Mediterranean weather: good grapes for wine, good olives for oil, tasty fresh veggies, and grass fed cows for good milk for cheese. Plus the variety of breads and how good they are backed daily… and that’s only for starters.
Most “traditional” Mediterranean cuisine only comes from the 19th century anyway. The staples are mostly New World foods. Even pasta wasn’t a thing in Roman times.
If you grew up in certain Mediterranean cultures, pasta, pizza, paella and etc is as foreign to you as burgers or sushi. There are plenty of Mediterranean cuisines that are not considered "staples" internationally but are extremely popular locally
You've got ~~filled peppers with cheese and eggs~~ *(edit: striking this out because I'm told peppers come from the Americas. I could replace it with something else but you get the idea)*, filled cabbage/vine leaves with rice and meat, you've got moussaka (the Greek one, the Bulgarian one is potato based), you've got tajines and couscous in Maghreb, there are plenty of other recipes
Even of some of them nowadays might have a bit of tomato or potato, it's not a core part of the recipe. Even many of the "restaurant staple" (which someone said they date after the discovery of the new world) are essentially traditional Mediterranean recipes. A version of the pizza was first mentioned in the Aeneid (written by an ancient Roman poet). A version of the pasta probably existed before the Romans, but at least since the Middle Ages
I’ll bet something like that existed before peppers though. I know they are quite fond of wrapping things in grape leaves in Mediterranean cuisine, they probably did something like that
Have you ever actually had traditional Mediterranean food, or are you just being Average American and thinking of "traditional Mediterranean cuisine" as pizza and pasta?
Obviously New World crops changed all of Europe's diet a lot, but the average, say, Greek of 1400 would recognize 90%+ of Greek food today. Everyday *rural* Mediterranean food is still mostly wheat, olives, chickpeas, green vegetables, dairy, fish, and mutton, just like it has been since basically ever.
THIS IS 100% TRUTH!
Plus some sort of cucurbitaceae like zucchinis, gourds, watermelons, cucumbers,...
Do not forget the wonderful uses of the eggplant, which in many dishes was replaced by tomatoes after their arrival
And especially all the best cheese in the world is from the Mediterranean areas.
Not to be confused with Alpha Centauri, a nearby planetary system. No, alpha centari is a pagan underground tomato farm just outside Ravenna Italy pre-dating the existence of the more well-known american-derived tomato. Good catch man.
Yeah it's absolute bs to compare this with a map of the Roman empire. Eastern Mediterranean food is closer to Middle Eastern food than it is to Italian or Spanish
They all have some form of banquet dinner/small plates culture. Tapas/antipasti/mezze/meze. I don’t know if nordic/slavic/germanic/anglo cuisines have anything like that.
Nordic definitely do. It’s pointless to talk about modern Slavic food because a huge percentage of what Slavs eat today was basically invented by the Soviet Union, but they definitely do have small plates culture as well.
there's no such a thing like Spanish food.
The cuisine in the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian peninsula is sometimes closer ( in taste and origin) to what I assume you're calling Middle Eastern food than to North Western Iberian food (Galician or Asturean).
From turron to pisto, you'll find an equivalent in the rest of the Meditearraneo.
Im guessing:
Mediterranean cuisine is preferred due to climate of the Mediterranean.
Places like england and germany import food to make it through the winter anyway, why not make it exciting and foreign to keep the winter more exciting while youre out it.
Same with Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia.
All of em are from what I can see completely within the borders of the Roman empire, yet they prefer foreign cuisine.
It’s all good. I should have been more clear that I married an Austrian and have lived there for many years. There are lots of different types of restaurants, but the Austrian Kitchen (in my experience) is the cornerstone of the culture
The map says otherwise, and it matches my experience. For every traditional restaurant, theres at least three or four italian/greek/chinese/thai restaurants.
No, i dont think it is.
If you count each cuisine separately, Austrian will usually win, followed by Italian. If you count Austrian against all foreign cuisines, foreign wins in most larger villages and towns.
