Not necessarily the best meals (or places), but the meals (or places) that best represent your culture.
I mean if you’ve never eaten Pupusas, I don’t know what life you’re living.
I have no idea what it is but I want to eat it now.
Corn tortilla dough is filled with cheese/pork/beans and other yummy options, and cooked on a greasy ass flat grill. Served with a Salvadoran vinegar slaw, they’re delicious
oh my sweet fuck I want that so bad now
Loroco y queso!
What is even that flower? I wonder if I can grow it in my apartment in Canada cause that shit is delicious. They sell frozen loroco where I live but it’s expensive. And I haven’t been to El Salvador in a decade for the real thing
We have a Salvadoran restaurant near us (in Maryland, USA) and we love these!
There is one pupusa place where I live and they don’t season their food and it just breaks my heart.
Currywurst. Chopped fried or grilled sausage with ketchup and curry spice sprinkled on top. Often served with fries.
You can get it almost everywhere in Germany, especially at street festivals. Simple, absolutely unhealthy and delicious.
Edit: I would also have said the Döner Kebab. Veil or chicken grilled on a vertical spitroast, sliced into thin strands of meat, loaded into a slightly toasted flatbread along with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onions and depending on the region and restaurant white or red cabbage in vinegar and oil, together with a yogurt sauce.
But you could argue that Döner is Turkish because it was invented by a Turkish immigrant and is usually prepared by Turkish descendants (or those who look Turkish). But then again I heard that restaurants in Turkey started offering German Döner because that’s what tourists expected to get.
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One of my biggest regrets in life is not eating currywurst while I was in Germany. I will make it right though. Maybe next year.
Pa amb tomàquet, bread with tomato. No, really.
You take some slices of bread, or something like a baguette or ciabatta sliced longitudinally to make a sandwich. Good bread, mind, not that spongy stuff you get in the U.S. Something with some crust, with a bit of a crunch. Slightly toasted (but not burnt) is good, and easier, but not necessary. You can eat this hot or cold, it’s good either way.
Anyway, as I was saying you take some bread, and you take some tomatoes. Red, juicy, the tastiest the better. Slice one in half, take half, rub the sliced part on one side of the bread (on the crumb, obviously, not the crust), until the bread has soaked a good amount of the tomato’s juice (you could do both sides if you wanted to, but it’d probably be a bit of a mess). It’s not a problem if some small bits of the tomato’s meat also end up in the bread, but you don’t want big chunks (unless you want tomato as a topping, though that’d be a bit redundant). You don’t want the bread to get too soft, don’t ruin that crunch. If the tomato is juicy enough you can reuse it for the next slice, until it runs out of juice or you’re just left with the skin.
Once you’ve got all your slices done, sprinkle some salt over them. Don’t go overboard, you want to be able to taste the bread, and the tomato.
Finally, dribble some good virgin olive oil on them. Again, don’t go overboard, don’t drown them. Once you’re done you can take one of the slices and use it to help spread the oil and salt on the other ones by tapping the crumbs against each other.
You can now eat the slices as they are, toast them if you want, accompany them with cured meats (cured ham is fantastic with this) or cheeses, as a side or as toppings, or as the filling of a sandwich (seriously, unless you’re making a hot dog, or a cheese melt, or a hamburger, or something like that this is the way to make a sandwich; once you’ve tried it you won’t be going back to plain or buttered bread).
Experiment, have fun, try different kinds of bread, more or less tomato, oil, or salt, toasted or untoasted, different toppings (anything you’d put in a sandwich will almost certainly work), oil from different types of olives, maybe rub some garlic on the bread before the tomato, if it’s hard enough to take it… there are infinite possibilities and combinations, and unless you go overboard with the toppings they’re just five minutes away as long as you’ve got some bread, some tomatoes, some olive oil, and some salt.
