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Which country has the best cuisine?

King Hearts

Curious to hear the thoughts of food connoisseurs.

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Tar.Aldarion

MurdyWurdy wrote: »

Have you eaten Chinese in a proper restaurant/not in Ireland? I hated it to until I lived in a country with excellent Chibese restaurants.

What you get in Chinese takeaways here is not really Chinese food

Meh I've eatien in so called excellent chinese's and the supposedly best one was the worsst meal I even had, and water cost 6.50. lol.

Other asian food is so much nicer.

Lmao at all tehse people saying ireland and we have best ingredients, um, no. We barely have anything passable if you've eaten good food.

clairefontaine

France and Mexico.

syklops

token101 wrote: »

I Asian food, especially Thai and Malaysian, is absolutely horrible.

Threads like this should be banned.

spank_inferno

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Lmao at all tehse people saying ireland and we have best ingredients, um, no. We barely have anything passable if you've eaten good food.

Ok Tolkien.

What country grows the best quality vegtables & meats?

Cos even at a cheap level Irish stuff tastes better than anywhere I can think of.

Itish agriculture puts massive efforts into food quality.

[Deleted User]

Iceland

My mum's just been there

annascott

French or Italian...

ninebeanrows

Surely Italy has brought us the most.

freshpopcorn

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

Iceland

My mum's just been there

The country or the supermarket?

Karl Stein

Turkey or Hungry.

Smidge

pickarooney wrote: »

Just how varied is Mexican cuisine? I've never been and don't know anything beyond the basics.

Exact same dish every time, just folded differently

As for French food?
As another posted said... way overrated.
From ordinary restaurants to fairly top end I wasn't impressed.

ardle1

King Hearts wrote: »

Curious to hear the thoughts of food connoisseurs.

It dont matter anymore, your thread should be 'Headed'... which Kitchen has the best Cuisine? and the answer would be!! My Kitchen:pac:

RDM_83 again

Buer wrote: »

I find Italian food quite repetitive. When eating in Italy, the menus can be quite boring unless going to an upmarket restaurant. It can be fantastic but the standard Italian fare is dull and not particularly well made.
.

Used to go on a lot of holidays to Italy when I was younger and I completely agree with the above. It can be lovely but it tends to be massively carb based with the meat being pretty poor as I remember and the bread just isn't a patch on France.

clairefontaine

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Used to go on a lot of holidays to Italy when I was younger and I completely agree with the above. It can be lovely but it tends to be massively carb based with the meat being pretty poor as I remember and the bread just isn't a patch on France.

I prefer the Italian food in the US to the food I had in Italy. Italian sheepskin milk cheeses are good though, and I like a lot of their aperitifs. Prefer French food. It's more interesting.

Frank Black

Italian, Indian, Thai, would be my favourites. Spainish and Mexican can also be very nice.

Chinese food in China in nothing like food from a Chinese takaway.

Worst country I've ever been to for food is Cuba - everything was very bland which is suprising when you see how much lovely fruit and veg they are able to grow there.

ringadingding

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Lmao at all tehse people saying ireland and we have best ingredients, um, no. We barely have anything passable if you've eaten good food.

You clearly have no idea about what you're talking about, we have amazing soil and grass, a rich farming tradition, perfect weather for root vegetables, our beef and lamb is sought after the world over.

Don't get me started on the fish/ seafood available to us.

If you bothered to look past the end of your nose, you'd know this.

Hersheys

Proper Italian pizza and pasta is unbeatable.

However the flavours and variety in Spanish tapas and Greek meze are immense.

France know their stuff. A decent cassoulet is amazing. More French restaurants have only a handful of dishes on the menu, all equally tasty.

Proper Chinese, in china or cooked in the home of a Chinese person, is so different to anything else it's barely comparable.

Indian for the curry.

North African cuisine for the flavours, the sauces and making a meal out of semolina.

But I do love the variety and freshness of Irish food. Local cheeses, the best beef, fish... Wowzers.

Thirdfox

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Meh I've eatien in so called excellent chinese's and the supposedly best one was the worsst meal I even had, and water cost 6.50. lol.

Other asian food is so much nicer.

Lmao at all tehse people saying ireland and we have best ingredients, um, no. We barely have anything passable if you've eaten good food.