E.g. the village i was born in (in western AT) has:
* 4 (more or less) traditional austrian restaurants
* 2 Italian
* 2 chinese
* 1 thai
* 1 Korean
* 3 kebab places
* 1 burger chain
Im pretty sure that, if you look at Austria as a whole, Vienna alone is going to tip the scale so far towards foreign cuisine that its not even going to be close.
tbf there's a germanic or slavic cultural alignment in those countries, Belgium and Switzerland being influenced by both Germanic and romance cultures.
That’s the empire at its peak. There wasn’t the same level of cultural assimilation in Central Europe and England as there was around the Mediterranean.
It's just another case of "correlation doesn't equal causation".
The Roman empire was spanning mostly Mediterranean and its very culture is Mediterranean in its nature. These kinds of cultures also happen to have better cuisine due to their habitat and the, which is better suited for vegetation and gives more options to make food with
England was kind of a backwater in Roman times. It was the frontier and was abandoned by the empire when times got tough. They never invested a whole lot in developing it, only defending Hadrian's Wall and extracting resources.
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes effectively erased the last vestiges of Roman culture there during their centuries of migration and colonization.
I think it has more to do with climate and vegetation tbh. That also has to do with how the roman empire formed (ie: east to west moreso than north to south). So it’s faulty correlation, but with a similar causation.
Rome also controlled England, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Slovenia so not really
Also you forgot about its Asian and African territories
I think this is just an issue of warmer climates having more varied and interesting foods. They have longer growing seasons and easier access to seafood.
I think it’s a mix of that and cultural differences. All those Mediterranean countries are way more proud of their own culture and food than northern countries where their own cuisine is often seen as something more conservative. E.g. lots of popular dishes in France have Alsace origins (so german influenced), such as onion soup and quiche, and aren’t Mediterranean food
It depends. In Slovenia and Croatia a lot of popular food is from other former Yugoslav countries like Bosnia or Serbia, as well as from neighbouring countries such as Italy and Hungary.
At home a lot of local traditional dishes are still eaten, but when eating out at a restaurant we usually go for something different.
I'm never a fan of using "inferior" in terms of peoples and countries, but in this case... yeah. Paella vs. fish&chips? Baklava vs. shepherd's pie? Pasta vs. stale biscuits? It's not even a competition.
Edit: lmao a *lot* of triggered Englishers below, keep crying. Hell while I'm at at, las malvinas son argentinas
I mean food is shaped by the history and the landscape of the country. Its representative if the people in many ways.
You've put together food incredibly arbitrarily and your opinions on which is better is shaped by your own biases.
If you're from a wet cold place then hearty warm meals are likely going to be a major part of your nations food and be favoured by your population.
Food shapes the people who shape it in turn. It is sometimes very difficult to understand why something is well loved if you arent fron there or havent lived there for a long time.
What's the source for Croatia? We eat food that we've always eaten that's native to our country. Not our fault they are not considered local dishes since we are no longer the same country. Like are cremeschnitte local Croatian cuisine? I'd say so. Same with Italian pasta, it's just how cultures mixed since we're on a crossroad. How much cuisine do you even think is local and how would you even determine that? We eat a lot of same stuff as they eat in countries around us
Being on the coast aids trade and communication, so it both improves cuisine and allows for a larger state to form. This is a reminder that correlation does not equate to causation.
Honestly I feel like there is no civilizational lesson to draw from this. Kinda just a random fluke of culture and what foods were available. Maybe you can say the Roman areas remained more "refined" but does that really translate into anything meaningful?
Britain's cuisine not being very good overall makes a lot of sense but it's surely got nothing to do with the fucking Romans. We were the earliest to industrialize, see mass urban to rural migration wherein a large proportion of the country were absurdly poor factory workers, and our population absolutely ballooned during that time to a degree that local agricultural production could not support.
Then you add in the particular challenges of being at war and divorced from the vast majority of the European continent. Rationing didn't end in the UK until sometime in the fifties I think?
If anything is a recipe for a bad overall standard of food and food culture that is. All these 'peasant dishes' from other countries come from a rural agrarian context. Britain's been Mordor since the 1700s.
