There are some exotic foods we tend to take for granted exist. Almost every city for example has a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and maybe an Outback Steakhouse. But this isn’t universal for some reason. Someone asked me if I wanted to go to an Egyptian restaurant and I was like “wait, they have restaurants?”
A question for all those who would say they consider themselves ethnically fluent. What are all the cultural categories of food you’ve had?
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Outback Steak house ? Lol wot?
It’s to Australia what Taco Bell is to Mexico.
I don’t want to inappropriately appropriate so I only eat white food:
- rice
- italian bread
- french bread
- naan
- mashed potatoes
- french fries with albino ketchup
- sugar
- splenda (no packet)
- cocaine
- egg whites
- peeled radishes
- mozzarella cheese
- feta cheese
- cheese sticks
- string cheese
- cheese powder
- cheese product
- popcorn
- etc
Does that exclude water, considering water is blue?
I churn the water before I drink it
How does that change its colour?
Turns it into white water
If you didn’t have a churner, would you just die of thirst?
There’s always milk
Yeah, but you can’t live on milk.
Water is blue?
Isn’t that from the sunlight and absorbing other colours?
When it’s in a glass it’s clear.
That’s an optical illusion. That’s like saying the sky isn’t blue just because you can see into the sky.
The sky isn’t blue. It’s the angle of the sun and the blue wavelength of light making it to our eyes.
At a different angle the sky is quite red or orange.
Turns out the color of everything has to do with different angles at which light travels through it.
Apples are red because the other wavelengths get bent into the 6th dimension and become electronic energy.
I don’t want to go through all but some of the more interesting ones:
Ethiopian - delicious stew/curry type food with this fermented flatbread stuff that almost smells a bit like beer. Way better than this makes it sound, lol
Vietnamese - if you like Chinese food you will love it. It’s somewhere between Thai and Chinese. They have an awesome beef noodle soup called pho
Jamaican - my family is partially from here so bias but jerk chicken is worth a mention alone. Very well spiced and usually super juicy chicken. Meat and rice type of stuff. But ackee and saltfish is interesting too, very salted cod mixed with this subtle flavoured fruit that looks a bit like eggs? Again better than it sounds.
Moroccan - If you’re interested in Egyptian food (I also have no idea what that would be, lol) Morrocan is probably a good recommendation. They have a dish called tajine which is a well spiced chicken stew, they cook it in a special pot I think
Mexican! - I know it’s obvious but in Europe Mexican restaurants are very basic. Tacos, burritos etc. But there are so many amazing dishes like mole (chocolate and chilli sauce, fucking delicious) that always get missed. There’s one called queso relleño (?) That is basically like a very rich Bolognese wrapped in cheese and FRIED. Probably best not to eat too often. But maybe you guys in the US get more authentic Mexican food anyway
Also, saying “ethnic foods” comes across a little odd. Makes you sound like a 50 year old white guy who’s never left his home town and isn’t so sure about all this weird food these strange brown people eat. Nothing wrong with being white or culturally insulated of course, but probably not the look you were going for. Might explain the downvotes.
How would you rather it be phrased or suggest it be phrased?
I’m of mixed race by the way if anyone was wondering, part Scottish and part Pacific Islander, and don’t even speak English as my first language (so much for doing that without people complaining of assuming subtext). In terms of food, I favor the food of the latter and have tried Maori/Kiwi, Nauruan, Indian, Australian, Filipino, Indonesian, Malagasy, Icelandic, North Korean (yes, there are places for that), Chinese, and Japanese food and would rank them in that order.
I think you could just ask something like “what are some of your favourite world cuisines excluding the obvious ones?” and then explain what you mean.
Apologies though, I guess this is just because it’s not your first language, what you said makes sense it’s more the connotations of the phrase. I think someone also posted a gif making a similar joke. Probably the best straight up alternative without the connotations would be “world food/cuisine.”
North Korean! Would love to try it but I guess similar to South Korean food?
I thought, going by history, something like the end of that question (“excluding the obvious ones”) or the fact that I was trying to speak of food generally (as opposed to implying the dishes were separate) would’ve thrown people off.
One thing worth noting about North Korean food, it gets very carnivorous and improvised. As in there are dishes that are still alive when you eat them, food not made to be cooked, etc. Fortunately an issue you can swerve around though.
There is (or was) a North Korean Restaurant in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. The staff were apparntly North Korean, so not sure how that worked and I was going to go but never go there back in the day.
The worst dishes (for me) I’ve had were in Malaysia , o coild nit find sonethbg Ibloeod, i started oit disliking the food in Myamar (before the recent civil war) not did start to find food I liked and the most suprisingly good food was Nepalese, at a little place owned by a Nepalese family. Not a fan of tomato based dishes so…
Is this something people track? What’s considered “exotic?”
Is KFC exotic if I live far away from Kentucky?
KFC is a specific recipe credited to one guy, so I wouldn’t say in a strict sense, but the case can be made.
I don’t know how to answer “exotic”. “Exotic” can easily slip into xenophobic territory.
Maybe I answer with a restaurant from a specific culture that I had never been exposed to before? In which case, Himalayan/Tibetan/Nepalese. I could eat momos every day. But I say that about every savory-wrapped-in-dough thing. Dumplings, empanadas, bierocks, meat pies, xian bing, piroshki, is there a culture that doesn’t have some variation of that? And it’s always good. If ever there is need for a flag to represent Humanity, it should be of a savory pie.