I thought you're a mod of the spell czech's forum

The best Chinese restaurant currently in Ireland is probably M&L Szechuan Chinese Restaurant/巴蜀人家 just off O'Connell street. Not sure if they offer Chinese and English menus but if they do then make sure to get the Chinese one.

I don't like spicy foods (weird Chinese) but their food is rather authentic and relatively good value.

And actually over here in China, it's impossible to define what is "Chinese" cuisine - do you mean Szechuan (spicy), Shanghai (sweet), Beijing (duck!), Yunnan (mushrooms and lightly seasoned) and all the other regions with their local delicacies.

The Chinese love their food and meals are an important event. It's my staple food so I'm a bit biased but I wouldn't swap it for anything else in the world...mainly because there are so many different styles of food which all qualify as "Chinese" that I'm spoilt for choice.

And the fact that we still do cooking - meals at home generally consists of 3-4 hot dishes (mix of vegetables and meat dishes) and perhaps one soup, coupled with rice. Or maybe a noodle dish in a giant hotpot. And the style of eating - it's communal, sharing and rowdy...not "everyone has his plate and keeps to it" - your mileage may vary but I like that eating spirit

Desserts though - I'd wholeheartedly give to the westerners - love the French desserts and effort they put into them.

jester77

When it comes to meat dishes, the French are best.

But overall I would say Vietnamese is fantastic, lovely balance of French and Asian, plus some of their clay pot dishes are :eek: :pac: :pac:

8-10

losthorizon wrote: »

Love French Food but Marie Antoinette who was Austrian took the Croissant From Vienna and introduced it to France. Its Half Moon shaped in honour of the Austrians Stopping the Turks taking over Europe. They defeated them in a major battle just outside Vienna and shaped them that way.

That's got urban myth written all over it

King Hearts

Smidge wrote: »

Exact same dish every time, just folded differently

As for French food?
As another posted said... way overrated.
From ordinary restaurants to fairly top end I wasn't impressed.

Just so you know, Burritos, fajitas, nachos etc are actually American food. That's not authentic Mexican quisine.

SEPT 23 1989

India

Foxhound38

Italian, Thai, Lebonese and Indian are all winners

Annasopra

Fox_In_Socks wrote: »

I don't think Pot Noodle has come in every national cuisine flavour yet, so I'm holding off judgement.

The English/Italian mix was good though (beef/tomato flavour)

That couldn't possibly be described as cuisine

Sunglasses Ron

Am I the only person who doesn't "get" Chinese takeaway? A meal typically costs an arm and a leg compared to a chipper feed and yet usually contains very small amounts of the chicken/ beef you ordered, and is disguised in a liquid mix that tastes somewhat like the container it comes in. I don't get how they ever became popular yet they seem to be going strong since at least the 70's, and particularly in the last 10 years, even the most rural town has at least two of the places these days. I just can't fathom the popularity when you compare the cost with the amount of meat you receive. No to mention the amount of closure orders they receive. Say what you like about the chains but I have not once in my life read about a food poisoning case or closure order against a McDonalds. I have bought the stuff pissed in country towns where they were the only place open late, but not in a million years would I pay such a price for so little meat, the profit margin on these places must be astronomical when you think about it.

curiousb

Buer wrote: »

Spanish cuisine is quite underrated with some outstanding seafood, cured meats and flavours.

+1. Good quality Spanish food away from the tourist traps is hard to beat. Nothing quite like a big table full of loads of Tapas washed down with cold beer.

Annasopra

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

Iceland

My mum's just been there

Frozen crap is not cuisine

blaze1

England.

Curries, fish & chips, roast beef + yorkshire pudding.

John_Rambo

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Lmao at all tehse people saying ireland and we have best ingredients, um, no. We barely have anything passable if you've eaten good food.

Do you honestly not rate Wicklow or Connemara lamb or Irish beef? Have you seriously tried all Irish caught fish cooked in Irish butter, all Irish shellfish, eaten it mixed with Irish cream, creme freche, wild herbs, wild garlic.. You have eaten Dublin bay prawns, mussels with a pint of Guinness on a Friday evening in front of a wood fire and found it below standard? You have sampled all our home grown fresh produce from the field, green house and orchard, the berries, fruit and veg?

