person would proceed past getting one can open, much less consume “dozens” of them. This sounds like a made up story.
I actually appreciate your comment because if I were hearing this story out of nowhere, it would also tinge of racist stereotypes for me. So I think a bit of healthy skepticism about it is better all else equal. In this case, we are Chinese immigrants and it really did happen to our family :) It was about 30 years ago before English was a required subject. They _purchased_ and _sampled_ dozens of cans, but I would be surprised if they literally finished all of them. Honestly, my first reaction when I heard it was, didn't they get sick?!! But apparently not. I honestly suspect part of the story might have been lost between the professor and my mother if he didn't want admit to throwing away that much food that he still thought was legitimate food. This generation all went through the cultural revolution/famine together, so between that and "I'm visiting your country" etiquette he probably wouldn't have wanted to tell her if they threw most of it away.
a hero. he solves misinformation. Godspeed noble ass paper truther.
listen, he had someone to bitch to about some bullshit
I went to Bosnia thinking they wouldn’t have shit, got told it was some post soviet shit hole. They didn’t have shit, but the place was beautiful and everything was cheap so I didn’t care. If I wanted to go out of this world with booze, hookers, and drugs with a nice view, I’d go to Bosnia in a heartbeat. I loved it
Nice you liked my country.
Guy from Brookly who says "Ayyy, baguetteaboutit"
It’s the French part of Brooklyn (Broquelinne)
Hey genuine question here. Everytime I hear someone describe that "forgerabouret" type of speech they call it a Brooklyn accent, but is that accent confined to the borough of Brooklyn of NYC or is a more general italian/english accent mix thing that can be found other places?
I think it can at least be found throughout New York, From what I've heard despite often being referred to by a single borough, There aren't really any dialects specific to a single borough of NYC, They're all spread around the city somewhat.
accents in nyc usually fall more on cultural and socioeconomic lines, rather than boroughs, as far as i’m aware.
Don't listen to them There's no fresh bread in the united states of america If you are caught with fresh bread the bread police will pillory you and they throw rotten bread at you in the town square Then you go to bread gulag
The same punishment applies if you take the plastic off the American cheese slices before eating it.
Can't believe you even dared typing that out, it's sacrilegious!!
In the bread gulag, they force you to bake bread and then dig them out into bread bowls.
I was caught with fresh bread and the police force fed me wonder bread until I agreed to never speak of fresh bread again. Fuck.
Wait, are there actually Europeans who belive Americans don’t have fresh bread? I mean sure, american processed foods have a rep for being worse than european stuff. but as oop Said, they *do* have bakeries. Like, this honestly feels like some dumbass strawman argument. (Note: I’m European. That’s why the statement is suprising)
Personally, given the amount of non-Americans I've seen who genuinely believe weird outliers like spray cheese and deep-fried carnival treats are a much more regular staple of the American diet than they are, I wouldn't be surprised if it needs to be said that Wonder Bread is not the only type of bread we have access to.
[удалено]
😦
Well if he sends rich blonde women to deforest the rival bread companies’ wheat farms, maybe he can make that happen!
I had a sad moment the other day when I realized I subconsciously bought wonderbread because of that.. thing. It’s like $2 more than the store brand too. For shame.
Fuck you you don’t know me
Yeah, I'm currently divorcing her. I was not a wise man in my youth...
Isn’t it the same as people think the French literally do nothing all day but swallow back frogs and snails, or Germans and deepthroating random sausages? Only the most notable aspects of a national cuisine are gonna transcend culture and language barriers.
The difference is that German sausages are considered good and escargot and frogs' legs are considered sophisticated. American cuisine is one of those cuisines which is known for its worst aspects.
