Don't forget this British confection:
;-D
Posted on 08/19/2004 7:01:22 AM PDT by Pokey78
My American friends in England never stop complaining about the food here. It’s all ‘gloopy’, they say, and they bitch about the warm beer, grey curries and unidentifiable soups. Sometimes their longing for US comfort food — beefburgers, hotdogs, cookies, tacos and dairy queen ice cream — becomes so strong that some of them even resort to a company called the Food Ferry, a British Internet site that delivers Skippy Peanut Butter, beef jerky and Oreo cookies.
My solution is a little different. I tell them that American food is overrated, unhealthy and revolting, and the sooner they wean themselves off it, the better they will feel.
American food seems pretty impressive at first sight, but during a four-year stint in the US I realised that it is basically a con trick: bigger isn’t necessarily better; brighter colours don’t mean more intense flavours; sugar tastes good, but leaves you feeling depressed, sick and still hungry.
British cuisine may be considered bland but at least, by and large, you know what you’re putting in your mouth. One of America’s bestselling snacks is a cheese dip designed to be scooped up with nacho chips. It’s runny, it’s orange, it tastes like cheese, but a label on the jar says that it’s a ‘non-dairy product’. Then there are Twinkies — small yellow sponge cakes found in the lunchboxes of most US children. Twinkies are made of such mysterious stuff that they don’t have a best-before date and are subjected to scientific tests. ‘A Twinkie was left on a window ledge for four days,’ says one Internet report, ‘during which time many flies were observed crawling across the Twinkie’s surface but, contrary to our hypothesis, birds — even pigeons — avoided this potential source of sustenance.’
Even the food that’s made of food is a challenge. A pastrami sandwich comes with a good six inches of meat in the middle — how do you get your mouth around something that’s nearly as big as your head? After a few attempts, any appetite you might once have had is gone. Have you ever tried an American apple? They look perfect — enormous, red and shiny — but have the consistency of cotton wool. It’s the same with the meat: huge, juicy-looking steaks, and chops, perfectly grilled, pink inside, but tasting of wet paper.
The Cheesecake Factory is one of the most popular family food chains in the US — and for me the most grotesque example of American food. A single slice of cheesecake is as big as a brick and would more than suffice for a meal. An entire cheesecake could quite easily put a small child into hyperglycaemic shock. It must put a strain on family life, having to watch your nearest and dearest eating this gunk. The cheesecake is just one of the ‘factory’ specials whose metal menu lists hundreds of other dishes, like the Tons of Fun burger: ‘Yes, It’s True! Double Patties, Double Cheese, Triple Sesame-Seed Bun with Lettuce, Tomato, Red Onion, Pickles and Secret Sauce. Served with Fries’ and the Mile-High Meatloaf Sandwich ‘Topped with Mashed Potatoes, Crispy Onions and Barbeque Au Jus. Served Open-Faced on Extra Thick Egg Bread.’
The labelling of dishes in American restaurants provides an interesting challenge to both menu-writer and reader. Ordering from the food encyclopaedias of restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory is rather like resitting one’s SAT tests. There is a full page dedicated to every beast, bread and starch as well as every national cuisine; also ‘fusion’ dishes. Whatever I chose, I was always left worrying whether I’d made the wrong decision. And despite the bewildering variety of foodstuffs on offer, any attempt to veer from the menu is greeted with blank incomprehension:
‘Just the turkey, please.’
‘The dish comes that way.’
‘But I only want the turkey, thanks.’
‘I’m sorry, miss, that’s not possible.’
‘But I know you’ve got grilled turkey — it says so right here.’
‘That’s our Grilled Turkey Sandwich, miss. Our Grilled Turkey’s on our dinner menu.’
‘But surely you can just remove the bread?’
‘No — I’m sorry. Like I told you before, the Grilled Turkey Sandwich comes with the bread.’
‘You make it sound like it’s born with the bread.’
So you decide to eat in, but this involves a trip to the supermarket and hours spent trying to spot the microscopic differences between thousands of identical brands. Whereas in England we would have an aisle of grains and jams and cereals, Americans will dedicate an area the size of a tennis court just to varieties of bread: loafs of every shape and shade, bagels and buns, waffle mix. Often, in desperation, I’d just go for the most adventurous option. ‘Coconut-sprinkled sweet potatoes’ made one appearance in my flat, but only one.