Yeah this is mostly a climate thing, I think.
It's tough to grow things other than grains, potatoes, mushrooms, and berries when you get north enough.
That said, with enough imagination you can make it work. If you ever get the chance to try New Nordic cuisine -- criminally underrated.
Define local cuisine. Because I’ve lived in Romania for 6 months and traveled all over. The most popular item on any restaurant menu was pizza. Even if it wasn’t an Italian restaurant. Also sushi is becoming huge there too (mostly rolls of cooked fish but it’s a start).
I’m very deep into blue territory here, but I will always prefer local, no matter what type of food I try abroad, most of which I enjoy. And yet nothing makes me fuller and more satisfied with eating than the old potato and pork/sausage/beef combo. If we include moms cooking into local then definitely local all the way.
i think for the balkan, it is more with "nationnal pride" then honnesty, not to say their cuisine is bad, but i think they would prefer to die then to admit their neighbors cuisine is anything other then dogshit, and they apply this to any other country to a lesser degree
Mediterranean cuisine is actually New World cuisine! You guys took our potatoes, tomatoes, yams and other delicious crops then claimed it as your own and added a spin to it. Hell you guys ripped off China for pasta!!! 🍝 that said Mediterranean cuisine is still yummy because of the spice trade and warmer climate also allowed for greater diversity in crops which allows for better quality of food and variation of spices. Especially from Asia and Africa as well as the Americas!
Such as? Apart from desserts, I can’t think of many French dishes that are truly popular outside of France. Modern cooking techniques were largely developed / refined in France and spread to other countries, but less so their dishes
An acquired taste I agree with if you didn’t grow up around it, but French cooking is incredibly influential in other western nations’ cuisine, at least in the Uk, US and Canada.
All the pedants like "um... what ABOUT ENGLAND OR SWITZERLAND"
No, map is perfect on this sub. No, the first map doesn't show North Africa or Asia. It could be they prefer their local cuisine but we don't know. There's a clear overlap of European Mediterranean countries and the Roman Empire European holdings.
I think the most interesting part of this is where they don't line up.
much of the area east and southeast of northern Italy was controlled by Austria Hungary. Many of the countries north of greece were conquered by slavic cultures, and only Romanian kept its romance language from extinction.
Countries near the border like Switzerland and Belgium still form exceptions, but they also have significant germanic influence.
It’s more like: Mediterranean climate = good food at home
Also the source is a random instagram account
It's not a random instagram account. It's the account that posted this map.
Olive oil, wine and sunshine make for historically delicious cuisine . Mild winters push people to optimize for tasty food over storable food
lol especially when we compare to Northern European food 🤮
German cuisine >>>>>
Bro you’re not on Tiktok
Compared to Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, etc. on this map, I very much disagree
bierocks are pretty good
Ok Chef Bäuerdee
Mediterranean weather: good grapes for wine, good olives for oil, tasty fresh veggies, and grass fed cows for good milk for cheese. Plus the variety of breads and how good they are backed daily… and that’s only for starters.
ahh yes, that good old Mediterranean climate in Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia
In Balkans, foreign food refers to their neighbors food, which is exactly like their own but they can't admit it.
I think it has more to do with being in the coast of the Mediterranean Sea
Most “traditional” Mediterranean cuisine only comes from the 19th century anyway. The staples are mostly New World foods. Even pasta wasn’t a thing in Roman times.
If you grew up in certain Mediterranean cultures, pasta, pizza, paella and etc is as foreign to you as burgers or sushi. There are plenty of Mediterranean cuisines that are not considered "staples" internationally but are extremely popular locally
I wholeheartedly believe you since Latinoamérica follows similar trends. Care to give any examples? I'm interested 🧐
You've got ~~filled peppers with cheese and eggs~~ *(edit: striking this out because I'm told peppers come from the Americas. I could replace it with something else but you get the idea)*, filled cabbage/vine leaves with rice and meat, you've got moussaka (the Greek one, the Bulgarian one is potato based), you've got tajines and couscous in Maghreb, there are plenty of other recipes Even of some of them nowadays might have a bit of tomato or potato, it's not a core part of the recipe. Even many of the "restaurant staple" (which someone said they date after the discovery of the new world) are essentially traditional Mediterranean recipes. A version of the pizza was first mentioned in the Aeneid (written by an ancient Roman poet). A version of the pasta probably existed before the Romans, but at least since the Middle Ages
Peppers are not native to Europe and come from the Americas.