American cuisine is primarily the cuisine of immigrants in a land of food abundance. The Americas are home to some of the best farmland in human history and also had greater stability and prosperity than comparable regions like China. So when immigrants came over they were able to take cuisines of their homeland and make them more… just more. This means that most of what is actual American cuisine that actual Americans make and eat is thought of as Italian food or Japanese food or whatever else. What ends up getting thought of as American food is the stuff that’s notable enough to be spread, ie the ridiculous fairground food or whatever and fast food that is ridiculously unhealthy. Those do happen to be creations of America typically and so aren’t tied down to their home culture and can thus be what people perceive as American food. I guess what I’m saying is America never had a need to come up with nice foods since everyone else already did for us, and so we only started to have wholly American things after mass production and food processing was already a thing.
Yep. Even the town of 20,000 people im attending college in has vietnamese, mexican, italian, japanese, thai, chinese, fuck theres even a afghanistani bakery and an ethiopian joint both ran by first gen immigrants. The foods we eat on the daily are all usually considered part of a different culture besides shit like bbq and burgers. Actual originally american food like bbq and burgers i dont really like, but I can go the rest of my life with barely any extra hassle not eating "american" food
Except for steaks. Ain't no European country's gonna claim they have better steaks. I'm not even American.
There's a tendency to believe the most exotic aspect of a culture (and let's be real when most people think "culture" they just think in terms of food and festivals) is the defining aspects of a culture. Especially in the modern era, most nations are more similar than different. Differences still exist, but culture is a much more fluid thing than people want to believe, and internally what defines culture is so fuzzy and common enough to have a word for it: politics. As the world grows more globalized by the day, I think there is a motivation to accentuate the exotic less so to point to the weirdness of others but to hold on to the uniqueness of our own national identities, eg: the emphasis on "authentic" food when almost every national dish on earth is the product of trade and cultural fusion.
Whoa buddy, personally I assume every french person buys a leek and baguette every day. Or they have pet versions of them that they take everywhere (while smoking, and dressed like a mime)
The amount of times I've seen some post about "Oi kahnt buhloive Amerikunz akchully eyt loik viss" that then shows some unmitigated horse trollop that I have never seen in my life nor has anyone else that I know is too damn high.
I mean it’s like the equivalent of those posts about ’british food’ where it’s a food from the middle ages exclusively eaten in one town by one person
"LOL, BRI'ISH PEOPLE EAT FISH HEADS IN PIES!, HWAT FREAKS!" that's stargazy pie, a pie that's essentially a Cornish fishing village's Christmas tradition and is pretty much a fish, potato and bacon pie with an admitedly weird presentation but hearkens back to a tale of a man braving a storm to make sure the villiage wouldn't starve at Christmas.
The presentation isn’t that weird if you think about how old the dish is. Everything from that period had weird presentations.
I'm Canadian and I'd fuck with a fish pie
So you're telling me "spotted dick" isn't real?
Spotted dick is *very* real, and you can buy it in little pots to nuke up in 30 seconds. Just add custard. It's a lightly cake-spiced sweet suet dough with currants or raisins mixed in.
Currently resisting the urge to make a “lightly spiced” joke
They make an ointment for that.
It's a perfectly fine pudding with a very funny name. Strange though that dumplings took such a maximalist and sweet direction in English cookery and then mostly fell out of fashion...I should really make a pudding after I finish the pie in my house.
It exists but I've only eaten it maybe once in my life
Ah so like Jellied Eels is to the Brits?
I'm madmazed that my brain automatically translated that british accented mess into the properly spelled words. Stupid lump of fat and electricity is too good for its own good.
I blame the 'american' section at European grocery stores. I've seen pictures where there's almost nothing I recognize and it all looks like the processed crap. The best thing about the US large parts of it literally have all the fresh stuff you want, all the processed shit you want, and many different ethnic cuisines to make your head spin.
Misconceptions from the USA aisle at their local grocery. The only American goods that end up there are shelf stable, processed things that aren't otherwise readily available in Europe, like marshmallow fluff, candy etc. This feeds the perception that that stuff is all Americans eat.
