Author Topic: Food fails from around the world  (Read 13122 times)

Food fails from around the world
« on: 14 December, 2017, 02:50:07 pm »
I'll start with a couple:

Germans: Curry Wurst. FFS, pooring a load of tomato ketchup all over some sausage then just dusting it with curry powder does not make a curry sauce!! Can you imagine someone from the Asian sub-continent being served up that shit?! Rank.

Australians: Pie Floaters. Why? Just why!? Why would you take a perfectly acceptable pie and bung it in some horrific radio active looking soup?! Wrongness.

Any more?
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #1 on: 14 December, 2017, 03:07:06 pm »
I think the British Army of the Rhine might have had a hand in the invention of curry wurst so you can't blame that one entirely on the Germans. I like it anyway. Most people from the Asian subcontinent would look askance at a chicken tika massala for that matter.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

T42

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #2 on: 14 December, 2017, 03:19:28 pm »
There's currywürst and currywürst.  I thought that the banger + fetchup  + curry powder efforts you get outside supermarkets were the ghastly limit of the art until I was persuaded to try one in Baden-Baden last-last year-year. There, the sauce was properly made, and was excellent. I'd go back.
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Gus

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #3 on: 14 December, 2017, 03:40:43 pm »
A Chip butty  A sandwich filled with chips- it's just plain wrong and bland greasy food.

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #4 on: 14 December, 2017, 03:51:05 pm »
A Chip butty  A sandwich filled with chips- it's just plain wrong and bland greasy food.

I couldn't agree with you more. Northerners are odd  :P
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

Jaded

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #5 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:02:25 pm »
Garlic soup with poached egg. (Portuguese)

Just No.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #6 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:11:07 pm »
France: Oh, where do I begin?

I'll start with snails. Sure - I appreciate they were peasant food years ago, but there's no need to keep serving them in restaurants now. Why all the garlic? Maybe to mask the fact that they taste like shit and have the texture of a recently hacked off bellend?
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

Kim

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    • Fediverse
Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #7 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:21:46 pm »
I reckon the French affinity for garlic stems from the fact that they haven't discovered curry.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #8 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:25:41 pm »
Garlic soup with poached egg. (Portuguese)

Just No.
Sounds good to me!

To follow up the Asian subcontinent theme: anything in India which claims to be Western food, particularly bread. Come to that, 90% of bread is pretty rank in UK too.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #9 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:27:09 pm »
Chinese food. The proper stuff. I hate to insult an entire nation but I'll do it anyway. The parts of animals you don't want to eat floating in cartilaginous muck and you're forced to eat it with sticks while other westerners tell you how authentic it is. There's a good reason we have our anodyne anglicised Chinese food.

Bouillabaisse. Starship Troopers in a bowl. Gazpacho. It's soup that's gone cold. Pasta with shellfish in the shells. Fuck off, what am I supposed to do with that. Italian pizza bores. Oh, I know you some great pizza somewhere in some Italian village, stop the fuck going on about it. Actually foreign food bores in general. This was so much better in... Here's a fucking map and bus ticket, fuck off back there.

On the other hand: Currywürst is the best (and nothing fancy, it just spoils it). I love the stuff. Chip butties, awesome. Crisp sandwiches, awesomer.

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #10 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:31:22 pm »
I reckon the French affinity for garlic stems from the fact that they haven't discovered curry.
POTD!

My entry was going to be garlic and potato soup, served in France.

Not a hearty thick broth, but something looking exactly like tapwater and tasting like tapwater with raw garlic boiled in it for a bit, hold the seasoning.

<i>Marmite slave</i>

Kim

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #11 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:32:23 pm »
Come to that, 90% of bread is pretty rank in UK too.

That little?  I think I last had decent British bread from a little bakery in Wales in 2013.

The Chorleywood process has a lot to answer for, as do supermarkets and their just-in-time half-baked mediocrity.  If we didn't have proper electricity to run toasters, I don't know how we'd cope.

Credit where it's due, the French make up for their many culinary abominations by having the right attitude to baked goods.

