Why are Americans so difficult to please?

Cooking simply with high quality, local ingredients is a concept that was pioneered by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. Chez Panisse is definitely an American restaurant as are The French Laundry, Per Se, Galatoire’s, Alinea, The Spotted Pig, Girl and the Goat and countless others. Chefs from other countries enjoy cooking here because they are not bound to tradition as we encourage innovation.

We have many regional cuisines: Cajun, Creole, New England, Southern to name a few.

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Hawaiian and regional pacific fusion as well!

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Thanks Ellen, the Wikipedia link seems to prove the point I was making. Let’s take Chicago cuisine as an example; Wikipedia says:

The city is known for various popular culinary dishes, including deep-dish pizza, the Chicago-style hot dog and the Italian beef sandwich.

Deep dish pizza bears no resemblance to Italian pizza. I don’t know what other country makes hot dogs (especially hot dogs with neon green relish). The Italian beef sandwich originated in Chicago.

If you are saying that a cuisine can’t have roots in any other country to be called a regional cuisine you are pretty much limiting yourself to China and France.

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Remember the story about the America kid who went to Italy and said ‘hey mom, they have pizza here!’? :slight_smile:

Hot dogs are often known as ‘franks’ in the USA because they originated in the German town of Frankfurt. And the ‘classic’ American hamburger is named after the German city of Hamburg, where it originated.

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New England cuisine, which is very healthy, is a simple re-creation of a simple version of English food. After all, there is where the stock came from. The fact that many parts of this country made special occasion foods, everyday foods is a PhD thesis ready to be written. New England, going back to what I know, has until very recently been a very austere place, based in the very rigid Puritan ideals which considered glutany to be one of the big sins.

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Food history nerd moment: tomatoes (and potatoes and all beans except fava/broad beans) come from “the New World”.

So “pizza” is American. As is pasghetti- with marinara sauce.

… now, in the middle ages the Italians had something that sort of resembled pizza… if I remember correctly, it was a flat bread base (but not what we would recognize as foccacia) with cheese and cinnamon on top.

Vanilla and chocolate, also new world.

… food history nerd running back under my rock.

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To Brits tea is more important than the Stars and Stripes is to USA citizens. I always travel with my own tea bags, even in Canada as many Canadians are not of Brit origin and thus don’t know how important the right tea is.

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The “Brits” who have stayed with us often sigh… finally an American who knows how to make a proper cup of tea. My grandmother and my Aunt Ruth served tea at 4PM every day. I was trained by Aunt Ruth, beginning at the age of 5, to prepare the afternoon tea. If I arrived early to help, I got to enjoy the first few cookies from the oven. I do not own the fancy tea sets that they did. I don’t have a companion kettle of hot water to customize the tea strength, My service is not silver. [They were all stolen.] But I know how it is done, and love the ritual. One of the things that my family retains from its English roots. The next generation knows nothing about tea, cookies, or crustless sandwiches.

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As I said, almost all cuisines are derived from other cuisines. Except for native Americans, all Americans are or are ancestors of immigrants. It is common the world over for immigrants to use the cooking techniques with which they are familiar and apply them to the ingredients that are available in their new home which creates a new cuisine.

You seem determined to insult American cuisine. How would you feel if I were as insulting of English cuisine? As you can see, English cuisine has also been influenced by foreign ingredients and cooking techniques.

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I have a funny story about that. We had a guest (one of our very favorites) who is a German Ph.d. candidate. She was studying at Cambridge and doing a project at UCLA. One evening she came home and excitedly told us that she’d tried Japanese food, poke. I had a good laugh, then informed her that she’d tried Hawaiian food. We have a friend who is a Japanese chef who had a good laugh about that story.

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Are you sure about the vanilla and chocolate? Those are both grown in tropical locations.

I’m hearing from my friends on the mainland that poke is gaining popularity there. It’s probably using frozen imported ahi, whereas in Hawaii, its all fresh caught!!

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I never put any of my clothing in the dryer. Sheets and towels, yes. But I hang all my clothes to dry.

Poke places are everywhere!!! No where near as good as the real thing

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Im afraid Lipton tea is unpleasant, because it’s so weak. The reason Brits are fussy about tea is because we drink it with milk. This requires a very robust flavour in your tea; overwhelmingly we prefer strong malty flavours. This type of tea, drunk without milk is very strong and bitter. Some like that but it’s rare for people to drink tea black.

Pretty much anywhere else in the world tea is more likely to be drunk black, usually with sugar and lemon. The blend is therefore altered to compliment this.

You can imagine however how using a teabag with a lighter flavour would be pretty insipid when you tried to add milk. This is why a tea aficionado will carry their own.

Separate from this is not understanding tea must be made with boiling water and brewed for 5 minutes to develop the flavour. Combine a weak blend with hot (not boiling) water, then add cold milk and be prepared for a truly lukewarm, unpleasant mouthful.

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Yes, poke has become the new bagels/frozen yogurt. New poke restaurants are popping up like mushrooms after the rain.

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We see that with a lot of cultures, not only Americans.

In our region (West Austria), they dislike Germans and people from Vienna for the same reasons.

I know in Ost-Tirol they do not like the people from Rome. They call them “Sentis” because of their rude way of making request.

Most Americans I get are the backpackers and the outdoor types, they are very friendly and flexible.
The “difficult” type of Americans stick to the places they know, mostly the big cities.

That’s because Lipton Yellow Label has approximately the same taste and colour as used dishwater… :grinning:
If it’s not blended in Yorkshire and you can’t stand a spoon up in it, it’s not tea!

(Or to be more polite, what Zandra said…)

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https://seattle.eater.com/maps/best-seattle-poke-restaurants-raw-fish We’ve definitely gone Poke crazy here!!!

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