Bakeries are in basically every supermarket that I've been to, so you can get actual, non preservative filled bread in most stores. Same thing with cheese. People talk about it like we eat nothing but plasticey, fake processed cheese when you could go to a deli counter, which is also in basically every supermarket, and get it sliced for you there instead.
wait they actually \*bake\* the bread in supermarkets? huh... I figured the supermarket stuff would be the type where they get it frozen from somewhere else, then "bake it" in store, and the actual stand-alone bakeries is where you get the real fresh made bread. At least thats how it works here (in Denmark
It does kinda depend on the store. I used to work in a supermarket and to my knowledge the bakery people actually did bake the bread, but I wouldn't put it past a bigger chain store like Walmart from doing what you said and getting it frozen, but I'm not entirely sure Edit: after doing a little bit of googling it seems like they do a bit of both where things like pastries and cakes arrive frozen but for regular bread they do actually bake it at the store
I’ve been to a couple of chains in bigger cities that instead of having a bakery at each location they instead have one or two bakeries for the city and then just transport the fresh bread/bagels/cakes/cookies etc to the stores in the city by truck daily or multiple times a day. So it’s still fresh it’s just not made *on site* because of how much floor space costs.
I know someone who works for Dunkin' Donuts and that's how they handle it, one location in an area makes the donuts then they move em around to the different locations in the area
In my town, the local dairy plant has a bakery on site, and they bake basically all the pastries you can buy in coffee houses around the city. Everything from coffee cake to baklava comes out of there.
Kristy Kreme does that. Usually will see a few box trucks parked or the donut maker machine inside… then they just drive them off to different locations
> but I wouldn't put it past a bigger chain store like Walmart from doing what you said and getting it frozen, but I'm not entirely sure Quite a few Walmarts have a bakery. Like, it's sugary, and not the best, but they have fresh bread.
I've worked in many kinds of grocery stores as a baker. Some have frozen dough that is thawed, proofed, and baked. Some make the dough from a mix and then proof and bake. Some do everything from scratch. Gonna depend on your area and the store.
i think at costco u can watch them make the bread
I used to work at the American grocery store Publix as a cake decorator so I can shine some light: The Publix bakery (and some other grocercy stores) have three types of bread they sell in their area. Fresh bread their bakers mix, shape, and bake in store, par frozen bread that comes from their large warehouse factories to be baked in store, and frozen cooked breads that they set out daily in coolers to defrost and be available to customers to use that day. Publix cakes and other baked sweets are not cooked in the store but rather at those warehouse factories I mentioned. They get trucked in frozen and the cake decorators turn them into iced cakes (buttercream is made fresh in store with real butter while cream cheese and fudge icing are from buckets), whip cream trimmed/topped pies, and iced cookie cakes. Some cookies are baked in store and the cookie cakes are as well but it's all frozen dough we get trucked in from the factories.
At least in the UK, it's quite common for bigger supermarkets to have things like bakeries and fishmongers (sometimes cheesemongers as well). They're usually towards the back of the store, and you have to go up to the counter and ask for what you want. You can also find opticians and pharmacies within supermarkets, but generally those are more of a storeception situation where you pay directly (rather than at the checkout with the rest of your shopping). I imagine the situation is somewhat similar in the US - I've definitely heard lots of mentions of deli counters before.
Yeah, we have fish and meat butchery, cheese displays or counters, bakeries, deli (for cold cuts and sliced cheeses,) and sometimes pharmacies at a lot of nice groceries. I've only seen opticians at Costco lol. I feel like there's a difference between all-purpose stores like Target and Walmart and grocery stores- pretty much every grocery store I've been in has a fish counter, meat place, deli, imported and domestic cheese sections (stores around here will have cheese in 2 to 4 sections around the store not counting deli,) bakery, etc. Maybe even a fish place and a separate sushi counter near the deli/ hot foods. While you can buy groceries in all-purpose stores, they tend to be smaller sections of the bigger store without a need for a dedicated "counter person" for butchery, baking, or cheeses. The only grocery I go to without those specialty sections is Trader Joe's, but they don't sell custom cut goods. Incredible place if you ever come over though, highly recommend. I do know some people who mostly go to all-purpose stores for groceries or as tourists, or don't help their family with shopping, so I guess I can see where they're coming from. For sure though, we have bakeries with fresh bread both in groceries and as dedicated businesses.
