Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I don't think this generalizes, it really depends on where you live in the US. I work in Europe and know many US expats there, so this is something we talk about.

The consensus has been that the quality and diversity of fresh foods in the US these days is frequently superior in many categories at the median, though notably worse in others. The paucity of good produce is noticeable everywhere, for example, a fraction of what is available in (my case) Seattle. Meat quality in the US has always been relatively excellent, though depending on what part of the US you live not always diverse. European butter is superior on average, but cheese shops have a similar range in big cities. Seafood in Europe is excellent along the coast, better than the US outside of a handful of fishery adjacent cities, but often poorer than the US once you move inland. The bread is indistinguishable for the most part.

Processed and cured meat products is still an area where available European products are unambiguously ahead of what is commonly available in the US. The US has improved a lot in this regard but it hasn't caught up yet.

Some of these are arguable of course. The one consistent thing everyone notices is the limited diversity and availability of fresh vegetables in Europe, and beef quality, but that is a pretty natural consequence of geography. All of which should be separated from the cuisine produced with said fresh ingredients.

Strongly strongly disagree.

The average produce, meat, cured meat, and seafood in the western EU is vastly superior to the average available in the USA.

Bread is especially disgusting in the US compared to EU.

That "average available in the USA" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The USA is larger than Europe, but no one would credibly say that these things are all good across Europe. You can find plenty of terrible bread, meat, and seafood in Europe. To call it "vastly superior" is indefensible on its face.

Hence why I referenced the median. It wouldn't make sense to cherry-pick a US city like Seattle, which has amazing ingredient quality and diversity that few cities can compete with, and generalize it to the entire US. I've lived a lot of places and recognize the variance. The ingredient quality isn't even consistent within single European countries, having surprisingly high variance over -- by American standards -- relatively small geographic areas.

If you compare blue collar city against blue collar city, the US is definitely competitive in my experience. I think many people have an outdated view of the food available in flyover country. I split my time between Western Europe and the US, and get around both. I am having a difficult time finding these "vastly superior" ingredients in Europe that you speak of.

I agree that the diversity is higher in the median, but disagree that the quality is higher. I live in the UK, but have spent time in the US, and for day to day shopping in the 3 cities I've spent lots of time in (SF, LA and Raleigh NC) the quality at the highest end is good but everything else is a crapshoot. Even at that most of the actual high end ingredients are European ingredients (cheese and butter, cured meats, olives) and cost 4-5x what they do in Europe. Not only that, I don't actually trust when I'm buying DOP parmesan from a us grocery store, but I know what I'm buying here.

The quality of supermarket meat in your average Tesco, or Asda ranges from acceptable to good. The quality in a Target or Walmart ranges from very very poor to good in my experience. As a textbook example the fabled wooded chicken breast is for the most part not a problem here, but was something I experienced on more than one occasion during my last month long trip to SF.

Bread is way better in Europe than in the US. There's not even an argument to be had here. In most of Europe, you can buy bread on any street corner that is better (not to mention way cheaper) than what you get in expensive specialty bakeries in big American cities. Bread is just not something that most Americans care about, whereas it's an important part of the culture in most of Europe.

The US is geographically larger than Europe but way less diverse in terms of culture. And it matters a lot when talking about things such as food.

The US is immensely different in terms of culture. Europeans have language differences and they've got old historical stuff, but the difference between Masschusetts and Texas is huge. Including food. This is complicated by large liberal cities falling into pockets of similarity.

What I think is worst in the US markets is bread and cheese. They taste terrible, and bread is so bad they need to put something inside to have at least some taste. Fruits are terrible too, but they're not produced here, so that is understandable.

I sadly have a similar experience in Canada. Whilst I have found products here that are good in most categories, and produce is generally fine, I find I have to be more selective with meat, seafood and especially baked goods and cheese.

> The bread is indistinguishable for the most part.

Sorry for the bluntness, but you lost me at this part. I lived in the US for a long time and traveled to Europe often. I could never get bread as good in US, even at the new fancy bakeries that keep popping up. The one-euro baguette (or tradition) from any random boulangerie is way better that any four-dollar baguette I found in the US. Is it the water, the flour, the technique? I think I've seen this question being asked, but not sure there is a good answer.