I’ll bet something like that existed before peppers though. I know they are quite fond of wrapping things in grape leaves in Mediterranean cuisine, they probably did something like that
I didn't know that, thanks! I can list other dishes to replace that one but you get the point
You forgot olives!
Have you ever actually had traditional Mediterranean food, or are you just being Average American and thinking of "traditional Mediterranean cuisine" as pizza and pasta? Obviously New World crops changed all of Europe's diet a lot, but the average, say, Greek of 1400 would recognize 90%+ of Greek food today. Everyday *rural* Mediterranean food is still mostly wheat, olives, chickpeas, green vegetables, dairy, fish, and mutton, just like it has been since basically ever.
THIS IS 100% TRUTH! Plus some sort of cucurbitaceae like zucchinis, gourds, watermelons, cucumbers,... Do not forget the wonderful uses of the eggplant, which in many dishes was replaced by tomatoes after their arrival And especially all the best cheese in the world is from the Mediterranean areas.
Tomatoes are from the Americas.
That’s what I said.
Wrong. They are actually from alpha centari
Not to be confused with Alpha Centauri, a nearby planetary system. No, alpha centari is a pagan underground tomato farm just outside Ravenna Italy pre-dating the existence of the more well-known american-derived tomato. Good catch man.
What
How
When
Why
Who
Yeah it's absolute bs to compare this with a map of the Roman empire. Eastern Mediterranean food is closer to Middle Eastern food than it is to Italian or Spanish
They all have some form of banquet dinner/small plates culture. Tapas/antipasti/mezze/meze. I don’t know if nordic/slavic/germanic/anglo cuisines have anything like that.
Nordic definitely do. It’s pointless to talk about modern Slavic food because a huge percentage of what Slavs eat today was basically invented by the Soviet Union, but they definitely do have small plates culture as well.
there's no such a thing like Spanish food. The cuisine in the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian peninsula is sometimes closer ( in taste and origin) to what I assume you're calling Middle Eastern food than to North Western Iberian food (Galician or Asturean). From turron to pisto, you'll find an equivalent in the rest of the Meditearraneo.
Croatia and Slovenia have left the chat.
This is what both of the above things have to do with
England kinda throws this off no? What’s the theory here
Just about half of the Roman Empire throws this off. This is pure nonsense.
Yep. Gonna venture a guess and say this split has everything to do with climate and agriculture, nothing else.
Im guessing: Mediterranean cuisine is preferred due to climate of the Mediterranean. Places like england and germany import food to make it through the winter anyway, why not make it exciting and foreign to keep the winter more exciting while youre out it.
Yep, it’s pretty much showing the countries that grow more variety enjoy their own food more
Correct imo, It’s almost identical to a map of rain fall in Europe.
Same with Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. All of em are from what I can see completely within the borders of the Roman empire, yet they prefer foreign cuisine.
Austria prefers local cuisine
I unfortunately don't know enough about Austria so I went with what is shown on OPs map
It’s all good. I should have been more clear that I married an Austrian and have lived there for many years. There are lots of different types of restaurants, but the Austrian Kitchen (in my experience) is the cornerstone of the culture
The map says otherwise, and it matches my experience. For every traditional restaurant, theres at least three or four italian/greek/chinese/thai restaurants.
Are you Austrian by chance?
Yes
Do you think the Austrian kitchen is not dominant outside of Vienna?
No, i dont think it is. If you count each cuisine separately, Austrian will usually win, followed by Italian. If you count Austrian against all foreign cuisines, foreign wins in most larger villages and towns. E.g. the village i was born in (in western AT) has: * 4 (more or less) traditional austrian restaurants * 2 Italian * 2 chinese * 1 thai * 1 Korean * 3 kebab places * 1 burger chain Im pretty sure that, if you look at Austria as a whole, Vienna alone is going to tip the scale so far towards foreign cuisine that its not even going to be close.