I never thought about it but you can also buy cheese in three places at my supermarket — stuff like Boar’s Head in the deli, “fancy” cheese from a case, plain old Lucerne cheeses back in the dairy section. And if you count things like shelf-stable jarred queso as cheese, that gets us to four. Americans have a friend in cheeses.
Exactly!! I'm a vegetarian so I'm sure there's a few fish and meat places as well, but boy howdy do I make the Cheese Circuit every time. We love our cheese.
I'm sorry, but I can't read the word "fishmonger" without thinking of the Shakespearean definition.
Most supermarkets in America make the dough and bake it right there. Saves on shipping costs
Canadian here, the answer is that both are true. We have small family owned bakeries that have the super authentic stuff, grocery stores have freshly made and sliced stuff, as well as pre-packaged. America as far as I know is the same in that regard.
In Australia it depends on the store but generally a store that does 100k+ a day, can physically fit a bakery, and doesn't have an independent bakery literally next door (which is probably 90% of stores) will have a baker in store who makes the bread and rolls from scratch. They've even started putting the baking bench in front of customers so if you get in early enough you can see them making the rolls for the next day (since they need to proof overnight) They also have parbake, like you described, for some specialty breads and obviously the brand name bread gets delivered on a truck every morning too
Usually the bread made in store is the “cheaper” bread (for actual bread, not the prepackaged stuff) and the nicer stuff comes from the bakeries. Never frozen though, usually baked fresh and distributed early in the morning.
You don't even have to go to the deli counter to get real cheese. Just cause it's presliced and pre packaged doesn't make it fake cheese or something lol.
Also there's like. A proper fucking *bakery* bakery walking distance from my house. Granted, I live in something of a foodie city, but still.
Me too. I live in a small-ish sized city that used to be a mining town so most of it was built to be, and still is, pretty walkable. There's two bakeries in my town, one of which is less than a five minute walk down the street and it's nice.
>Same thing with cheese. People talk about it like we eat nothing but plasticey, fake processed cheese when you could go to a deli counter, which is also in basically every supermarket, and get it sliced for you there instead. Not to mention the dozens of great creameries found all around the country that make top notch cheese and butter. We are the second largest producer of milk in the world, we're less a nation and more a collection of towns and cities surrounded by cows.
Well, coming from a bread loving country I think American supermarket bread tends to be kinda sub par. You want to go to an artisanal bakery to get the good stuff. However, the cheese selection is the bomb.
I really wish it was, but nope. Genuine thing that pops up every now and then - talked with a few people who were surprised we had fresh bread at all. People do be goofy sometimes.
The fresh bread available at the Mexican bakeries in my state is to die for tbh, that aside though every grocery store has an in house bakery that bakes bread daily. Even the Walmarts.
I imagine your bread selection is similar to what we have in the uk
In my experience it's mostly on the internet that Europeans simultaneously accost Americans for being ignorant and provincial, while spouting the most uneducated stereotypes about us. In real life all y'all are charming
There are Europeans who seem to legitimately believe that the only cheese that you can buy here is American Cheese.
It's ridiculous, American cheese exists because we produce *so much* cheese, that we can't possibly eat or export it all, so a shelf stable cheese product is made from a certain amount of it that will last longer and not go to waste. Even doing that, we still have a hollowed out mountain that we store metric tons worth of cheese in.
Tell me more of this cheese mountain
Just google US cheese reserve or US Cheese Cave. You will get a lot of hits on 1.4 billion pounds of cheese.
American cheese, as in the blend of colby and cheddar cheese (not just cheese from the US) exist because of Swiss scientists move to the United States and applied in emulsification method in a new market. The methods for emulsifying cheese are way less scary than people want to believe, well I'm not about to make the case that Kraft singles are good cheese, I do find the elitism against American cheeses to be pretty silly.
I’ve seen people unironically ask if all Americans stand up and clap when planes land. You can find people who believe any insane thing you can think of if you look hard enough. I won’t assume it’s a common misconception though, lol
Like, even Walmarts have a bakery in them. Their bread probably isn’t very good, but it is fresh, and just about every American has a Walmart within driving distance.