Anyway, I am now in France and not much has changed. Food (stuff that you find easily in a supermarket or corner shop) is still way better than similar stuff in US. And costwise, compared to the part of the US where we lived (northern NJ) almost everything is cheaper.

You're right, I forgot about the cheese shops, because in France I wouldn't have to go out of my way to find good cheese.

But, "Bread is indistinguishable"? WAT? Really? I guess we have different tastes. Other than some sourdough there is no bread I've had that I like in SF. That definitely varies by country in Europe. Hard to find good bread in Germany and some of those northern countries have their interesting breads that are an acquired taste I have yet to acquire.

My impression of fish in SF, LA, Seattle, NYC, Baltimore, is it's not close to France and Japan. The selection is small, the quality mediocre. Maybe like cheese there's some speciality shops I'm forgetting.

> Hard to find good bread in Germany

This sounds like a wild claim to me - the Germans must be the most passionate people about bread that I've ever met. Every time I talk to Germans who've lived abroad, they bring up the poor quality of bread that they experienced. Sometimes just a visit will do - Germans who've visited the US usually have a horror story or two about the sweet brioche-like loaves. Our neighbours visited recently and it must have been the second or third thing they mentioned about their visit...

>> Hard to find good bread in Germany

Well, that can o ly be because our bakers are opening shop in the UK and tge US then. Arguably bread quality decreased considerably in Germany so. Mostly due to the fact that big chains dominate the bakery market. Same goes for local butcher shops. German bread still beats, say, Italian bread on average. And don't get me started on what passes as bread in the UK or Scandinavia, even if those countries improved a lot.

> Hard to find good bread in Germany

Must be a different Germany in a different Universe..

Back in Germany anybody who (realy) cares about bread wouldn't even think about buying those mass-baked chemicals from the stores. For bread you go to a craft bakery which you can find everywhere - if you don't just look for around the neighborhood of the big Supermarkets.

And in those magical craft bakeries you'll find it hard not to buy anything at once, but at least a good dark, handmade in the night before, bread.

I've been around quite a bit, it's hard to find something comparable to a German or Central European dark bread enywhere else.

I feel there are two schools of bread in (Western) Europe: the French and German one. The French love bread with a thick, crunchy crust, whereas the classic German dark bread rarely have such a crust.

???

Of course German bread has a thick crispy crust. If anything it's the Anglo box shaped bread which is soft and doesn't have a proper crust.

> Hard to find good bread in Germany and some of those northern countries have their interesting breads that are an acquired taste I have yet to acquire.

As others have said that's the most hilarious claim I've read in a long time. Unless you like "toast bread", i.e. white, sliced bread in plastic bags that typically taste like card board, Germany is probably the place with the widest variety of bread types and with the people who feel the most strongly about bread. Also if you search for high quality bread in any other country, you almost always find that the bakery is run by some German immigrant (my experience in NZ, OZ, Sweden).

The fish in Japan is excellent but much of it isn't native. It comes from somewhere else, frequently the Gulf of Alaska, the product of which is available fresh in Seattle without sitting on a boat for a trans-Pacific journey. Asia pays top dollar for it though, so they get a lot of it. But here? It is where they got it from, it is big business. The quality of sushi in Seattle is somewhat famous, not only the myriad local sources but its direct access to the entire Pacific Rim.

I wouldn't have to go out of my way to find good cheese in many parts of the US. It isn't the 1980s, the median availability is similar to the median availability in most of Europe, here in 2022. You seem to be fencing with stereotypes instead of reality. I don't have a dog in this fight but (1) I spend a lot of time, and have spent a lot of time, all over the world and (2) I eat absolutely everything everywhere and in particular investigate their food markets. I'm not guessing about what is and isn't available to the average person in various places, I actually shop in those markets.

Every place has their local specialties, and some places in Europe really do go above and beyond, like northern Spain. But the quality and availability has radically converged in my lifetime for everyone. Americans are not benighted or some such, their markets are quite good this days. The fact that ordinary suburban US supermarkets routinely carry hundreds of cheeses from all over the world is quite a change from decades ago. The actual cheese shops just specialize in obscure cheeses that minimally intersect with the ones the supermarkets carry.

All that aside, Americans have amazing produce. That and beef are two things they do exceptionally well by any standard. I've never been able to get anything comparable in Europe.

There is no such thing as "Europe" on this topic. Just the UK and France are worlds apart, for instance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com