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Comment by mamon | Hacker News Reader

After I moved to California (quite recently) I was shocked by the quality of food here, compared to Europe. In fact I think most of so called "American cuisine" are actually workarounds for that poor quality.

They use enormous amounts of ketchup, because it very efficiently kills the taste of everything underneath.

They use toasters, because American bread tastes like it was made of sawdust mixed with gum, and toasting it makes it taste slightly better.

They grill a lot of things for the same reason.

They eat a lot of eggs, because it is almost impossible to cook them wrong :)

And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all.

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I don’t know which part of California you’re in, but this certainly isn’t true of the cuisine in San Francisco. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant that used ketchup on anything but fries or burgers.

I’ve had plenty of bad food in France and Italy by the way, you can get bad stuff anywhere.

Judging a nations cuisine by personal anecdotes is not very rational.

And Walmart is not really a grocery produce store. If you want fresh vegetables, go to your local grocer, farmers market, or atleast a Whole Foods. I mean if you’re going to Walmart to buy vegetables, perhaps your buying “American cuisine” at the wrong places too. Anyplace slathering ketchup on stuff is fast food or fast casual, or a really shitty restaurant.

Actually I'd say it is very much true of most San Francisco cuisine and produce which is ridiculously overrated. You can go to an average restaurant in Paris run by some working class schmuck and get Chez Panisse tier food for half the price or less.

I'm not sure how you're supposed to judge a nation's cuisine by anything but personal anecdotes, unless you have some metric for noticing American tomatoes taste like paste, and Italian ones don't.

You could start by having double blind taste tests. People love to wax on about their taste abilities and end up failing in real experiments. French wines always beat California wines Until they did the Judgement of Paris blind test and were shocked to find California wines topped all categories.

This whole discussion reminds me of the Conan O’Brien running skit where his “Producer”, an over the top Europhile, is constantly commenting on how everything is better.

https://youtu.be/vuDMiFwWTM4

There have been some outstanding wines produced in California. I know they exist but I haven't tasted them since they are way outside of my price range.

But for $15 / €12, you can buy excellent wines in France. In the US at that price range, it is extremely rare to find good wines. Just like strawberries, it's about the appearance (the bottle, the label, the name) and not the flavor.

I'm sure the California vintners association was able to gin up some propaganda stunt where they came out on top on a stacked deck. I think their hooch mostly tastes like berries cut with paint thinner, and for equivalent price I was always able to get a much better wine from just about anywhere else even when I was shopping in California. Could be the vintners are all barbarians, or just their property taxes make decent wine at a decent price to be non-possible.

Literally the only people I have ever met who think SF or California in general have food worth barking about are people who live there and don't get out much. For America even a small place like Portland Maine is vastly more interesting, better quality ingredients and better in general.

The contest was run several times and originated by the British and used French judges. There was no way to “stack the deck” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)

Maine more interesting? Maine is mostly white. California is far far more racially diverse and the cuisine is a result of a large number of immigrants and cultures mixing. I doubt you’ll get any comparable Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, or oodles of other ethnic cuisines there, nor the countless fusions that have been produced. From a variety standpoint there’s no way Maine compares.

SF has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the US.

Your comments basically sound like snobbery to me, and unjustified by anything other than personal opinion and anecdote.

>Maine more interesting? Maine is mostly white. California is far far more racially diverse and the cuisine

Lol, yes, because white people don't know how to cook anything. Great argument. I guess you've never been to Maine.

>SF has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the US.

Obviously having the most of something means they're the best!

I agree: I am a snob -I think SF is bloody awful and people who say "the food" is something to crow about rarely notice the rivers of human sewage flowing by their restaurants, or the fact that the tomatoes taste like paste.

"rivers of human sewage"? Sounds like you have issues beyond being a snob.

I guess my issues involve having working nose and eyes for detecting the human shit on the sidewalk?

On the other hand, in France you can buy fresh produce in all Walmart-type stores.