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #12 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:32:36 pm »
Cockneys: Just what the fuck are you doing with those Eels? I don't need to say anything else on the matter.....
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

Basil

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #13 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:35:06 pm »
USA.  Grits.  :sick:
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Gattopardo

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #14 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:36:13 pm »
There's currywürst and currywürst.  I thought that the banger + fetchup  + curry powder efforts you get outside supermarkets were the ghastly limit of the art until I was persuaded to try one in Baden-Baden last-last year-year. There, the sauce was properly made, and was excellent. I'd go back.

I have had currywurst where the saveloy contained the curryied elements.  It was nice....I drunk.

I like german sausages in general, strict laaws of what a sausage should contain, basically meat, fat and a bit of seasoning and light on the preservatives.

Gattopardo

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #15 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:37:02 pm »
Cockneys: Just what the fuck are you doing with those Eels? I don't need to say anything else on the matter.....

Winkles?

Gattopardo

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #16 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:37:31 pm »
Lasagna and chips...

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #17 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:49:46 pm »
Japan: When I order a steak, I want it to taste like a cow. So leave the soy sauce, or worse - teriyaki sauce alone, OK?
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

ian

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #18 on: 14 December, 2017, 04:59:30 pm »
Lasagna and chips...

What else are you supposed to eat with lasagne? Mash?

Jaded

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #19 on: 14 December, 2017, 05:05:01 pm »
I reckon the French affinity for garlic stems from the fact that they haven't discovered curry.
POTD!

My entry was going to be garlic and potato soup, served in France.

Not a hearty thick broth, but something looking exactly like tapwater and tasting like tapwater with raw garlic boiled in it for a bit, hold the seasoning.

You forgot smelling like the armpits in an Alpine ski cable car.
It is simpler than it looks.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #20 on: 14 December, 2017, 05:14:58 pm »
Come to that, 90% of bread is pretty rank in UK too.

That little?  I think I last had decent British bread from a little bakery in Wales in 2013.

The Chorleywood process has a lot to answer for, as do supermarkets and their just-in-time half-baked mediocrity.
True. And Wikipedia says:
Quote
CBP is used in over 80 percent of factory-produced bread in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India. Many smaller bakers also use the CBP to mix their dough which they then process by hand. Many "speciality", "crusty", and organic breads are produced this way.
Which, added to unfamiliarity with what bread can be, explains the appallingness of Indian bread (and we can't even blame colonialism, as the process wasn't invented till 1961). 
Quote
Credit where it's due, the French make up for their many culinary abominations by having the right attitude to baked goods.
Also true.
Quote
If we didn't have proper electricity to run toasters, I don't know how we'd cope.
Not at all true. IMO the prevalence of toast is one of the things that allows stupormarkets and bakers to get away with such crap bread.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #21 on: 14 December, 2017, 05:19:55 pm »
Yes, the French know how to put together a baguette. Admittedly you have to toughen up the roof of your mouth, but it's worth it, and they have a shelf-life of about 14 minutes before you've got something more suited to beating off a zombie hoard (and not that kind of beating off, though I bet there's a website dedicated to the more interesting uses of stale baguettes but I'm not going there).

UK supermarket bread is dire, the pretend baked stuff, good god, why even bother.

French food can be good. But it's quite often awful. I've had steaks that were gristle held together with more gristle.

Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #22 on: 14 December, 2017, 05:33:00 pm »
The Belgians generally turn out good stuff. I thought I'd search for something typically Belgian, and found 'Peches au Thon', which consists of tinned tuna, with added mayonnaise, served in tinned peach halves, and garnished with parsley. I might try this at Christmas.


Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #23 on: 14 December, 2017, 05:35:26 pm »
Chinese food. The proper stuff. I hate to insult an entire nation but I'll do it anyway. The parts of animals you don't want to eat floating in cartilaginous muck and you're forced to eat it with sticks while other westerners tell you how authentic it is.

Ditto Korean food.

My mother went to China with my sister, and they asked to be taken for an “authentic” meal. My mother, on returning home, said that the chickens feet were ok, but she didn’t expect them to be cold.....

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hellymedic

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Re: Food fails from around the world
« Reply #24 on: 14 December, 2017, 06:04:08 pm »
I read the ingredients in the haggis I bought quite recently: sheeps' lungs, beef fat, oats, salt spices.

We quite like haggis but the ingredients aren't precisely classy!