American Food

[Dos_Box]

We are currently sat in the hotel room packing and an advert has just come on TV. For Kraft cheese slices, with bacon in.

Now Shaun and I have both been very good and have avoided junk food (apart from lunch at Wendys yesterday when we had no choice) and eaten sensibly in decent places. But the TV is innundated with ads for food that is mainly, cheese, bacon, cheese and bacon, cheese and bacon and sausages\burgers and a whole combination of ingrediants that in the UK you would think twice about having on their own!

Mind you, on our second night here I decided to order a chicken sandwich from a menu only to have a large seg of breadcrumbed, deep fried chicken in a red hot sauce. With fries on the side. I put this down to 'cultural differances'.

We did have a very nice pizza from an Italian eaterie we had found (thanks for the suggestion Jane) which was superbly prepared, freshly cooked and tasty.

So my advice for anyone visiting the US is to look around and ask the locals for the best places to eat and you won't be dissapointed. There are plenty of excellent and affordable eating joints, just avoid the junk food at all costs!

Oh, and don't forget to tip!

[john]

No wonder America has the big weight issues and other health problems if a Chicken Sandwich comes like that. Wonder what happens if you order a beef sandwich do you get a 16oz fillet steak deep fried in breadcrumbs with the cheese and bacon slices on it etc oh and with big piles of chips

 

You pizza looked nice though

[Dos_Box]

It was lovely. We are going back there for lunch after we check out. Cheap too

[FN-GM]

No wonder America has the big weight issues

 

Ouch!

 

To be honest i would expect the food to be different from ours, at the end of the day its another country. Would you go to India, China, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Thailand etc and expect the food to be the same as ours? (apart from big tourist areas). I wouldn't expect America to be an exception to the rule, I dont expect a big difference and as extreme as others, but i would still expect it to be different.

[Dos_Box]

I have been surprised this week. In Denver they don't have the huge weight issue. It's a very active town that's great for walking around and has many alternatives to junk food when eating out. There is also the issue of the altitude (1 mile above sea level) and heat (30 degrees+) that makes people eat less and metabolise foods quicker.

@FN-GM The food here is identical to anything you will find in any UK town. It's just the service is many magnitudes better!

We even had a very good fish and chips a few days back with SmoothWall, which had less chips than you would get in the UK.

[torledo]

No wonder America has the big weight issues and other health problems

 

ditto the UK.

[mac_shinobi]

I know you said avoid junk food but I miss taco bell and also the biscuits and gravy from KFC in the US, oh and apple bee's and wendys do some good stuff - guess Im just a food junky

[webman]

guess Im just a food junky

 

Don't you mean a junk-foody?

[sted]

We are currently sat in the hotel room packing and an advert has just come on TV. For Kraft cheese slices, with bacon in.

Now Shaun and I have both been very good and have avoided junk food (apart from lunch at Wendys yesterday when we had no choice) and eaten sensibly in decent places. But the TV is innundated with ads for food that is mainly, cheese, bacon, cheese and bacon, cheese and bacon and sausages\burgers and a whole combination of ingrediants that in the UK you would think twice about having on their own!

Mind you, on our second night here I decided to order a chicken sandwich from a menu only to have a large seg of breadcrumbed, deep fried chicken in a red hot sauce. With fries on the side. I put this down to 'cultural differances'.

We did have a very nice pizza from an Italian eaterie we had found (thanks for the suggestion Jane) which was superbly prepared, freshly cooked and tasty.

So my advice for anyone visiting the US is to look around and ask the locals for the best places to eat and you won't be dissapointed. There are plenty of excellent and affordable eating joints, just avoid the junk food at all costs!

Oh, and don't forget to tip!

 

adverts for stuff like this then Baconnaise

[localzuk]

This thread has made me think of the first episode of Futurama with the 'baconated grapefruit' and 'caffineated bacon'.

[beeswax]

A few years ago when my sister lived in the States we went to visit her and sat in a restaurant on the banks of the Ohio River. I always like to eat at least one burger when I'm over there, but was put off ordering the chilli burger by my sister. I soon found out why. At a nearby table a customer had ordered on of these, and when it arrived it just looked like a huge chilli surrounded by rice, but as I watched him work his way through the chilli I saw that he eventually uncovered a large bun with a burger in it.

[sippo]

In the US you obviously get all the fast food chains/burger joints, but if you know where to look and you do a bit of research you'll find that some of the food is quite amazing. I've had fish out there, that was caught literally an hour before it was on my plate- you really can't get fresher than that.