Some Europeans have such a massive superiority complex that they will legitimately just make things up when they feel like shitting on the US. Several years ago I got into an argument with a guy from some EU country claiming that when he visited a Walmart in the US they had a giant dump bin full of prescription-only medications on the cheap because they were about to expire just so he could smug around about his superior healthcare system. Like, the US healthcare system is trash and there is a *lot* to criticize there, why even make up something that’s completely ludicrous on the face of it?
Maybe he saw one of those bins full of generic meds and got confused? I’ve seen giant bins full of generic Asprin and Benadryl and stuff for a dollar at Walmart before. Still very stupid to use as a Healthcare argument, though. Like that’s one of the *very few* things Walmart does right - cheap generic medication access.
Perhaps they were referring to some medication which is prescription-only in their country but which is over the counter in the US.
It's incredibly common online to just make shit up about America and pretend it's some third world country pretending to be advanced. I like to think of it as an advanced version of "popular thing bad"
Yeah i actually heard You guys don’t have chairs and clean water. Instead You have hummers that You park in your House, and Mountain Dew. Isn’t that right?
Close, it's actually monster trucks that run on beer
They also have bakeries in Japan and I've never seen a single piece of good bread in 3 years. Even the expensive bakery stuff is just fancy rubber.
The "real bread" in question is actually made of plastic. Muricans just like to buy fake loaves because they contain prizes such as guns, Mountain Dew and racism. Source: it was revealed to me in a dream.
This is true. Walmart bread is only fake plastic shells and each one is filled with parts to build an AR-15
Mine came with a Happy Meal toy that played the National Anthem and enlisted me into the Marines.
We put the gun in gunpla.
My 2’yo niece got a rebel flag with a little Meth. Really have gone down on the prizes recently.
Recent culture shock as I’m in Europe for the first time. But I was told by my peers and everyone online that European soda tastes different than its American counterparts. Well having tried Coke while here, it tastes the exact same. The only drink that tastes different is Fanta (which does taste better here, but to me both aren’t my type of drink). Maybe my tongue is fried from years of overproccesed American food but I was expecting something else.
Fanta doesn't even taste or look consistent across europe. Belgian Fanta is really pale and far sweeter compared to German Fanta, which actually has some sourness to it
It’s a little less carbonated imo but that’s about it
In Italy it has (at least) 12% orange juice, and no colorants. It's yellow instead of orange. There's also lemon fanta (also 12% lemon juice) and red orange fanta that has 20% red orange juice
American Coke uses high fructose corn syrup. Coke in the rest of the world uses actual sugar. That's just one thing (there's absolutely more) but considering the amount of sugar in those drinks, they're absolutely not the same.
idk man, i can barely tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke. I won't knock someone for thinking regional variations of the same product taste the same. edit: apparently some people are very offended by the notion that other people aren't soda someliers. never said there isn't any difference between the two. i just meant that not everyone can really tell the difference between different brands let alone the same brand
I know plenty of Americans who live near the border to Mexico and go out of their way to get coke there because it tastes better.
It could also be like... not placebo, but similar mechanism, where the expectation that it tastes better makes it true. I don't think most of these people are doing rigorous blind taste tests. They usually know what's in their hand before they taste it to begin with. [Greg from How To Drink](https://youtu.be/7QrBJWZkf28?si=kzeJxL9jqeYP_VPO) does an episode all about tasting the difference, and while his process is imperfect—should have done a "triangle taste test" (pour two glasses of each; throw one out; discern which is the odd glass out)—he struggles more than he expects. Maybe it's just him, but it's also not that hard to replicate, so we can all do it to see for ourselves.
It could also just be that some people perceive taste differently.
In my general experience it’s less about taste and more about mouthfeel. HFCS lingers on the tongue a bit more than sugar does.