(Also, if you’ve got really good bread and really good oil, but would rather skip the tomatoes, pa amb oli, bread with oil — and a sprinkle of salt — can also be an excellent snack to eat by itself before a meal, though pa amb tomàquet is better if you want to eat it with toppings, or as a sandwich.)
Found the Italian?
If you don’t live in Italy and you’re naughty, rub a little bit of garlic on the bread before the tomato :-).
Italy has so good food it’s crazy (and I’m living in France!) but it seems impossible to get that bread, those tomatoes etc elsewhere (there is surely some magic to it too). It’s like oranges from Naples. You just don’t make them anywhere else.
Found the Italian?
Close, Catalan. Food’s good here too.
Oh yes it is! A shame Barcelona is so overcrowded with tourists nowadays (I went there a lot some 10+ years ago, stopped when the tourist invasion happened, I mean I was then part of the problem).
Mediterranean food for the world !
Fair warning to anyone who wants to visit for our food, just in case: the food in tourist focused restaurants here is… not particularly good, and extremely overpriced.
If you want good food, avoid the more touristy areas, and find out where the locals eat when they eat out (or get them to invite you to eat some homemade food).
You can beat calabrese oranges?
Literally my favorite bar food from southern Spain, cozy and fresh!
Boston cream pie… more like a cake. Very delicious. If you’re ever in Boston, you can visit where it started at the Parker House Hotel (Omni).
on the east coast of Canada, in the French speaking region known as Acadie (not in Quebec), there is a dish known as Poutine Rapée. it is not the delicious “cheese fries and gravy” Poutine, oh no. This is a big fucking potato dumpling with seasoned pork and onion inside it. Making them is an art form. They are super delicious. Eat one of those for lunch and you’ll go for hours.
As a former Maritimer, I feel robbed that I was exposed to Halifax donair and not this instead.
Donair sucks and donair pizza is an abomination, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. This on the other hand sounds amazing.
well bud, I enjoy donairs enough for both of us put together, so don’t you worry about that. I could eat the arse end out of one right now and I’m not even done my coffee.
But yeah, Poutine Rapée is absolutely tits. Like a “cult classic” movie or a super amazing hotspot that only the locals know about, if you know you know, and now you know. I hope wherever you are that you have a kick-ass day.
New York pizza and hotdogs, Philly cheesesteaks, Vermont cheddar, and San Francisco sourdough clam chowder bowls. I’m sure every state has their specialty, so you’ll have to visit every single one to try everything :p
- BBQ, from any/all regions
- Cajun food – very important one!
- Fried chicken and waffles – I tried explaining this umami to a handful of people in Japan, and they didn’t understand.
- Casseroles of all kinds
Good point on the BBQ. The differences between regions is substantial, and although you may not like one region’s BBQ, you may very well love another region’s. I for one am not a fan of the vinegar based BBQ, but a good dry rub, or mustard base, I am all there.
Ok so everybody is always about the stroopwafels, the fries with lots of mayo and the raw herring. And that’s all fine unique and dandy.
But the real thing that many food travelers miss is the smoked eel. They are delicious smokey fatty fishes, really unique to dutchland, Japanese unagi doesn’t hold a candle to it.
They are horrible looking, hard to peel (yup you peel the eel) but they are the best culinary thing our country has, and I’ll die on this hill. Goes with a korenwijn type (Dutch gin)
JÄGERSCHNITZEL. ifykyk.
Nostalgieglückstränen, nehme ich an. Ne? NE?!
Mmh, the uniquely East German taste of Realsozialismus
Uhh yeah 🤤
Apart from the obvious cheese and chocolate, i‘d reccomend some good ol rösti with a spiegelei
I’ll fight you!
- Cheese: France, évidemment
- Chocolate: Belgium, potferdomme
- Rösti: …'mkay, I’ll leave you the potatoes leftovers fried in a greasy pan, but ffs not the dried-out thingy from Migros please
Oh hell no. Alway buy the potatos, steam them for 20 mins and then they‘re ready to be grated into the pan. Don‘t forget the aromat!