 

It really annoys me when people say everyone in America is fat. Compared, in ratio, to this country its not as bad as you think!

[featured_spectre]

Would you believe that in terms of ratio's, Australia is the most obese nation in the world?!

 

Back to the top of food in the US. When I went to Maine, I went out with my father in law, and we had a seafood platter, everything that was on it, was alive half hour before serving, this included fish, lobster, oysters, shrimp, crawfish, mussels, clams, limpets etc. That was lovely!

[tom_newton]

At this stage I need to point out that I was fed "Chicken biscuits" for breakfast by one of my esteemed colleagues - this involved aforementioned chunk of fried (battered) chicken, a slice of "eggy stuff" and some "cheese" between two dumpling-consistency things. Interesting. Think it may have constituted a crime against humanity

[broc]

No wonder America has the big weight issues and other health problems if a Chicken Sandwich comes like that. Wonder what happens if you order a beef sandwich do you get a 16oz fillet steak deep fried in breadcrumbs with the cheese and bacon slices on it etc oh and with big piles of chips

 

You pizza looked nice though

I once ordered a hot roast beef sandwich for lunch while working in the US, it was 12oz sliced roast beef in a small loaf, oozing gravy everwhere.... I didn't eat for the rest of the day

 

If you really want to see excess, take a holiday on an American cruise liner; free food, 24 hours a day.... absolute gluttony..... the breakfast servery was the worst, with people carrying several plates pile high with food.

Edited July 5, 2010 by broc

[CHR1S]

Mmmm 20 NEW Worst Foods in America | Eat This, Not That makes you hungry lol!!

[K.C.Leblanc]

So now the important questions?

 

Can you get a good curry?

Is the beer any good?

[sippo]

If anyone goes to the US, you need to try and find a yard house. They literally have over 100 beers on draught from around the world.

 

For me it was a yard of Hoegaarden!

 

[Dos_Box]

So now the important questions?

 

Can you get a good curry?

Is the beer any good?

 

We went into an 'Authentic Irish Pub' where on the menu they had an Irish curry listed! We had fish and chips. TRhe beer, on the whole was quite nice. They have micro-brewers (real ale) which are quite popular and abundent in bars. Of these there are plenty of wheat beers, so Ric would have been very happy. The usual Bedweiser and Coors etc are widespread, but avaoid teh 'lite' versions. They taste like they have already been drunk once.

[ButterflyMoon]

I go to Texas regular as one of my sons lives there and I have to say the Mexican food is fabulous. I never used to like Mexican food before I went but the authentic stuff you get there is out of this world. The only thing I truly miss while there is a decent cup of tea...........

[CHR1S]

I go to Texas regular as one of my sons lives there and I have to say the Mexican food is fabulous. I never used to like Mexican food before I went but the authentic stuff you get there is out of this world. The only thing I truly miss while there is a decent cup of tea...........

 

I love Mexican food, never been anywhere near the place to try anything authentic tho.. ill add it to the list lol

[witch]

The only thing I truly miss while there is a decent cup of tea...........

 

that happens all over the world except in the ex-colonies - no-one seems to know that the water needs to be boiling, not just warm.

I am going to Sri-Lanka in three weeks - home of Ceylon tea - surely THERE I will be able to get a decent cup of tea?

[Sarconia]

I still class American food as the worst food in the world then again I must be one of the few people who lives in America for a while and actually manages to lose weight. Bearing in mind that I was shopping in supermarkets and not really eating out that much - the eating out experience is fairly good and the customer service is generally excellent - much better than over here and I did quite like Wal-Mart.

 

I ended up living on a diet which basically consisted of nothing but vegetables, salad and fruit and even then a lot of that tasted a bit strange. I tried loads of products and gave up in the end because whilst they looked ok in the packaging as soon as they entered my mouth I could only think "yuck". Hersheys chocolate... what is that? lol, Kool-aid... umm, I like the colour... that's about it, chicken soup which has... 1 piece of chicken in it? Peanut butter which was so greasy, I didn't expect everything to be the same, I'd eaten food from loads of different places and it's always different... but this was generally a bit nasty.

 

I don't think it's the amount of fat people in the US which really shocked me, it was the size of those who happened to be fat - they are huge.

[sidewinder]

I'm not a huge fan of American food either, I know you can get good stuff (never had problems eating well in New York!) but in general the food culture seems to rely far more on fast food than here, and the food is usually bigger and greasier. And everyone seems obsessed with cheese!

[tom_newton]

The beer is... OK. Too cold & fizzy (and that's just the ales).