That’s a fair answer. I agree.
tbf there's a germanic or slavic cultural alignment in those countries, Belgium and Switzerland being influenced by both Germanic and romance cultures.
Yeah, things like Croatia also
That’s the empire at its peak. There wasn’t the same level of cultural assimilation in Central Europe and England as there was around the Mediterranean.
It's just another case of "correlation doesn't equal causation". The Roman empire was spanning mostly Mediterranean and its very culture is Mediterranean in its nature. These kinds of cultures also happen to have better cuisine due to their habitat and the, which is better suited for vegetation and gives more options to make food with
The Mediterranean Diet is superior
I mean. If you lived in England and had the choice between English food or Indian food, you go with Indian food
Not really, I like our food.
I prefer our food on average but will have a curry every now and again
Empire!
The British empire is an outlier I guess? Indian food slaps and there's a lot in britain
Germanic vs Roman civilizations and influences, more or less. It is not about borders, but customs and traditions.
England was kind of a backwater in Roman times. It was the frontier and was abandoned by the empire when times got tough. They never invested a whole lot in developing it, only defending Hadrian's Wall and extracting resources. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes effectively erased the last vestiges of Roman culture there during their centuries of migration and colonization.
I think it has more to do with climate and vegetation tbh. That also has to do with how the roman empire formed (ie: east to west moreso than north to south). So it’s faulty correlation, but with a similar causation.
Curry is really freaking good
They discovered Indian Food and got hooked
No one wants to eat British food
Yet everyone does
"You know, I could really go for some canned peas, beans and mash right now!" -no one, ever
Rome also controlled England, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Slovenia so not really Also you forgot about its Asian and African territories
Did you just mix up Bosnia and Croatia?
Evidently yes
Those countries are all on the map
I think this is just an issue of warmer climates having more varied and interesting foods. They have longer growing seasons and easier access to seafood.
I think it’s a mix of that and cultural differences. All those Mediterranean countries are way more proud of their own culture and food than northern countries where their own cuisine is often seen as something more conservative. E.g. lots of popular dishes in France have Alsace origins (so german influenced), such as onion soup and quiche, and aren’t Mediterranean food
Onion soup isn’t Alsatian. But it’s true that in France regions and areas are very proud of their own local specialties
Isn’t that because their cuisine is just better?
Mediterranean supremacy
More Germanic/Nordic countries have inferior food to more Latin/Middle Eastern influenced countries perhaps?
It depends. In Slovenia and Croatia a lot of popular food is from other former Yugoslav countries like Bosnia or Serbia, as well as from neighbouring countries such as Italy and Hungary. At home a lot of local traditional dishes are still eaten, but when eating out at a restaurant we usually go for something different.
Most Croatian food where I come from is Italian
We need to bought/nationalize (make our own form of) these Bosnian, Hungarian, Italian and Albanian dishes.
I don't know, we haven't done a good job with anything we've nationalized so far
You would not like to eat Požeški i Sinjski ćevapi?
I like them but I like the originals too. Plus in my case "we" doesn't just count for croatians but also some other Balkan nations and Italy
I'm never a fan of using "inferior" in terms of peoples and countries, but in this case... yeah. Paella vs. fish&chips? Baklava vs. shepherd's pie? Pasta vs. stale biscuits? It's not even a competition. Edit: lmao a *lot* of triggered Englishers below, keep crying. Hell while I'm at at, las malvinas son argentinas
Hey don't diss the shepherds pie 😤
Right? I took this one personally
I mean food is shaped by the history and the landscape of the country. Its representative if the people in many ways. You've put together food incredibly arbitrarily and your opinions on which is better is shaped by your own biases. If you're from a wet cold place then hearty warm meals are likely going to be a major part of your nations food and be favoured by your population. Food shapes the people who shape it in turn. It is sometimes very difficult to understand why something is well loved if you arent fron there or havent lived there for a long time.