Hypermarkets in France are typically half to one fifth the size of Walmart Supercenters, not exactly the same.

A typical Albertsons, Safeway, or Ralph’s is more the size of France’s big box stores, and those do have fresh produce.

Not sure. The hypermarket I grew up going to had 80 (eighty) checkout lanes and sold everything you'd find at a Walmart Supercenter, but with way more selection.

As for the food sections in a typical grocery store in the US (Kroger, Publix, Albertsons, Safeway), it is laughably tiny and the quality is depressing.

I looked up the average square meters and Walmart’s supercenters tend to be 1.6x to 2x.

For example, Carrefour vs Walmart

Carrefour has got a lot of different sized shops, with the smallest in city center with size of less than 50 sq meters. Of course if you've taken the average size of only the big ones, then the difference is quite big.

Be fair - it cost 10X at the farmers' market. My local Wal-Mart has excellent vegetables. Maybe not the variety.

My take on Bay Area food culture is that people are too caught up in the rat race to perceive the difference between good food and expensive food.

This results in inflated prices and inconsistent quality, with an emphasis on over-salting, sugaring, buttering things (as the lowest-common-denominator market demands).

FWIW Walmart is the largest seller of organic food in the USA.

I understand why you are being downvoted because to label a whole countries cuisine as being bad is a massive generalisation.

But I've got to agree that my experience in New York was pretty similar. Even in a fine dinning steak house, the steak was hidden by a 'salt crust' which made it practically impossible for me to enjoy it. In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans. Everything was just over done in one way or another.

> In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans.

On the other hand, most -if not all- of tomato sauces in the UK are so acidic that Spaniards living in the UK are importing tomato sauce from Spain (as it has a bit of added sugar). It might be similar with actual Italians, so maybe this example is just that you're used to your way of having tomato sauce :)

True. I understand that drinks manufactures adapt their products to suit different markets. The Fanta "Orange" I've seen in Europe seems paler and possibly less sweet compared to the ones in Africa. I wouldn't be surprised if Coke tasted slightly different depending on which part of the world you happen to be.

I can vouch for that. My father used to bring a pack of Cokes back from Florida whenever we went growing up. Good old High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Everything in America appeared to be shifted towards an extreme though. Fattier, bigger, saltier or sweeter than you'd find in much of Europe.

UK Fanta contains orange juice and sweetener because of the sugar tax. Had international Fanta (possibly American or Arabic) on a Qatar Airways flight and it was bright orange with no real fruit, and most importantly, sweet and I felt satisfied after half a cup.

Coke does taste differently - the ingredients are different even across Europe. I always look forward to visiting Germany because I always bring a 4-pack back.

> Coke does taste differently

It's usually cut down with things like chalk and aspirin when sold to final customers across Europe.

Oh, you meant the other Coke. Nevermind :D

> Even in a fine dinning steak house, the steak was hidden by a 'salt crust' which made it practically impossible for me to enjoy it.

I don't know what restaurant you were at, but this sounds quite unusual for "fine dining steak house"s in New York.

It was the Strip House. I'm not trying to single out specific places though, more of a general feeling when in the US (and Canada incidentally).

Every Walmart I've been to has fresh produce. But to your point, if you want a large variety of fresh produce for cheap you go to an ethnic food store. Around Atlanta that would be the Asian and Mexican grocery stores, which are as large as Walmart, stocked majority of produce. It's bustling with customers, carts full of produce.

The produce section at Walmart is actually larger than my local so called grocery stores (Kroger, Publix...)... Where carts are full of cereal and other non perishable food.

On the topic of strawberries, they would be half the price at the ethnic super markets.

I somewhat disagree with the statement grilling takes the taste and hides the freshness. I would say that to frying. If you go to your local "seafood" restaurant most of the menu is fried this, fried that.

> And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by

Nearly everything you said is incorrect, this one in particular. Vegetables are not expensive in the US compared to other nations of similar incomes.

