Your Favourite Three Cuisines
 

Hi everyone,

Yes, I deliberately left the title broad...feel free to nominate an entire country/self-governing landmass, a specific region, or a little from both columns.

Defend your choices if you'd like, but I'm creating this primarily to hear suggestions for future travels.

To start, my top three (based solely on places visited, and in no particular order) are:

-Mexico
-Japan
-Turkey

Regionally, I would say:
-Manado, Indonesia (spicy, smoked seafood)
-Oaxaca, Mexico (just about everything thus far)
-Hunan, China (spicy; ample vegetables and seafood)

---

Which are your favourites?

Italian
”chinese” (best on USA soil for me)

oh smeg I like everything. Or rather I like stuff from everywhere I’ve tried. Only stuff I won’t re-eat is mayonnaise based sauces and live drunken shrimps. And I’m not going to ever try horse or dog.

Those mayo-based sauces are quite popular in East Asia!

and in Europe and USA and who knows where else... i love eggs and just can’t deal with mayonnaise. Sigh. I still haven’t read my Trout Fishing in America book. Sigh.

Mexican
Thai (In Thailand only)
Middle Eastern

Honorable mention:
Chinese (Americanized only)

Italian
Japanese
French

stereotype - I assumed you would say Brazilian. Which cuisines do you enjoy eating when in brasilia?

I have never found anything very special about food in Brasil, except I love their grass fed beef, and the way they prepare it - churrasco.

Mexican
Japanese
French

American
Mexican
Lebanese

Italian
Mexican
Greek

I feel bad leaving French off the list, and French country cooking will always have a special place in my heart and stomach, but after our last few visits to Italy, I think I prefer Italian food and wine :eek:

This is hard!
Italian
Mexican
Thai or Chinese

TexMex
Kansas City-style barbecue
Americanized Chinese

Decisions , decisions , decisions .. 😋

French
Peranakan

Where do I place grass fed beef / steak , mash & ice cream ?
?? Ireland , New Zealand , USA - Colorado , Texas , Vermont , Wyoming ?? !!

The edit ( s ) will come likely right through this unusual 2020 weekend - Thanksgiving for quite a number reading this

Where in the Middle East?

Which part of the US?

One of my friends recently moved to KCMO...could you recommend any recent bbq openings? I told him about Arthur Bryant's, but beyond that, no ideas. Cheers!

For me, KC-style bbq is as much about the sauce style as is the smoking style. I like Arthur Bryant's meats, but his sauce is much to vinegary for me. My all time favorite in KC is Arthur Bryant's burnt ends. But I would pair a sweeter sauce (like KC Masterpiece) with them.

There are literally scores of bbq restaurants in the KC area; it will be a fun field trip for your friend to try as many as possible :)

Northern Italian
Southern Italian
American New England

It's hard to say exactly as I've never traveled there and many restaurants seem to combine
dishes from the region. For sure Greek, Turkish, Lebanese...

Which part of the US?
Southern US and Soul Food:
BBQ, fried chicken, greens, ham, biscuits and gravy, ribs, egg salad, pork chops, fried okra, jambalaya, bbq chicken, hot chicken.

plus Americanized ethnic: spaghetti, chicken stir fry, roast beef, kielbasa, etc.

Thai (Bangkok/ central region)
Greek
Japanese

Honourable shoutout to Mexican. Very close, but it asked for top 3 only.

Italian (like real Italian. I often wonder how America and Australia ended up with such vastly different versions of Italian)
Westernised Chinese
Anything involving a dead animal and hot coals.

Malaysia (specifically Penang)
Bavaria
Middle Eastern (specifically northern Iraq)

There are some great Kurdish restaurants in Nashville you’d enjoy.

Very contextual, favorite to cook is different from favorite to eat, etc.

I'd say for overall food culture
1. Malaysia/Singapore
2. Spanish/Portuguese
3a. Italian... not because it tastes the best, but because of the culture around it and how much of it i cook
3b. Japanese... aethestics and philosophy. i just dont eat it or cook it often.