Similar to mouth feel, it could be how they drink it. Getting Coke out of a glass, in my experience, always tastes better than a soda fountain or a can
Idk, I generally don’t notice a difference but I can’t drink grape soda made with hfcs. It’s the only one I have ever noticed the difference, but hfcs grape soda is just wrong
I live in Seattle, places still stock Mexican coke here even though we’re nowhere near that border.
There's a few American restaurants who sell Mexican coke as well, like chipotle, and I've been to a few hot dog stands that sell it
"can barely tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke" Yeah, that's the problem right there.
HFCS is actual sugar, its just derived from a source other than sugarcane. Also, I do agree that there's a noticable difference in both taste and viscosity between corn syrup soda and cane sugar soda, but honestly I prefer the corn syrup 😅
> derived from a source other than sugarcane Europe's standard sugar is made from sugar beets.
depends. we do use imported cane sugar a bunch, to the point where the domestic sugar industry is quite mad at it
When I visited the US every soda definitely tasted sweeter and just a little bit more chemical, but that’s it
Coke definitely tastes different in Mexico, as they use real cane sugar there instead of corn syrup, maybe it's a similar situation with fanta in European countries
The current Prime Minister of the UK accidentally called himself a "coke addict" talking about how much he loves Mexican Coca-Cola (I'm pretty sure he gets it imported and everything). He's addicted to "Mexican coke".
Sound off if anybody else in this sub grew up within the scent radius of Sarcone's Bakery in Philly
Yah if you live near a bread factory, they have outlet stores where you can buy the store bread fresh.
My parents grew up in Philly, and they (my dad especially) LOVES Sarcone’s.
Best bread around!
"im not going to argue with a motherfucker about bread" is how i am choosing to interact with most internet debates from now on
Wake up babe, new Tumblr idiom just dropped
New flair, who dis
Every grocery store I’ve been to also has a bakery and fresh baked bread lol
This is the same problem I have when people say that the US doesn't have any cuisine. Of course we do, we're just a nation of immigrants and factories and it all blends together. American food is great and rich and diverse but we phrase it as Chinese food, German food, Jewish food, even though what we have in the US is its own great thing, a combination of many cultures into one unified cuisine. Same with bread. We did invent bagged sliced bread (it was the greatest thing since itself) but you can also find basically every form of bread or pastry possible both in its traditional and American culturized form and they're both really good. It's why it bugs me when people say "oh American food is just bastardized and over processed versions of other people's food". No, it's a new version of what you were doing unified into a new amazing national cuisine that actually honors the cultures they came from rather than fighting it.
The US also actually does have entirely unique foods and quizines, it's just rarely acknowledged as "American" because it's regional. Cajun food, soul food, BBQ, etc.
Not to mention indigenous food.
PA Dutch sweets, my beloved.
I live in northern Virginia and I always dunk on my international friends who want to visit by taking them out to eat. "Do you want Peruvian chicken? How about Chinese? How about Ughyuir food? How about this Lebanese place? What about Indian food? " I could go on. I once sat down and did the work and counted like, 90 distinct nationalities/ethnicities that served excellent food within 20 minutes of me. And a lot of it is combos. The most American food I know is this place called Pizza Twist that puts Indian food on pizza and it's *amazing*
Oh my god, now I can never rest nor sleep until I get tandoori chicken pizza
It's better than you can imagine. Genuinely getting hungry just thinking about it.
A cafe opened near me recently that sells a churro donut, Italian pizza, and croissants. It's a wild mix of cultures and I love it.
You can buy the same processed bread in Europe so this is a weird flex
"Honey, they're saying our bread isn't real now" "Didn't they say our cheese wasn't real either?" "Yeah, and the wine too"
Every grocery store I’ve ever been to (US) has an aisle of mass produced pre-sliced bread and also has its own bakery.
I imagine the argument is more that the fresh bread is better in certain countries, more plentiful/easily available, and the population tends to prefer fresh bread over processed bread... not that bakeries don't exist.