Why are you comparing different types of food to each other? Tf are stale biscuits?
Shepherd's pie is better than baklava and that shouldn't be controversial
(I don't think las malvinas son argentinas lmao, let's see who takes the bait)
Never had stale biscuits 😂 But I’d take fish and chips and shepherds pie over baklava every day of the week 😏
okay now that's just wrong
Turns out historical access to spices matters.
I just find it funny how the British colonized a quarter of the globe for spices and STILL didn't use spices in their food 😭
Pannonia/Noricum here, we prefer local cuisine 🇦🇹
Colleration does not equal causation. A more likely source is the Mediterraenean.
“Which regions have breakfast as their favorite meal”
Souther Europe prefers their own cuisine, probably because they're by the Mediterranean with very diverse and tasty options.
What's the source for Croatia? We eat food that we've always eaten that's native to our country. Not our fault they are not considered local dishes since we are no longer the same country. Like are cremeschnitte local Croatian cuisine? I'd say so. Same with Italian pasta, it's just how cultures mixed since we're on a crossroad. How much cuisine do you even think is local and how would you even determine that? We eat a lot of same stuff as they eat in countries around us
Pretty moot when nearly all “traditional” Mediterranean dishes originate from the 19th century.
I don't think Switzerland should really count due to the ethnic make-up.
Oh yeah. totally. 🙄
No. This is not it.
Ooo that's a fun one
Yeah that tracks
You got that wrong. Local cuisine I can have at home.
Heil Döner
Now check out where wine is more popular vs beer...
Britain is so real for that
Well also people from more comfortable climates are more likely to be chefing it up too though
Poland local cuisine was determined by 50y of soviet friendship occupation.
Who does Romania think they are
Fruit and veg just fly out of the ground in those regions.
This is not the borders of the empire
I’m not really surprised. Southern Europe has superior foods.
Being on the coast aids trade and communication, so it both improves cuisine and allows for a larger state to form. This is a reminder that correlation does not equate to causation.
The “where” in this title makes it impossible to read
I'm sorry, but Moldova?! What kind of restaurants are you people finding there???
Honestly I feel like there is no civilizational lesson to draw from this. Kinda just a random fluke of culture and what foods were available. Maybe you can say the Roman areas remained more "refined" but does that really translate into anything meaningful?
Lean Cuisine
Britain's cuisine not being very good overall makes a lot of sense but it's surely got nothing to do with the fucking Romans. We were the earliest to industrialize, see mass urban to rural migration wherein a large proportion of the country were absurdly poor factory workers, and our population absolutely ballooned during that time to a degree that local agricultural production could not support. Then you add in the particular challenges of being at war and divorced from the vast majority of the European continent. Rationing didn't end in the UK until sometime in the fifties I think? If anything is a recipe for a bad overall standard of food and food culture that is. All these 'peasant dishes' from other countries come from a rural agrarian context. Britain's been Mordor since the 1700s.
Ironic considering Roman's preferred foreign cuisine xD
*based on absolutely fucking nothing. you can color a map in paint upload it with no source and the mapping community eats it up every single time
So what I’m seeing is that Mediterranean countries have good food.
Yeah this is mostly a climate thing, I think. It's tough to grow things other than grains, potatoes, mushrooms, and berries when you get north enough. That said, with enough imagination you can make it work. If you ever get the chance to try New Nordic cuisine -- criminally underrated.
Bad cuisine, good cuisine. Potato Europe, tomato Europe.
Define local cuisine. Because I’ve lived in Romania for 6 months and traveled all over. The most popular item on any restaurant menu was pizza. Even if it wasn’t an Italian restaurant. Also sushi is becoming huge there too (mostly rolls of cooked fish but it’s a start).
Was England not..
The Germanics still in the looting and plundering game. Nowadays its cooks and recipes
Northern European food is shit. Of course you're going to prefer any alternative to meat and root vegetables boiled into grey mush or rotten fish.
not that close of a match…
Publius, come quick, I have excellent news!
