I don’t know which part of California you’re in, but this certainly isn’t true of the cuisine in San Francisco. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant that used ketchup on anything but fries or burgers.
I’ve had plenty of bad food in France and Italy by the way, you can get bad stuff anywhere.
Judging a nations cuisine by personal anecdotes is not very rational.
And Walmart is not really a grocery produce store. If you want fresh vegetables, go to your local grocer, farmers market, or atleast a Whole Foods. I mean if you’re going to Walmart to buy vegetables, perhaps your buying “American cuisine” at the wrong places too. Anyplace slathering ketchup on stuff is fast food or fast casual, or a really shitty restaurant.
Actually I'd say it is very much true of most San Francisco cuisine and produce which is ridiculously overrated. You can go to an average restaurant in Paris run by some working class schmuck and get Chez Panisse tier food for half the price or less.
I'm not sure how you're supposed to judge a nation's cuisine by anything but personal anecdotes, unless you have some metric for noticing American tomatoes taste like paste, and Italian ones don't.
You could start by having double blind taste tests. People love to wax on about their taste abilities and end up failing in real experiments. French wines always beat California wines Until they did the Judgement of Paris blind test and were shocked to find California wines topped all categories.
This whole discussion reminds me of the Conan O’Brien running skit where his “Producer”, an over the top Europhile, is constantly commenting on how everything is better.
There have been some outstanding wines produced in California. I know they exist but I haven't tasted them since they are way outside of my price range.
But for $15 / €12, you can buy excellent wines in France. In the US at that price range, it is extremely rare to find good wines. Just like strawberries, it's about the appearance (the bottle, the label, the name) and not the flavor.
I'm sure the California vintners association was able to gin up some propaganda stunt where they came out on top on a stacked deck. I think their hooch mostly tastes like berries cut with paint thinner, and for equivalent price I was always able to get a much better wine from just about anywhere else even when I was shopping in California. Could be the vintners are all barbarians, or just their property taxes make decent wine at a decent price to be non-possible.
Literally the only people I have ever met who think SF or California in general have food worth barking about are people who live there and don't get out much. For America even a small place like Portland Maine is vastly more interesting, better quality ingredients and better in general.
Maine more interesting? Maine is mostly white. California is far far more racially diverse and the cuisine is a result of a large number of immigrants and cultures mixing. I doubt you’ll get any comparable Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, or oodles of other ethnic cuisines there, nor the countless fusions that have been produced. From a variety standpoint there’s no way Maine compares.
SF has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the US.
Your comments basically sound like snobbery to me, and unjustified by anything other than personal opinion and anecdote.
>Maine more interesting? Maine is mostly white. California is far far more racially diverse and the cuisine
Lol, yes, because white people don't know how to cook anything. Great argument. I guess you've never been to Maine.
>SF has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the US.
Obviously having the most of something means they're the best!
I agree: I am a snob -I think SF is bloody awful and people who say "the food" is something to crow about rarely notice the rivers of human sewage flowing by their restaurants, or the fact that the tomatoes taste like paste.
Not sure. The hypermarket I grew up going to had 80 (eighty) checkout lanes and sold everything you'd find at a Walmart Supercenter, but with way more selection.
As for the food sections in a typical grocery store in the US (Kroger, Publix, Albertsons, Safeway), it is laughably tiny and the quality is depressing.
Carrefour has got a lot of different sized shops, with the smallest in city center with size of less than 50 sq meters. Of course if you've taken the average size of only the big ones, then the difference is quite big.
My take on Bay Area food culture is that people are too caught up in the rat race to perceive the difference between good food and expensive food.
This results in inflated prices and inconsistent quality, with an emphasis on over-salting, sugaring, buttering things (as the lowest-common-denominator market demands).
I’ve had plenty of bad food in France and Italy by the way, you can get bad stuff anywhere.
Judging a nations cuisine by personal anecdotes is not very rational.
And Walmart is not really a grocery produce store. If you want fresh vegetables, go to your local grocer, farmers market, or atleast a Whole Foods. I mean if you’re going to Walmart to buy vegetables, perhaps your buying “American cuisine” at the wrong places too. Anyplace slathering ketchup on stuff is fast food or fast casual, or a really shitty restaurant.