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> French food is great ... except in France it's very different (and outside of the center of Paris sucks pretty bad)

Can't tell if you're trolling, have never been to France, or just went to all the wrong places. The center of Paris would be the worst place to eat any great French food, unless you only care for pretentious, overpriced restaurants which get featured in tourist magazines. Go spend some time in small restaurants in Bretagne, Lyon, Alsace, Marseille, ...

> Cheap Chinese food in Paris ... you'll be sick for days.

Paris' immigrant Chinese population has been growing pretty wildly recently, and I've been to many Chinese restaurants with Chinese friends who are studying in France who find them pretty legit. Again, sounds like you need a better guide for when you're spending time in France :)

> Turkish fast food, specifically Kebab, is as far as I know a German invention taken up by Turks, rather than something that historically existed in Turkey.

Wikipedia disagrees with you:

"With time, the meat took a different marinade, got leaner, and eventually took its modern shape. It was not until a century later, that döner kebab was introduced and popularized in Istanbul, most famously by Beyti Güler. His restaurant, first opened in 1945, was soon discovered by journalists and began serving döner and other kebab dishes to kings, prime ministers, film stars and celebrities. [...]

In Germany the döner kebab was popularized by Turkish guest workers in the early 1970s with a center in Berlin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab#History

I think they meant the part about the invention of the Döner Kebap in it's currently popular form: "The dish developed there [in Berlin] from its original form into a distinctive style [...] that would soon become one of the top-selling fast food and street food dishes in Germany and much of Europe, and popular around the world.[14]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab#History

My favorite example of this is Japanese sushi. In Japan, where totally fresh fish is abundant and easy to purchase, the focus is entirely on the fish and rice. Most every dish is just raw fish and rice.

There are simple rolls which wrap, fish and rice in seaweed. Sometimes wa few, sparse other ingredients like shallots or cucumbers make there way into the roll.

Then, Sushi gets taken to America, and what I can only assume was a creative solution to the problem of limited access to fresh fish, sushi was transformed into the decadent "maki" rolls that dominate sushi menus in the US. Cheese, fruits, vegetables, fish, meats. US maki rolls that have nearly a dozen ingredients are not uncommon.

Both styles of sushi are amazing, though very different. More like cousins than the same type of cuisine.

Reminds me of how cocktails were invented during prohibition to mask the bad taste of moonshine. Japanese shushi is to American maki what wine is to martinis.

I think when cuisines get transported to foreign counties, they get changed to adapt to their new environment.

Cocktails weren't invented during prohibition. http://www.snopes.com/cocktails-came-out-of-prohibition/

Actually rice is the main focus in Japanese Sushi - it needs to be treated perfectly - soft and grained, yet sticky enough to just hold together, with salt and vinegar added to a point, pressed and eaten very quickly. Fish is just there to round off the rice. That's why Sushi chefs train for years just preparing the rice - cutting fish is the last step to learn.

I'm sure rife is important, but you're way over correcting. Fish is just there to round off the rice? Please.

I stand by my comment. Any trained Sushi chef knows how to cut the fish properly, all they need is access to a good wholesale fish market like Tsukiji or one of its resellers to offer you some very nice fish - but the way they treat the rice is where you see the biggest difference between a trained sushi chef and a master. No matter where you go in Japan it's still way beyond what you'd get in expensive places abroad with a high likelihood though.

How long can it take to learn how to cook rice? Couple of hours?

How long can it take to learn how to make a list of things for a computer to do? Couple of days?

Here's a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamae

>It is a common Japanese legend that the truly great itamae-san ("san" is an honorific suffix) should be able to create nigirizushi in which all of the rice grains face the same direction.

While that's definitely an exaggeration, it gives you an idea of the importance of rice in Japanese sushi. Basically, it's taking something that's naturally chaotic (like cooked rice grains that just stick together in whatever fashion), and bring their entropy down to become something ordered by using the most efficient motions possible. For that purpose they use hand fans and wood to control the moisture as well as very finely trained hand motions to control the shape of the nigiri as well as the alignments of the grains.

All of that, just so the guest can pick it up with his/her chopsticks, and have it effortlessly fall apart in the mouth, in an explosion of flavour, like a two stage guided cluster bomb targeting your taste buds ;-).

So, yes, you could probably just use an automatic cooker for the cooking process (although the masters sneeze at that of course, but it sure is standard in Japan nowadays up to a certain price level) - but cooking is the easy part, the fun starts after that.

> Any trained Sushi chef knows how to cut the fish properly, all they need is access to a good wholesale fish market like Tsukiji

This isn't a convincing argument at all, I could just as easily say "any trained sushi chef knows how to cook rice properly, all they need is Amazon and access to a good rice cooker like Zojirushi".

For what it's worth, I don't believe the idea that rice is the main focus -- it just sounds like the sushi chefs are fucking with people when they say something like that.

There's an easy Test you can do: Go to Japan and do a few taste tests. Try 7-11 sushi, kaiten-sushi (big chains that serve on turnstiles), a small neighborhood sushi restaurant that serves lunch for 1000 yen and a master's sushi restaurant (usually 10000 yen up to 25000 yen, but you may be able to get a better deal through a Japanese contact). Then report back on what you find. All I can tell you is from my experience, and that is, for most fish the difference starts diminishing at the 1000 yen mark, but the texture of the rice and the care going into the condiments is what you pay for when going to a master. I'm not trying to have a debate, just sharing my experience from living in Japan for years.