Bunny Chow! Chicken curry in a bread bowl
Bunny chow is so good. There’s a South African expat who runs a store/restaurant by my house here in Texas and makes what seems to be pretty authentic bunny chow and Vetkoek. Unfortunately, I found out that he and his wife are so aggressively MAGA that I legitimately wonder if he left S.A. because he was sad to see Apartheid go.
Seems far too common. My parents had a difficult time getting into the US so hearing about “all the illegals just strolling into the country” vitriol Fox spews seems to indoctrinate them
I was wondering what South African dish I would see here. Can’t go wrong with a Bunny Chow. But I would also mention Koeksisters, Melktert and our best braai meat, Karoo Lamb Tjops
Just some pasta with tomatoes, cut in small pieces, with a bit of olive oil and some basil. It takes 10 minutes just of waiting for the pasta to be ready. As simple and quick as delicious.
Cold smoked raindeer meat.
Just amazing.
Poutine, but just the classic kind. Cheese curds and brown gravy over fries. Don’t go to a poutinerie for the first time ever and order some stupid shit like buffalo chicken poutine. And don’t order your first poutine from McDonald’s either.
The best is in Quebec. Ottawa is a good second best.
The best poutine I had was at the Montreal airport, no joke. Big ol pile of Smoked Meat on top!
I love poutine. The only reason it hasn’t caught on here south of the border is it’s Frenchy.
The Southwest of Germany has two really regional dishes that are worth a try. The one is Käsespätzle which is a special Swabian type of egg-noodles with cheese. The other is Maultaschen which are Swabian Ravioli.
My favorite thing when I visited SW Germany was Fleishkase (I’ve also heard it referred to as Leberkase), and I’ve been unable to find it anywhere here in the states. I ate it at least once a week, grilled on a crusty bread with mustard from a Barbarossa bakery, and anywhere I traveled that had it on the menu I tried it (shoutout to Trier for having my favorit!)
I’ve been meaning to look into how difficult it is to make. I’ve been dreaming about it for like 2 years now 😭
Edit: Also, yes, kasespaetzle is next level fantastic. That I can kind of get at the Commissary on most military bases though, because us Americans want access to all the neat shit we get used to while serving overseas. However, while it’s yummy, it’s also prepackaged noodles just-add-water type shit at the Commissary, and not half as good as what I had over in Germany. Does scratch the itch when I’m craving it though!
Leberkäse is kinda hard to make yourself and is basically made from what’s left after slaughtering a pig and using all the good stuff for something else. Käsespätzle however is super easy to make from fresh dough yourself. For one pan the Spätzle are just made from 250 grams of very fine flour finely mixed with 5 fresh eggs. You just need to get some water cooking and then can either do a technique called “Spätzle schaben” where you just need a small kitchen board and a knife to get them into the water or use a Spätzlepress which is a specialised tool just to make them (safes you a lot of work).
The recipe my dad uses (was the owner/chef of a local kitchen):
500g Flour type 405
500g Flour for Spätzle (can supposedly substituted for 80:20 wheat and semolina flour according to a random search)
500g eggs (about 10x middle eggs)
30g Salt
400g Carbonated water (airy texture for dough. If not available just use regular water)Give that a good beating a good beating (mixing) and press it through a noodle press right into hot water and cook until done.
The slower the thicker they will becomeDidn’t try it yet but I believe it should be about accurate.
Also I dunno about the amount it will result all done. Probably needs to be downscaled significantly since this is aimed for restaurant type of mass ;)Thank you for taking the time to write this out for me! We’ll put your Kasespaetzle instructions to good use in our home! You’re awesome!
Here is a video of the technique i mentioned using a wooden board. And a link to the firm that bilds the specialised press that makes this a lot easier.
I was never a big Leberkäse fan, but I go to Trier on a regular basis now. Do you maybe remember where you got your favorite Leberkäse from, because I always found the food in Trier to be either mid at best or hella expensive.
Can confirm both of those are fantastic!