Back to modding the sleeping forum for you!

I found South Africa pretty impressive for food...

SpaceTime

I think sometimes we completely underrate what's available in Ireland too. We've really good ingredients and an ever-increasingly experimental approach to food where people are pulling in all sorts of influences from all over the globe and combining them.

"Celtic Fusion" type cuisine can really be top notch stuff.

Irish artisan food's also really becoming very interesting.

It varies by place, but if you're in Dublin and Cork in particular there's just a vast array of amazing food.
In more far-flung parts of Ireland you'll still come across gems here and there too.

Internationally, I think the same's true, a lot of countries that are not extremely arrogant about their own national cuisine tend to be capable of drawing in influences from everywhere and making really amazing food.

Some of the best food I've had has been in places like Canada, New Zealand and the USA as well as Britain and Ireland.

In European terms, I was quite surprised at how good proper Belgian gourmet food is. We tend to overlook and write-off some of the small countries.

Spanish food's also very underrated, perhaps because most of us have only ever really experienced the resorts where they are really aiming the food at what they think English and Germans eat which is usually way off the mark.

There was also a huge explosion of foodiness in Spain in the boom years which has definitely had a big impact. A lot of the northern cities really have very interesting food go for a top notch meal in Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pamplona etc and you'll see what I mean. Pamplona's pinxoes (tapas in Basque) can be pretty impressive too.

I find Germany and Britain can be written off unfairly too. There is some excellent food in both places and they're both becoming very experimental and foodie in recent decades.

For me, good French food is actually the really high quality, rural, unpretentious stuff that's just made from excellent ingredients. I find what kills French cuisine for me is the pretentiousness of some of the restaurants. France has great food, but it also has a lot of very mediocre restaurants and cafes that charge way too much money for serving really bad quality, unimaginative dishes and I think it's doing France's food legacy no favours.
There are some amazing restaurants too, but there are too many bad ones that can give you service with bad attitude.

I recently had an experience in a Paris restaurant (quite a mediocre one) with two Spanish friends of mine who are very into their food and wine. The food was not great and the water was absolutely patronising.
We also went into a place that was calling itself a 'Tapas Bar' and when we ordered tapas we got unbelievable attitude because we weren't ordering a 4 course meal and this was in the French Basque Country which should know a thing or two about pinxoes and tapas ! The attitude was actually so bad we left the restaurant and didn't order!! I've never done that ANYWHERE else.

Italian food can be absolutely fantastic. I find the Italians just have great food and don't tend to be overly pretentious about it. The standard even in small cafes can be really high. The only thing that detracts from it is that they don't tend to reach out to other influences very much and it can become a bit bland just getting the same dishes over and over especially if you're in mid-priced restaurants all the time.

As for Chinese food, it can be absolutely amazing if you know what you're looking for. I have Chinese in-laws now and China's just such a vast place that trying to describe "Chinese food" as a single cuisine is a bit pointless. It's a whole continent of cuisines really and you can pick and it varies enormously. There are at least 8 regional cuisines that are quite dramatically different from each other. It's a bit like trying to just say "European Cuisine" There are some common threads that connect it in terms of noodles, ginger, some of the spices, but the regional variations are absolutely enormous and there are also dishes that are popular all over China too which could be considered 'national cuisine' I guess.

However, the Chinese restaurant food we get here from takeaways is a bit like concluding that American Cuisine is McDonalds. From what I gather, the Chinese restaurant menus we get pretty much came about through the popularisation of Chinese food in America in the 19th century and early 20th century. They're predominantly southern Chinese dishes that were adapted to the US pallet. That format was re-exported to the UK and Ireland probably mostly from the 1960s onwards which is how we ended up with Chop Suey and other dishes that don't exist in China

Chop Suey = tsap seui = Miscellaneous Leftovers in Chinese.

It's sort of what Pizza Hut is to Italian food

murpho999

Can we not see from this thread that every country can have good cuisine if cooked and prepared properly?

Also, you can only comment on a country's cuisine if you have really been there.

Haven't been to China yet but with all the regional cuisines there it must be better than than the calorie packed , salty Chinese served here.

Surprisingly, been to Mexico, and was disappointed. Food quite bland and lacking vegetables.

Spanish should be more popular than it is too!