Half the problem, I think, is that food isn’t just food in the States — it’s an obsession. Not only does Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake exist, it can be gawped at online. The Krispy Kreme website features a five-minute video with a jaunty electronic soundtrack showing rows of little doughnuts browning slowly on a conveyor belt, before being lovingly glazed, bought and eaten. Food even provides whole states with a sense of history and identity — Midwestern towns fight over titles like ‘home of the peanut’, ‘birthplace of the corndog’, ‘Krispy Kreme Kountry’.
And with the excesses of American food comes a national fixation on dieting: as Eric Schlosser reports, McDonald’s has attempted to cash in on this with a McLean burger for dieters. We may not go to the gym so often in Britain, but our food doesn’t demand that we do. I flew back from America looking forward to shepherd’s pie and pints of beer only to be confronted by an upsurge in American fast food in London — not enough to keep my US friends happy, but still worrying. Perhaps we and the Americans should pay more attention to global gastronomy. We could form a food think tank to wean the US off sugar and on to snails, squid and sushi. It would make us all healthier — and happier.
As a tourista, I would gravitate to places like Simpson's or Rule's that I have actually heard of. While the nice little place around the corner that the locals frequent goes unnoticed because it isn't in the guidebooks.
Similarly, some poor sap who comes to Atlanta GA and eats at the overpriced tourist traps downtown that catch the unwary . . . will never know about either the down-home barbeque joints like Harold's or the tiny little 10-table restaurants with exquisite French cuisine like Violette's.
Don't forget this British confection:
;-D
You're absolutely RIGHT! I usually prefer fried or roasted sweet 'taters to white ones, though!
I regularly change things out on the menu such as fries for mashed potatoes or brocolli for spinach and its a not big thing. When you do that for customers they come back again.
That's precisely it, I don't know about Atlanta, so I'd make the same mistakes you might make in London. I find when I'm in a foreign city, I have to ask the concierge at the hotel, "Look, where do YOU eat?" ;)
Regards, Ivan
Any generalization about "American food" is probably outdated. In this country, you can now get just about every kind of food imaginable.
My wife and I were in Scotland the summer before last and we loved the breakfasts, including the haggis. Also, we had steak and mushroom pie and a ploughman's lunch at a pub down in Greenwich that were to die for and weren't hungry for dinner until 9 PM. Now, just got back from a week in Boothbay Harbor ME where the blueberry pancakes, lobster rolls, fried clams, and the crab cakes were out of this world..so, if one knows where to look, both the UK and USA have some terrific indigenous food. Lazy people will continue to eat crap wherever they happen to be.
Fishing. We have a 2 acre farm pond which we stock with catfish, bass and bream. You just put a little red wiggly worm on a fish hook, cast, and wait....
Interesting that that picture of Heinz (US company) version of the great British Classic, "Spotted Dick".
Imitation they say is the sincerest form of flattery ;o)
I agree with you... in many US restaurants today, the food portions are downright obscene!
Do they use the very same tomatoes and cheese? Those ingredients are key. If it's the water, perhaps they should try bottled water! I tried an Uno's pizza in Boston and it was a HUGE disappointment. Not even close to Chicago style. Not even close.
Then there is the opposite reaction when Americans eat in a European restaurant. An acquaintance of my husband's was having a birthday and wanted to eat at a European restaurant (obviously because he wasn't paying). My husband said the food was overpriced and the portions really small (this from a man who doesn't really eat much to begin with). My husband came home later and filled up on my homemade bread.
What actually is "American food" anyway?
Most "traditional" American dishes have their origins in Europe, South America or elsewhere don't they?
This poor person has not be introduced to Bar-B-Que yet! Someone get him to Maurice's or some other famous BBQ joint!
Lite beer is the devil's work, surely. That being said, I'm one of the few real beerheads that truly appreciates an American Lager. Budweiser is truly a 5 star beer. When you judge a beer, you judge it against others of its type, in this case other American Lagers, and Bud by far the best of breed. Those that don't like it, don't like the genre. If you don't like the genre, you have no business judging the beer.
I spent a few months in rural England. The "local" places to eat were of course the pubs. I found only a couple local places that had freshly prepared food. Most pubs in the area I was in had frozen dishes they fixed up (much like the US). After awhile it got a little old.. laugh.. same stuff different decor.
Now there was one place that had WONDERFUL food. Everytime I went I got the Pork Tenderloin Medallions... the cook would fix a different sauce with them every night. Fruit sauces, gravies.. they were delicious.
I tried the beef - I think the difference is in how they are fed. I didn't care for it so I stuck with chicken or pork.
I ate it in the 70's and found everything to be overcooked, just like mom used to make it. I did seek out Chinese/Indonesian food for balance.
Ella can go &^%# herself with a frozen corndog.
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