Unpopular Opinions Thread

[MarqHusker]

Korean food is good.

I am partial to an Indian couple in our hood that own a Fusion restaurant nearby,  they are quite clever in their offerings which rep.  China, India l, Japan Korea and even Afghani.

[utee94]

We had Indian for lunch yesterday and I was pondering this point.  We both really like Asian cuisine, a lot, there isn't one we don't like.  Really good Chinese is really good, to me, a fair bit of it is just "sort of OK good" to me, but some is superb.  Japanese, sign me up.  Korean?  Bibimbop del sol, yup.  Vietnamese?  Yup.  Phillipine?  Yup.  Malaysian?  What I've had was really good.  Thai?  All day.

Globally, I'm all over Mex, south American, Tex Mex, Frrench, Italian ... the kinds I don't care for is a shorter list.  We have two excellent Indian places near us so that is a factor, and to me, it all tastes quite different from each other and is superb.  We get something called thali sag often for lunch and it comes with five very different dishes and naan (which to me is not the greatest).

Yeah I don't think there's a single style of food or regional cuisine that I don't like.  There are some dishes I like more than others, and there are some specific foods/ingredients I don't like (I'm looking at you, cucumbers!).  And there are some restaurants that just don't make good food, regardless of style, although they tend to perish quickly.

But I've never had a problem finding something I liked, no matter where in the world I was eating.

[Cincydawg]

German food is not something I aspire to find.  I've been in Germany, it's no better there.  Home cooking in England that I've had was quite good, in restaurants?  Not at all, bland and so so.  I eat Indian/Paki when I'm there mostly.  The food in Copenhagen was pretty good but not superb, except one French place we found.  Ha.  We had great good in Belgium, but they are basically French....

I missed really good food in Barcelona somehow, we just lucked into mediocre spots.  Of course, in Rome we had to have authentic pizza at a Pizza Hut.

[bayareabadger]

Indian food?
There are several sorts... India is a big place.  Eastern Indian can be much like Chinese.  Southern Indian is what I think folks here think of when Indian food is mentioned. 

Mumbai is a place you best be careful... I effed up in a major way, there... I drank a glass of water at a swanky restaurant and paid dearly- case of "Mumbai shit pie" ensued and I made it worse when I took unisom instead of imodium ad...

That was a bad couple days.

The worse ever though was after risking it for a week during Ramadan and eating nothing but rotisserie I "think" goat sold at a roadside stand in the desert of Qatar.. it was the only place open selling any kind of food during the day and the only time I had to get out... I think "they" looked the other way and left it open for the workers from elsewhere who weren't Muslim.  That food was fine as can be, but when I made it to a Starbucks just before they closed one morning and got a chicken salad pita? Hell broke loose. 

It was pouring from both ends for two full days and I was forced to decide which I'd rather clean off floor... fortunately, the villa I was in had the bathrooms ceramic tiled from ceiling to floor with a drain in floor... and had what was intended for spraying your ass when finished "wand", which was the same thing as a kitchen retractable sprayer, hanging on the wall beside the toilet.  I went back in there with a bottle of dish soap which I slung everywhere and sprayed everything down the drain... I had a little Pakistani dude who cleaned for us, but I couldn't do that to him.  It was bad.  I've hated Starbucks everywhere since. 

Man, our water system is great

[utee94]

One of the best meals I've ever had was in Barcelona, a fantastic seafood paella and plenty of rose' wine.

We have a couple of pan-European restaurants in town that serve some German dishes, they're actually quite tasty.  I'll order rabbit pretty much any time I see it on a menu, and the German hasenpfeffer dish at one of these restaurants, is better than any rabbit dish I've ever had anywhere else, including all the time I spent in France.

Sadly my absolute favorite of the pan-European restaurants, failed during COVID.  Their hasenpfeffer wasn't quite as good, but their French dishes were off the charts.

[Cincydawg]

I dislike Starbucks anyway, but seeing them in Paris is just annoying.

Seeing McDonalds in France is, well, amusing, and yes, I've dined there a couple of times.

Cincinnati has a lot of German heritage and had German restaurants back in the day but I did not enjoy them.  Yeah, somehow in Barcelona we struck out, but we were dining at the hotel which had a superb executive lounge for free.  We only had lunch out, and the paella we had once was like days old reheated.

We were in Cancun a while back and found this little place around the corner that had fish tacoes, we still talk about them, fresh fish, incredible.  We left large tips, and told people passing by the place was great, the owner brought us free magaritas to get us to stay and advertize longer.

[Drew4UTk]

The best sushi I've ever had was in Portland Maine.  That's weird to me because I've had it in some pretty renowned places carrying a reputation for it.  That was almost 20 freakin years ago, and I still think about it.  

Maybe an Unpopular opinion: sushi ain't just sushi- it's all about the preparation.   

[utee94]

Portland, Maine >>>>>> Portland, Oregon

Maybe unpopular opinion?

[Cincydawg]

That's interesting.  We went to a highly recommended suchi place here and didn't care for it, our Kroger makes pretty decent sushi and sashimi and nigiri, we usually just get that.  One of the best seafood places I ever dined was in Wilkes-Barre, PA, oddly enough.  

You can find really good stuff anywhere these days.  Or not.  Probably not great to drink a glass of water in india ...

[Honestbuckeye]

Portland, Maine >>>>>> Portland, Oregon

Maybe unpopular opinion?

Wrong thread. Very popular opinion.  😂

[Cincydawg]

I've never been to the Maine version, it's probably quite nice.  I spent a few days in Oregon but 20 years back, it was fine, nothing exceptional.

[utee94]

Portland, Maine has been one of my favorite towns I've ever visited/worked in, here in the USA.  I spent a month there and absolutely loved it.

Now I will say, that month was August.  I have doubts about how much I'd love it in January and February.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Pretty much all sushi is made from frozen fish anyway. As such, it doesn't really matter where you are. You can find good sushi almost anywhere, and in most cases there is no actual benefit to finding it near a coastline. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

The problem with an idea like "Best Asian cuisine" using nationality as a proxy is purely demographic. 

China and India have giant populations spread over widely disparate regions and they're going to have the most variety in cuisine in what can be called their own. 

Almost by definition, any other country in Asia is going to have a much more limited breadth of cuisine to choose from, due to less land mass, fewer residents, and less diversity of region. 

I do think Thai tends to have a lot more diversity than many, though, because a lot of dishes resemble things that would be common in Chinese food, while a lot of others (curries/etc) resemble a lot of things that would be common in Indian food. It was fusion before fusion was cool.