The US is a leading producer of vegetables such as cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes (/tuber), onions, turnips, soybeans, carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes (/fruit). Globally the US is third in vegetable production, behind China and India. For one example, the US produces about 15% of all lettuce globally (with 4% of the world population). Vegetables are more than plentiful in the US, we unfortunately waste enormous amounts of vegetables.

The US consumes more vegetables per capita than these European nations:

Germany, UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, Austria, Ireland, Iceland, Hungary, Czech, Bulgaria

US vegetable consumption is almost identical to the average of the EU. It's also essentially identical to the consumption in Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe.

Source: FAOStat

> Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe.

This is indeed interesting, but I guess vegs are mostly grown on poorer countries (except Netherlands I suppose), so it's cheap and easy to buy local vegs. Also, mediterranean/southern european countries (Italy, Spain, Greece - poorer than their northern neighbours) have different diets than northern countries. Less meat and more tomato/olives/uncooked stuff as the climate doesn't require to ingest as many calories as in the north.

I used to live in an area where was-marts were built out very densely, probably a dozen super-centers within easy driving distance. When the stores first open they tend to have really great produce, then after six weeks or so everything falls off, and your left with overripe/wilting produce, and the fruit flys are like a plague. After seeing this pattern a number of times I decided that the good produce goes to store openings, then once people develop a habit of going to the store they start sending the good produce to the next store opening.

Agreed its usually quantity over quality. California is perhaps freshest and tasiest in the nation, with the healthier lifestyles, local farms and Mexican influence. You should try the midwest.

> And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all.

Are you kidding me? Find a farmer's market.

In the EU, you don't have to find a farmer's market to get fresh produce.

To be fair, you can find poor examples of food in Europe too (and very poor hygiene).

Going to call shenanigans on your claims. Vegetables and fruits in California are quite cheap, especially the organic and heritage types because they're grown locally here.

And having eaten European food, I would say the quality of most of it is trash. The French drown their dishes in butter because that's the only thing that makes their food palatable. British, Irish, and Scottish food simply isn't unless you're drunk, which explains their proclivity for drinking at every meal. And Italian food? It's best ingredient comes from America...

You apparently didn't eat much proper food in France or Italy beyond some take-away junkfood or maybe some obscure highly local cuisine without any clue what you're ordering, otherwise I can't explain such a disconnect from reality. UK food generally is not considered haute-cuisine by anybody so that's a weird comparison.

But then your post is full or weird stuff - organic local food being "especially cheap" doesn't make much sense, when everywhere this is the most expensive category due to extra costs on whole process of growing/treatment/transport

Before I went in-house, I counted a number of Michelin-starred chefs as clients and I ate at most of their restaurants. I know what good food can taste like. While in France, I ate at a variety of highly-regarded local sit-down restaurants, expecting truly amazing food. I was not impressed, nor was anyone else in my group.

The ingredients were about on par with organic vegetables available at my local grocery store. (I live in a nice part of California, so we have better access to fresh organic heritage vegetables than almost anywhere else in the world--including Europe.)

While the food certainly looked much fancier than what I normally in in America, and the cooking was far better executed than most American restaurants, on a flavor basis it was merely average. Quite simply, I've had more flavorful food at a taco stand.

Well you basically answer yourself in your last sentence - neither French nor Italian cuisine is aiming for similar taste experience as some taco stand. Since you are so mightily experienced, you for sure know that french cuisine is generally regarded as best in the world due to many reasons. That's a general comparison obviously, so picking some specific places here & there the comparison can end up differently.

You can also try to compare it to indian cuisine for example, which is fabulous for many people (including me) and reasons, but an attempt to compare those is an indication that you don't really have a clue about whole haute-cuisine experience. And lets not forget you considered some of British cuisine as something to compared to, which is... a bit clueless, isn't it.

But its good that you enjoy tacos, that's clearly more your type of experience.

Ingredients! Potatoes, tomatoes, corn. Chocolate AND vanilla. Tobacco. Chili peppers. And on and on...

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