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Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

This food looks delicious and I'd love to try some. It seems that they haven't "Americanized" it as much as many other ethnic restaurants - though I haven't had real Ethopian food so I don't actually know that for sure.

I wish that Americans would stop paying for shitty versions of other cultures foods. I live in a huge city with lots of people of a certain south-east Asian ethnic group. I am also married to a south-east Asian of said ethnic group. We have tried every one of the available restaurants and not a single one of them comes even close to properly approximating the food available in her home country (according to her).

In her opinion, this isn't just because of a lack of available ingredients. It is because Americans don't want authentic food. Fix your shit America because we will forever be (along with the UK) the laughing stock of the culinary world with these practices.

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I have no idea why you're having a go at Americans so much, this literally happens everywhere. British interpretation of Indian dishes has nothing to do with originals. Every country has their localized version of McDonald's even(Poland has a burger with saurkraut and goat cheese). German idea of Italian food is....difficult, but incidentally Germans make the best kebabs. I'd argue that the worst pizza I've ever had was actually in Italy.

There's no such thing as "authentic" food. It doesn't exist and it never did.

With you until the last line. There are definitely corruptions of good dishes that have no merit. What do you call them?

Bad food. Seriously, food isn't good just because it's authentic, just like music isn't automatically good because it's traditional.

Like, some Scottish establishments will deep fry a pizza. Who cares it's not an "authentic" Italian food? It's "authentic" Scottish food at this point. I also don't particularly care about Italians thinking it's an abomination - they are free to think that, but I wouldn't have a go at the Scots for doing it - if they like it, then whatever.

Fried pizza is most certainly an authentic Italian thing -- it's street food in Napoli, and it's absolutely fantastic.

Germans idea of Italian food differs across Germany, I think. Munich, which is far south (so closer to Italy) and has a lot of Italian people has enormously good Italian food. Coffee is also almost synonymous with Espresso/Cappuccino/Latte Macchiato, and "ciao" is one of the most common ways to say "bye" in Munich (and I never knew otherwise).

Haha, I completely agree, but also understand why it happens. There is a documentary called "The Search for General Tso" on Netflix (I believe) that talks about how a staple American dish in Chinese restaurants came to be. In particular, nearly everybody says, "we had to change this and add sugar, as Americans have a sweeter palette than Chinese have".

However, the same thing happens in Asia with other countrys' foods, which can sometimes be good (Shaka Shaka Chicken, Japanese Curry) or perplexing (Cheeseburger Pizza).

Having grown up around a lot of Asian and Asian Americans, I do wish the majority of Americans were more open to different cultural foods. There are so many good dishes from all over the world, that it just seems a shame to miss out on. I can't imagine life without Shengjian bao, xiaolung bao, green onion pancakes, or the host of noodle dishes.

By the way, you didn't mention in particular, but I am guessing the huge South-East Asian ethnic group is Hmong? In which case I'm sure you've tried sweet pork (nqaj qaab zib). If you haven't, or if I'm wrong about which group you're talking about, try it anyway. It's delicious!

I hope it's not Thai. That'd be very ironic.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...

Must not be the Bay Area then? I'm still amazed at how many different cuisines there are here, and how authentic they are. I'm German, and a lot of German food I tasted here was spot on. My wife is Chinese and we've been to plenty of restaurants that were authentic according to her.

On the other hand, we both combined only know a handful of cuisines really well, so I can't tell if we're just lucky to have them match up.

My experience traveling has been that very few countries have as much variation of cuisine as the US, even considering the amount of 'american-ization' of dishes you'll see.

Alpha cities and regional / global capitals certainly do, but your average Midwestern city seems to have much more variation than a random middle-sized European city from what experienced abroad (with the caveat that obviously individual European countries are much more different from each other than US states are).

Which ethnic group/cuisine are you referring to?

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