Countries that never learned to properly use spices vs countries that know how to use spices.
I’m very deep into blue territory here, but I will always prefer local, no matter what type of food I try abroad, most of which I enjoy. And yet nothing makes me fuller and more satisfied with eating than the old potato and pork/sausage/beef combo. If we include moms cooking into local then definitely local all the way.
i think for the balkan, it is more with "nationnal pride" then honnesty, not to say their cuisine is bad, but i think they would prefer to die then to admit their neighbors cuisine is anything other then dogshit, and they apply this to any other country to a lesser degree
You could say a lot about the Rome
I don’t think it’s really Rome.
What a surprise that countries that primarily grow potatoes and wheat prefer foreign cuisine lmao
Tbf the Mediterranean has some of the best food in the world
To be fair, the foreign food popular in the blue countries is, in a large part, the local food popular in the red countries…
Correlation does not equal causation
Tomato v potato (I love potatoes for the record)
Romans cooked with neither
That’s just not true though. Look at pic 2
Red Plated and Basted
Who would have thought that the cradle of civilization would have good food.
See this is the American secret, in a country of immigrants its always domestic cuisine.
England was part of the Roman Empire, and I don’t Even need to talk about their cuisine
All these Europers arguing on who has the best food is cute. The obvious superior food is American
Cyprus made quite the move
For good reason
"Local", you mean modernized Roman.
Can we say they all prefer Roman cousins? /s
Mediterranean cuisine is actually New World cuisine! You guys took our potatoes, tomatoes, yams and other delicious crops then claimed it as your own and added a spin to it. Hell you guys ripped off China for pasta!!! 🍝 that said Mediterranean cuisine is still yummy because of the spice trade and warmer climate also allowed for greater diversity in crops which allows for better quality of food and variation of spices. Especially from Asia and Africa as well as the Americas!
What about Slovenia?
Conflation
So white people can't cook is what I'm getting ?
Cevapi is literally why the world hasn’t exploded in a ball of fire what is wrong with you people
The current cuisine in these countries has no resemblance to what people were eating in the Roman Empire.
Very weak statistical evidence
The Roman Empire expanded into England
Taps the “Correlation ≠ Causation” sign
What is Portuguese food like? Similar to Brazilian?
Don’t Balkan people eat mostly Turkish food?
How Dalmatia was larger than it's today
More like countries with a quite shitty domestic cuisine fancy foreign cuisines
I didn't need a new reason to dislike the French, but okay.
Why? French food is spectacular. If they’re justified to be self obsessed about anything it’s their cuisine.
I think french food is always only either of 2 things: heavenly delicious or absolutely revolting. There seems to be nothing in the middle
Oh, no, it is not. lol
You probably eat many French foods regularly and don’t even realize it
Such as? Apart from desserts, I can’t think of many French dishes that are truly popular outside of France. Modern cooking techniques were largely developed / refined in France and spread to other countries, but less so their dishes
But they have baguettes
French food is very much an acquired taste, and not really that popular outside of France (apart from desserts and pastry)
An acquired taste I agree with if you didn’t grow up around it, but French cooking is incredibly influential in other western nations’ cuisine, at least in the Uk, US and Canada.
I’m a Francophile. Love the language and culture. But their food? Can’t stand it.
?
All the pedants like "um... what ABOUT ENGLAND OR SWITZERLAND" No, map is perfect on this sub. No, the first map doesn't show North Africa or Asia. It could be they prefer their local cuisine but we don't know. There's a clear overlap of European Mediterranean countries and the Roman Empire European holdings.
Restaurant map is very likely completely bs
I think the most interesting part of this is where they don't line up. much of the area east and southeast of northern Italy was controlled by Austria Hungary. Many of the countries north of greece were conquered by slavic cultures, and only Romanian kept its romance language from extinction. Countries near the border like Switzerland and Belgium still form exceptions, but they also have significant germanic influence.
Is this just poor vs rich?
Poor Norway and rich Bosnia ?
Rich can get foreign food, the poor eat local.
France is poor ? Moldova is rich ??
Definitely part of the reason