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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,389,283 times
Reputation: 40736
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Quote:
Originally Posted by magicshark
I am new to Polish food. I want down to a Polish store and picked up some frozen mushroom and frozen potato and sauerkraut pierogies. They are this brand Lila's Pierogi - Authentic Polish Family Recipe - Smacznego! Hopefully they are decent!
I find Lebanese style stuffed grapeleaves are NEVER done right in restaurants. I have given up. I only eat my own or those prepared at other's homes.
If you go back, ask if they have a sausage called Kabanosy, great stuff!
That's not the point. I cook. A lot. And the meals I prepare are delicious, if I may say so myself, but I cannot discern the authenticity of ethnic dishes. I can tell you what I think tastes good to my own palate, but discussions of authenticity are way out of my wheelhouse. Having never been to Thailand to have local Pad Thai, I would likely taste Gordon Ramsey's version and declare it very tasty.
Isn’t that really the important thing? What good is authentic but unpleasant food?
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnina
All of them if you happen to live in the US, because they are not authentic (except of very few places) but Americanized to please the local palate.
Even those who actually try very hard to cook like back home - they just don't have access to the authentic ingredients, and while some could be imported, many couldn't due to US food regulations.
We want "ethnic food" to be authentic, but we are almost never willing to pay for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by twinkletwinkle22
Summer in Florida (off-season) is the worst time of year to get Asian food. We love Vietnamese food and eat it whenever traveling to a larger town since we live in a restaurant desert. But twice in recent days, at different highly-well-reviewed Vietnamese restaurants our meals have sucked. I think the real chefs are on vacation and the dishwasher is filling in.
Vietnamese dishes are known for use of herbs, especially mint and basil and cilantro. Both times these were missing from my entree. And last night hubs ordered stir fry and it tasted like a Chinese dish, nothing Vietnamese about it.
Thai food is also appealing but a native Thai friend said she dislikes eating it in US because it is made too sweet to suit American palates. Our issue with eating Thai food at a restaurant is what level of heat to order. In Washington DC area "medium" can almost be scorching but in Florida "medium" has no hot pepper taste at all.
Why do we have to make this an ‘American’ thing? How is the ‘New York’ or ‘Chicago’ style pizza in Bangkok or Beijing? How about Pad Thai in Warsaw or Nairobi? Conch Fritters or crab cakes in Moscow or New Delhi? Louisiana Jambalaya in Ulan Bator, Quebec, or Buenos Aires? Are such things available at all in these places, let alone ‘authentically’?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
The easiest thing to pick on is the ubiquitous strip mall Chinese restaurant. General Gao's Chicken? Nobody in China eats that. The whole menu is food nobody in China eats.
I am honestly tired of hearing about people from ‘other’ countries complaining about the ethnic food from their culture found here. Maybe THEY should try to step outside of THEIR comfort zone for once and order food from a culture other than their own. The number one whipping boy seems to be Chinese and Thai food, but ask yourself, when was the last time you were in a non-Asian restaurant like Cracker Barrel, Applebee’s, or Olive Garden and saw a Chinese or Thai family eating there? It is incredibly uncommon in my area, but they always seem to be in abundance in the so-called inauthentic Chinese and Thai restaurants. When in Schenectady...
Last edited by rugrats2001; 10-04-2018 at 09:51 AM..
If you go back, ask if they have a sausage called Kabanosy, great stuff!
Oh I will go back! There were so many things I need to try there. I'm guessing it is fairly authentic as I was the only person not speaking Polish in there.
They had all kinds of sausage hanging up. I will most definitely ask for Kabanosy next time. Thanks!!!
Ummmm ... because a majority of the posters here are Americans talking about American restaurants. We're not talking about restaurants in Bangkok, Bejing, Warsaw, or Nairobi.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rugrats2001
I am honestly tired of hearing about people from ‘other’ countries complaining about the ethnic food from their culture found here. Maybe THEY should try to step outside of THEIR comfort zone for once and order food from a culture other than their own.
We're not talking about people from 'other' countries complaining about the ethnic food from their culture found here. We're talking about our own experiences of finding food that isn't authentic. I'm not from Japan, but having been there, I would like to be able to find authentic Japanese food here. I'm tired of weak Americanized Thai food ... I want the real deal.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,389,283 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by magicshark
Oh I will go back! There were so many things I need to try there. I'm guessing it is fairly authentic as I was the only person not speaking Polish in there.
They had all kinds of sausage hanging up. I will most definitely ask for Kabanosy next time. Thanks!!!
The easiest thing to pick on is the ubiquitous strip mall Chinese restaurant. General Gao's Chicken? Nobody in China eats that. The whole menu is food nobody in China eats.
Who care's? The gourmet seeks enjoyment, not affectation.
Ummmm ... because a majority of the posters here are Americans talking about American restaurants. We're not talking about restaurants in Bangkok, Bejing, Warsaw, or Nairobi.
We're not talking about people from 'other' countries complaining about the ethnic food from their culture found here. We're talking about our own experiences of finding food that isn't authentic. I'm not from Japan, but having been there, I would like to be able to find authentic Japanese food here. I'm tired of weak Americanized Thai food ... I want the real deal.
Do you think there is some type of culinary standard throughout Japan, extending from Tokyo all the way down to the tiny fishing villages, in 4 star restaurants and roadside stands and in every house and apartment? There is no single recipe for any dish. Hop to another island and order the same dish. Will it be the same? No. Go back to the same restaurant six months later, the dish will vary due to a hundred factors. Something as seemingly insignificant as the source of the water used to cook the noodles, or variances in the individual fish or batch of herbs used today changes the flavors and consistency of the finished meal. Food in Japan tastes the way it does because it is in Japan. Not because there is an ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ way to cook it. There are plenty of Japan-born Japanese cooks in the US, cooking in Japanese restaurants, making what you consider to be inauthentic dishes. They can’t ALL have forgotten what their food tastes like, can they? The same is true for Thai food.
I had a friend who, while on vacation in Mexico, was OBSESSED with eating only ‘authentic’ mole sauce dishes. Even though he was convinced that ‘every mother in Mexico has her own mole recipe, handed down through the generations’, he still had to ask every single waiter if it was ‘authentic’, as if a restaurant 500 miles from the border was possibly importing sauce from New Jersey.
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