US has the best American-xxxx food in the world. If you go to China, Ku Po Chicken doesn't taste like anything you have here. China will never beat US for American-Chinese food.

US has it's limitation on certain meats for instances: horse, seal, dog, whale, cat, and other exotic meats are not readily available for taste.

Most of what passes for Japanese food in the U.S. is meat in teriyaki sauce and made-in-USA varieties of sushi rolls. For some strange reason, most of the low-cost "Japanese" restaurants in this country are run by Koreans or Chinese.

I am a Japanese-English translator, and when I attend conferences in Japan, one of my priorities (and a priority of the other attendees who live outside the country) is to eat authentic Japanese food, in all its freshness and variety, as much as possible.

We certainly have the best variety of food in the world.

Exactly. Americans get the .......ized versions of many different cuisines. You may find a true version of a xiao long bao or kao ya in some of the ethnic pockets within the major metropolis', but your local chinese restaurant isn't going to have anything resembling what you would get in Beijing, Taipei, or Hong Kong.

Is that because U.S. food is so bad for you OR is it because it all tastes so good that you eat too much of it? I think that it is because of the latter.

I don't know if the U.S. has the best food in the world, since I have only been to about 10 different countries, but it is the best out of the ones that I have visited.

I know many people who swear by English food. So much so that when they go on holiday abroad (generally to some Mediterranean resort) they will only eat English food - fish and chips; pie and chips; burger and chips; pizza and chips; ...

By most objective standards, English food is not the greatest food in the world. This doesn't stop people who eat a lot of it believing it to be so. That's why I'm always wary of anyone who tells me the food they eat on a daily basis is the greatest. I suspect it's just the food they're most familiar with.

The US perhaps has the best food but it doesn't mean that you can easily find it, and it doesn't mean that you will usually eat it. It means that with the population size and diversity, that if only 3% of restaurants are great, it still represents a great number of places.

In my area, admittedly one of the culinary capitals, many chefs (and even mom/pop places) don't try to be specifically authentic - they work with what can be locally sourced and make dishes based upon that - it may be similar to the "homeland" dish, but it is different. There are also very few national chains. If I locally spend more than $100 in a year on food (including fast food) from anything more than a small local restaurant group, it would be a lot. I realize this is an anomaly for the US.

Now, what someone previously said is quite true. When I was in Spain, just dropping into wherever for a snack, provided usually great and affordable food. Here, it is an overpriced event. It is similar for other cuisines that don't have a lot of local choices.

What the US has that many other places don't is variety. This can make for a perception of "best food" for anyone who spends much time anywhere. Take Argentina, for example. (You could replace this with many other examples). Steaks? Yum. Empanadas? Yum. Pizzas? Yum. Ice Cream? Yum. If you venture too far out of this range, you can find a few good places, but you don't find a plethora of creative cuisines and preparations. If you go for a week, you eat a bunch of good food. By week 2, you just wish more places offered a nice piece of fish, or some nice steamed fresh vegetables next to your meat. Want Mexican food? It is an expensive imported item, and if you want it spicy? Good luck!

There is plenty wrong with the US diet and I'm not going to get into that part of the conversation. I'm just glad I live in an area where I don't have to partake in consuming industrial food on a daily basis.

OP, it seems obvious that your palate is geared towards American preparations, but I agree with your premise. (Although I strongly disagree on the Italian chains that you cite, which I find terrible.)

America really has the best of everything. If you attempted to find the best Italian food in Chicago, French or Chinese in New York, Mexican or Korean in Los Angeles, etc., or even in secondary or tertiary cities, I believe that you would find something as good as the best in the local country. I have enjoyed the Chinese food in New York and San Francisco as much as Beijing and Shanghai. And don't forget what you might call modern American food (e.g., Vidalia, Charlie Palmer Steak, or 2941, to use Washington, DC as an example), which in my opinion compares to the best local cuisine in any other country.

For less globalized cuisines like Arabic, Spanish, or Polish, I don't know how America compares. Then again, these cuisines are not that great, anyway, which is why they are not globalized.

When it comes to the average restuarant in the U.S. versus the average elsewhere, I would not say the U.S. is the best. I vote for Paris, among the places that I have been. Of course this is partially due to the novelty and to my personal preferences, but I have found every little brasserie, corner bar, train station, even the sandwiches at the deli counter in the department stores, to die for.

A sophisticated way of saying, I'm uncultured for thinking New York pizza is better than Roman pizza?

I'm sure my living in the US is part of it, which is why I wrote it!

I'm sure it's both. But I subscribe to your point because everything in France is swimming in eggs or cream sauce and you almost never see an obese French person.

Which is my point exactly; was wondering if any palates more sophisticated than mine shared this opinion.

And this should drive home how terrible I found Italian food to be.

I think it is more likely because countries serving these haven't colonized/emigrated in droves to the rest of the world.

For my tastes....

Chinese food is far far better almost anywhere outside of China/Hong Kong, esp. Singapore, Thailand, US, and Canada.

Thai food is 100 times better in Thailand than anywhere else.

Mexican and Japanese I see no appreciable difference between California and the homeland.

I agree that the US is able to provide a tremendous variety of cuisines adapted to the North American palate in one country. Is there some really awesome food to be had: most definitely. Is it the best? Does it really matter?

I have had some really good french food in NYC. But nothing in NYC can match a place like Taillevent and the French service. Perhaps service-wise, La Cote Basque came close..... probably the Japanese do haute french cuisine better than the Americans. That being said, there still is some excellent french food to be had in the US.

For sushi, and I will draw a distinction between Japanese food and sushi, I have found only 3 places in the US where the establishment has gotten the rice right. Megu and Sushi Yasuda in NYC and Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills -- but even then, the rice is seasoned sweeter than it would be in Japan as the North American palate when it comes to sushi rice leans more to sweet than the tart in Japan. There was a place in Singapore which got the rice a la Japanese style and that sushi experience was almost as good as in Japan and blew, so far, anything we've had in the US out of the water.

London has some really great Indian and Lebanese food. Vancouver has some great Northern Indian cuisine -- in fact, I think the standard of South, Southeast, and East Asian cuisines in Vancouver are amongst the highest outside of their respective countries.

But to a foodie like me, awesome food is awesome food -- it really doesn't matter where I eat it, as long as I get the opportunity to do so and have a great meal. Going to the US to escape the Olympics in a couple weeks and am looking forward to the food!!

Why is it that MacDonalds and Coca-cola tastes worse in the USA than it does in other countries?