Food

[gbb]

Eating local food while on holiday gives you NO sense of what their real food really is like (generally speaking). Spend time with them and eat with them at home, then you really savour real food.
Limited to my travels, this is what ive found..

Uruguay, truly bland food. It got to the stage where i just couldnt be bothered to try, lost the best part of a stone there..and i'm no heavyweight anyway. It was so bad, on the last day there we stopped in the Hilton in Montevideo with the entire menu to choose from, a nice range of food obviously. Couldnt face it. It took me about a month to get somewhere back to normal. It wasnt bad food, just so boring and bland, the one highliught was a barbeque...so much meat. Similar to Argentina and brazil for their meat consumption...shame i didnt see much of it.

Spain...not the touristy places. neither here nor there really.

Egypt. Two weeks working there in an industrial city eating what they ate. Truly DIRE. Much of it looked like..well i wont spoil your tea. Bloody awful to look at, even worse to eat.

Cyprus...i LOVE Cypriot food. Sheftalia, Stifado, Meze etc etc etc. Even the side dishes, Tszadziki, couscous..all of it. Go to an authentic taverna the locals use...the foods out of this world. They love their barbeques, put us to shame. Barbequed songbirds was 'interesting'.

Turkey...only holidayed there, so you get no real feel for the authentic stuff.

Greece...love their food. Not surprising, very similar to Cyprus.

 

[darkstar]

Did the person who voted for China, do so based on takeaways bought in England? You can get some very nice food in China, but it's not the best cuisine in Asia, let alone the world.

I'd have to say Italy, just because if the clean and simple recipes, which have been consistently nice every time i've visited.

 

[darkstar]

Oh and as for the worst food, I can't really vote for Russia as I've never been how many of the 13 people who have voted have visited Russia, our of curiosity?

 

[ThePainInSpain]

I can't vote, because for some strange reason Spain only appears in the 'best' list, whereas it should be in the 'Worst' list.

Obviously written by someone who has spent little time in this country.

Spanish cuisine is rubbish, cheap crap at high prices.

A lot of their so called 'traditional dishes' that they rave about, are in fact subsistence or famine food.

 

[looe]

As I can't vote SWEDEN as the best I don't vote............... Smorgasbord, raw fish, surstromming, moose....and so on and on and on

 

[Keith Oates]

It's a slightly strange poll, with so few options for the worst. My actual worst food experince was in Slovakia (which wasn't likely to have featured in anyone's first choice of options, I know): their national dish, halusky, is basically fried pasta with extra bacon fat. It sort of slides down your throat...

I find that it's not so much countries as particular cities that have the best food. And the oustanding city in my own experience is undoubtedly Tokyo, and not for the fancy restaurants (although those are amazing) but the fact that you can find superb little places with a single row of seats at a bar serving beer or sake and a couple of people turning out the most perfect food (from noodles to grilled meats to sushi) in almost any neighbourhood. So it has to be Japan really - Kyoto is almost as good too - they just take food more seriously as part of everyday life.

I think you may be a tad biased in that assessment FM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Keith Oates]

Did the person who voted for China, do so based on takeaways bought in England? You can get some very nice food in China, but it's not the best cuisine in Asia, let alone the world.

I've never been into a Chinese restaurant in England that served typical Chinese flavoured food as it has been 'adjusted' for the western tastes.
However as with FM, my vote may have been a little biased although I do enjoy a lot (not all) of the Chinese food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Fnaar]

I can't vote, because for some strange reason Spain only appears in the 'best' list, whereas it should be in the 'Worst' list.

Obviously written by someone who has spent little time in this country.

Spanish cuisine is rubbish, cheap crap at high prices.

A lot of their so called 'traditional dishes' that they rave about, are in fact subsistence or famine food.

I lived in Spain years ago, and I LOVE Spanish food, at it's best, which for me mostly equates with seafood, big meaty dishes like churrascos in Galicia, excellent cheese, ham etc. It's easy to eat terrible food in Spain, but then it is anywhere.

 

[Fab Foodie]

This is a near impossible question, but that shouldn't stop it being asked!

I agree with Looe, I found Swedish in particular and Scandinavian food in general to be of the most consistently high quality. You really do not need to fear where you eat there.

My experience of Russian food in resteraunts and decent hotels to be exceptionally high quality also. At the factory where I worked the fodder for the staff though basic Russian food was generally far better than I get in many UK factories and cafes.

The street food of Thailand is also fabulous and I've been eating some wicked seafood in Italy of late.

American food is generally dissapointing and Brazillian a bit too over-carniverous even for me.
But I think overall the UK is most dissapointing. The 'good' is really very good, but most is mediocre at best and huge amounts of it's really bloody awful. Most Fish and Chips and Chinese food in the UK is crap to boot.
Frankly we should be dooing much, much better, there's no excuse for our crapness really.