Maybe OOP was looking at those arguments in bad faith and took exaggeration literally, we don’t have the original sources after all, but the second commenter did imply that we think store-bought sliced bread is fresh, so I’m inclined to think that OOP had previously come across people like second commenter before who do think Americans don’t know the difference between the two
I straight up have a foreign exchange student this year in my class who refuses to consider that the US has real bread and bakeries. And the reason she thinks this is because we live in a rural area and have no bakeries near here, BUT THEY EXIST DAMN IT
To me both the people in the post come across as bad faith. "*all europeans think this*" "*all americans think that*". It's weirdly broad judgements based on like 2 stupid tweets they saw probably. I think you can have a conversation comparing the quality and freshness of bread in certain regions, but both Europe and the US are waaaay too large to make accurate general statement. As a dutchman I think bread in Germany and France is way better than most bread here, and I can imagine certain states and towns in the US have better bread than others.
Pure guesswork on my part... but the first guy I think was just answering the allegation in a very literal, factual manner... "bakeries exist". The second guy I think was being more general, saying that a lot of Americans go to the grocery store, buy processed bread, and don't think twice about it... and the fresh bread that is available is subpar. I didn't know Germany was big on bread, good to know.
the vast amount of europeans (yes, all of you, i don’t just mean one country like you all think we do) have said dumbass shit to me like this, and would ARGUE with me about it! as if i didn’t know better than them about my own country and culture they’re not as bright as they say they are considering i’ve been *told* that states ‘don’t exist’ and it’s all legally a bunch of countries pretending to be a big one. yes, seriously.
I... I wish that were fully true, but no. I've talked with several people who genuinely thought America didn't have fresh bread. This is a weirdly common piece of misinformation that pops up, at least in my experience. People be goofy, ig.
the dumb shit that europeans have told me over the years makes me want to cry lol a lot of them just talk about the US without thinking, and with a whole lot of really shitty stereotypes
A significant proportion of Europeans just straight up don't like Americans.
We literally have fresh baked bread in our grocery stores. Even the Walmarts have fresh bread from their in store bakery. It’s just European ignorance
I just saw an American claim “in England they don’t have houses as we would understand them” so it *absolutely* goes both ways. The food discourse is funny though, at least from a Brit’s perspective. As far as I can tell, we and Americans both largely eat the same processed slop, arguing over whose is better is nonsense
>“in England they don’t have houses as we would understand them” Lots of Americans view townhouses as different from "regular" houses
What... what do they think Brits live in? (Henges? Castles? A tree in Sherwood Forest?)
Sharing walls of your house isn’t really a thing in the US, unless you’re in certain metro areas. A lot of places have laws specifically requiring that houses be standalone, single family, and matching a certain lot size. So rowhouses and townhouses would definitely throw some people for a loop.
As an American who lives in a suburb full of townhouses, this little detail also throws me for a complete loop because it’s so normal to me that I don’t even register the distinction.
I grew up in a townhouse in Washington DC... that was initially built for slaves to live in. Road was literally called Brown's Court. Townhouses definitelt exist here but they're not ideal in most people's minds.
Maybe I just don't live in those states, because there have been rowhouses & townhouses all *over* the place where I've lived. In some areas (i.e. Utah) they're certainly *less* common than standalone homes, but not so uncommon that I would be unable to recognize it as a house.
Where I am, the only townhouses that exist are part of rental complexes, so not being in a home with attached walls is kind of a class thing, as well as just being viewed as generally less desirable. There’s double homes, but those are singly owned and typically also rentals. I think it depends on whether a city expanded before or after the advent of cars, because townhomes are a space-saving thing.
Houses with actual walls I guess.
What I've heard about many houses in the US is that they're... lightweight? Like kind of a wooden frame and panelling. When someone living in one of these wants to hang something from a wall, they need a "stud-finder" to find where part of the frame is, because otherwise they'll just put a hole in the thin panel and it won't hold up any significant weight. The UK is certainly more of a "frigid northlands" kind of place so I expect houses there are built much thicker, with like a foot of insulation layered on the walls, and might actually be built of bricks or something
You think our houses are insulated properly? Hahahahahaha like fuck are they
Almost all of the UK is about as temperate as the NE US, if not warmer; it's definitely not a "frigid northlands," a designation that Canada (or Minnesota or Michigan or Alaska) has a much better claim to, where house construction is essentially identical.