Most underrated cuisines from my perspective:
Turkish
Regional Mexican (not Tex Mex)
Uruguay/Argentine/Chilean asado

there’s too many parts of Italia for food. Too fun! :-)
I like how liane moriarty books take place in Australia and say “yum cha” instead of dim sum :-). Even though that’s how I heard it in my past, I still use “dim sum” now.

I definitely first had soup dumplings in China before they became more common in USA. Swoon

My uncle is from Campania and taught me Italian. I love it all but southern Italian is something I can cook well and really love the flavours. Even my sister who would burn water is amazing at southern Italian. When we would visit Naples we'd go out and her being much younger would stay home often with Nonna Maria. My sister does not speak any Italian and Nonna Maria spoke no English but my sister picked up cooking Italian by sitting in the kitchen and cooking with her. It's actually one of her fondest memories of childhood.

I have done no research into this but I always assumed that in Australia we say yum cha because dim sum is to close to dim sim. I do know that yum cha is the whole meal whereas dim sum is the collective name for the food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sim

1. Ile de France
2. Poitou-Charentes
3. Bordeaux

The three I'm dabbling in at home lately...
Italy
Thailand
Japan

Japanese (not omlettes or curry)
Indian (railway food)
British (stews and pies)

Italian (proper Italy Italian with multiple courses, not Americanized crap)
Japanese
Middle Eastern/Mediterranean

I think of yum cha as Cantonese / Hong Kong while dim sum might be more Mandarin Chinese - either way in Chinese characters they might be the same.

very fun about Italia. I’ve loved my meals there but am way afraid to have the Sardinian joy of Cazu Marzu. It’s a fun conversation topic.

My favorite cuisines based on travel, that are very challenging for logistics:
franconian food (mostly pork) in Nuernberg
truffle pasta & other dishes in “northern” Italia and Umbria

I cannot find taro bread that I can get in maui - it’s sweet like the Hawaiian brand rolls but purple taro and pink guava breads. Even as food dye, it tastes different from white Hawaiian rolls. It’s also challenging to find them in maui at times, like Kona coffee butter. So this is another big culinary joy that I have only found in maui and surely other places in Hawaii.

French, Turkish/Greek and Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese/Spanish). That said, I also really like central European food (aka Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia) in the winter.

1. Creole
2. Cajun
3. Too many others to choose from

Japanese without a doubt. My others really change according to mood, the last great meal I had, etc. But right now it would probably be a tie between Mexican (authentic stuff, not Americanized Mexican), Lebanese, Italian (esp. northern and central Italy) and Indian. But over dinner last night we were talking about Basque food -- when we can celebrate in groups again I want to do a Pintxos party -- and that's also a strong contender.

What are your favourite aspects of Japanese cuisine?

I appreciate so many things... The flavor combinations, the devotion to perfection, the respect with which food is treated. If you look at my comment on the thread about foods that sucks with people while traveling, you'll see that sounds of my favs have been simple foods prepared in stunning ways in Japan.

Tough to choose only 3. I'm sure I'll need a short explanation.

- Mexican
- Thai
- American

Japanese is virtually a "thai" :). I could have gone either way between those two, but since I'm not a big sushi fan I went with Thai. But let me explain "American" as I'm sure that will annoy some people.

I realize that a lot of "American" cuisine is borrowed. But there are Americanized foods that I sometimes crave - a really great cheeseburger with melty American cheese, an Italian beef sandwich, a loaded Chicago-style hot dog, bbq slathered in Carolina sauce, an omelet loaded with so many things that you can hardly see the egg, etc. So I'll stand by that choice, even if a lot of those items originated in other countries.

Great idea for a thread by the way.

Regarding the "American" comment, I hear ya! While overseas, I do crave a NY slice and a burger quite a lot...but I crave künefe, kaki furai, and Baja-style tacos much more. Presumably, it's because I don't spend as much time in places where those foods are common.

By the way, what do you like about Japanese and Thai food?

I'm surprised so many people rate Thai food so highly. You can't walk a block in this town without running into a Thai restaurant and while it's good, I'm not that big into it. I much prefer Vietnemese in the SE Asian food ranks.