I guess that makes sense. The value-add of a sushi chef to good fish is almost nothing, they just have to cut it and make sure to serve it fresh. The variability the chef introduces to rice is a lot bigger (i.e. rice can be really shit if you cook it wrong), so in order for sushi to rise from its piece-of-fish-on-rice street food beginnings to cult cuisine status of today, they had to pick some part to idolize and ritualize (in typical Japanese style), and rice was it.

You could at it this way, yes - Sushi is a bit like Pizza in that

a) it was born a few hundred years ago (Edo period) as a take-away food / fast food

b) some forms of it have become a high craft or even art that you can spend a lot of money on (compare to high status Pizzerias in Napoli)

Now whether that's legitimate or not is of course up for discussion - in my opinion it's a legitimate and fulfilling experience that you can have by going to a Sushi master if you can appreciate this kind of craft.

Good comparison. They both are delicious, simple, affordable foods widely enjoyed by the "peasant" class, which nonetheless have a rarified purist/snobbish following as well. I enjoy both, hope I can one day afford to judge for myself whether the high falutin varieties are worth it :)

I've done all this, I felt there was a (marginally decreasing) increase in quality at all levels of that chain you described. Maybe the marginal increase in quality of the fish was less than that of the rice; I don't know. I certainly couldn't tell -- they both seemed to taste better and better to me.

I am pretty sure parent is "right" from my limited understanding. That being having watched some interviews etc with sushi "masters" I have heard some of them say same thing. If I remember where I will respond again and apply link.

Iirc sushi means rice in Japanese

> French food is great ... except in France it's very different (and outside of the center of Paris sucks pretty bad)

Others said it already you but you must be trolling; there is such incredible food to eat outside of Paris that we never get to Paris anymore. If you are not trolling you must've had really bad luck as in many places in France but outside Paris you'll trip over lovely food.

For the cuisine I cannot say (but I know it's a popular opinion to love it) I find Hong Kong very impressive; I went to all Michelin stars there (they change rapidly over the years and lose stars as easily as they get them) and it's just ok food. I find far better food in Shanghai and for some dishes (mushroom auntie dumplings) I would even say that I had better luck in Suzhou. Hong Kong seems to have far too many tourists/immigrants to sustain any authentic flavours (anecdote: we had lunch a few days ago and someone from the UK was barking at the waiter that his food was too spicy). There are some good Indian/Nepalese places in HKG but often you have to tell you are used to Indian food, otherwise you get the bland version (and that does not only mean not spicy as in chilis which is a matter of taste, but other spices are left out as well).

Ofcourse everything is a matter of taste when it comes to food, so not arguing, just hoping people will try more stuff open minded.

I think you are generally correct but there are also some exceptions. You can get authentic "international" food if you know where to go.

The most authentic and best tasting Vietnamese restaurant in my area is also incidentally the least successful one because they don't know how to cater effectively American tastes.

There is a menu for the Americans and a secret one for Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese one has the really authentic stuff (coagulated pork blood, pork and chicken with bones, REALLY spicy dishes) etc.

The other two Vietnamese restaurants in town do a lot more business (nice decor, lighting, menu, everything is somewhat Americanized etc.) but they get lazy and put the wrong kind of broths in different soups because only Vietnamese people will notice.

Anyway, the best way I've found to get "authentic" food in the US is to try to find an urban center with a LOT of one kind of ethnic population and then just go wherever they go.

> French food is great ... except in France it's very different (and outside of the center of Paris sucks pretty bad

Hah! Lyon is the stomach of France, and it is very, very outside of Paris. There are many regions with amazing food in France. You're probably trying to make a point, but what you wrote makes no sense.

Sorry, but I would say you are trolling.

As Portuguese living across multiple European countries, including two years in France, my only complaint about french restaurants is the average price they cost, making going out an event instead of "I don't feel like cooking".

The reason for this is people's palate and availability of the raw ingredients and spices. In most cases people replace raw ingredients and spices need to be homemade or replaced. The end result is nothing which is going to be authentic.

Sure there will always be places where someone native wants his home food and does all the hard work to put it together. But those are very few.

> Turkish fast food, specifically Kebab, is as far as I know a German invention taken up by Turks

That is not quite correct. The Kebab ("grilled meat") is genuinely Turkish. To put it into flatbread was the invention of a Turkish immigrant to Germany, in Berlin in the 1970's [1]. From there it rose to prominence as fastfood all over Germany, and subsequently internationally.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/doener-erfinder-...

You are spot on. Chinese food in china is good and different from what you get in Chinese restaurants in US/Europe - you really have to look for restaurants there to get real Chinese food. Also the Turkish food, your writing is spot on. The same can be said for Italian, Austrian, German, French, etc food. An "Oktoberfest" copy-cat in another country is usually a lot different to the original. To really cook local food on another continent you need a cook, receipts, species and ingredients from the original country.