I have been to most parts of Italy and I have to say that I agree with you. It also annoys me how precious and dogmatic Italians get about food.
Italian food is all about ingredients and simply showcasing those ingredients. That’s why you don’t get pizza there with more than 1 topping usually as it’s all about the quality of that one topping. I think that’s why italian food travelled so badly to the US as the ingredients aren’t half as good and it just became a sub standard b a stardised version.
Even at it’s best though I always find italian food so uninspiring compared to other cuisines where it’s all about the balance of flavours like Thai, Japanese etc. Spanish is probably my favourite European food
Part of the reason I think Italian is a common answer is that it’s the most common ethnic food in America, so it isn’t very special.
I struggle with French. It’s probably because I’m from New Orleans, but French food tastes rich and bland to me. I’m not used to rich food that also isn’t spicy
Obsession with burgers of the last several years (Shake Shack, in-n-out, Five Guys, etc.) seems pretty dumb. Same with steak places. Truly great ethnic food you are usually paying for the labor as well as the ingredients. With the burger places you are paying up for a product worse than you could make yourself. With the steak places, you are paying three times the cost of the steak to have someone else cover it in butter and cook it for you. And, sometimes they still cook it incorrectly. I’ll make my burgers and steaks at home.
Not a fan of most americanized italian foods but I’d say mexican is the most overrated - i see overpriced tacos everywhere.
I do feel compelled to defend my people’s food and having been all throughout italy I can say its def not overrated. The best steak you can find is in florence, tuscany has incredible food, but the fish stews my mother makes is second to none. Try the Cioppino next time you are in a restaurant.
Quality of ingredients also counts for quality of food. If I grow the world’s best tomato that does not need to be processed because it is so good, then why cook it a lot?
I’ve always thought Greek food was a bit overrated, but that’s probably because I grew up eating it. There is one dish that is called “souvlaki.” People act as if it’s God’s gift to the world, but all it really is is shish kebab. Every country in the world has shish kebab.
Agreed on Mexican (Americanized Mexican). Real Mexican is much better than most Mexican restaurants in America. Tacos are overpriced as hell. I’m fortunate that there is a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that sells 99 cent tacos in my city, which also happen to be the best tacos I’ve ever had too.
Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it’s all organized by the Italians.
It’s a bit of an outdated stereotype about British food. Fair enough, a lot of the old traditional food isn’t great but things have progressed beyond that.
regardless, I challenge any of you bawbags to eat a full traditional Scottish breakfast and not enjoy it
Cajun/Creole cuisine is superior to Italian. Wish there was some good cajun food where I’m at… want some gumbo, a shrimp and oyster po-boy, and some boudin
Same for Mexican, Tex-Mex too
Spanish as well (expensive but I can see the value)
I agree on Chinese food as quite a large percentage of the proper authentic stuff is totally unpalatable for westerners so most of what we get in the west is adapted to our palates. The chinese really would eat anything and the quality of meat is horrific. They’ve also eaten lots of species to extinction.
It’s quite a well known thing that the food in Bejing isn’t great, it’s something to do with a poor traditional cuisine from that region that’s been taken over by lots of influences from other regions of china and it’s ended up a bit of a mish mash.
The food in Xi’an is incredible though, the muslim influence helped. Szechuan is also great, nothing like the western version. Cantonese yum cha is amazing as long as you skip the chicken feet. I mean, why would you even bother.
Xian does have good food. Unfortunately that’s where I got food poisoning, so I had to cut my culinary adventure short. But I really liked their burger thing