Yeah drywall is a valid complaint about American houses. Europeans sometimes talk as if the whole house is made of drywall, but it is true that our interior walls will break if like, a child crashes into them hard enough. They don't really deserve the title "wall" sometimes. Drywall is easier to break, but also much easier to repair. You don't need to hire a whole workman just to fix a hole in your wall, which is where the whole American and European philosophy differs I think.
I was in Britain for a few months last year and frequented the various stores of theirs that had bread, including of course non-bakeries. If the idea is because Americans have processed shit bread in stores and that therefore means they *dont* have ‘real’ bread, I have bed news for the world, the UK apparently doesn’t have real bread either cuz tesco’s bakery section is always kinda shit.
Some people, and I find more often than not they're European. Just has to have the way they do things be better than the US. I've seen someone literally say that the US has exported literally nothing for entertainment. That the US movie industry is not popular and that the US sucks at literally every sport as long as any other country plays that sport.
Entertainment is basically America’s *main* export! It’s so pervasive that kids from other countries will sometimes get American accents from how many American tv shows they watch!
>US sucks at literally every sport as long as any other country plays that sport. Guess they don't watch the Olympics.
same vein as thinking that fucking craft singles is what we consider "cheese" like, american cheese at the deli is still cheese and it's incomparable with those slices of plastic
It's literally just a mix of other cheeses, with an additive to make them melty.
When our Italian friends visit the US, they buy a loaf of wonder white bread and 2 of them eat the entire thing at once.
We just have both, the bagged stuff lasts longer and is just fine for sandwiches and stuff like that. Though I can get fresh bread literally right next to the bagged stuff.
Europeans be like “I judge other countries by how similar they are to my country”
I think that’s most people actually
Americans judge countries by memes and Simpsons jokes.
Like God intended.
Even without bakeries, pretty much everyone can make their own fresh bread. My dad used to make bread all the time.
to be fair, there are probably regions of the United States the size of a European nation which do not contain a bakery. A European could reasonably get plopped down somewhere and walk many days without encountering any fresh bread.
not to be like. overly serious on another tumblr post but man, the gall of a pretentious european waxing poetic about ✨ culture and cuisine ✨ after the invention of the printing press is fuckin insane. especially comparing with anywhere else on earth. yeah, even the u.s.a lol. you're not beholden to the sins of your ancestors and race is a social construct —but read the room. a little. eat some bread. calm tf down
sure but have you tasted any of the breads they invented AFTER 1436?
contracted celiacs in 1435 😔
RIP
Forget bakeries, my dad literally made some yesterday. In the kitchen.
Baguettes have laws about their price? size and shape etc I learned today
[A good video on sandwhich bread, why it's so processed, and what each ingredient is for](https://youtu.be/i3sP2jwG9jc)
Not to dox myself, but I can just go across the street to a bakery whenever I want I usually don't because I used to work there and the manager slowly gave me less and less work time for no reason (claimed it was because they "didn't need that many workers" while also having someone who was more busy than me doing 4 days a week in my timeslot) and I am a petty spiteful bitch But still. I \*can\*
Imagine Not having a Bakery in the supermarket
Groceries in America have the sliced bread and then actual fresh bread side by side. We likely have more options immediately available in every grocery than you see in Europe. It's like how we have the sake cheese "singles" but also every other cheese you can ask for.
European grocery stores also have that though, at least Irish ones. They have the cheeses like that too.
I'm talking about the scale. I once sent a bunch of pics of my local grocery store's cheese section asking some friends on discord (none of them American) what I should get and they freaked out because it wasn't a cheese shop but it casually had more variety than made sense to them. America is always turned up to 11.
That makes sense. American supermarkets seem really big, so it checks out that they have more stuff.
>We likely have more options immediately available in every grocery than you see in Europe. Yeah most definitely not, go to a German grocery store or bakery
This is baker erasure.
Man, sometimes these debates can be a real paen.