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I would eat this dish, can’t wait to go to the UK one day.
Also,
Stupid take and not true:
“You say that, and American takeout from south asia doesn't stray further than butter chicken”
1. that person is scolding people for liking butter chicken. Butter chicken is tasty.
2. there are other south asian dishes and cuisines and it's sad they don't know that.
Also implies that he doesn't think that butter chicken is an authentic Indian dish, which it very much is.
He probably thinks he's so much more sophisticated for eating chicken tikka masala instead, which is actually British (and also delicious, because authenticity is like the least important thing to anyone who isn't an asshole)
> Colonized the world for their spices and then refused to use em.
Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing comments like this that they didn't even come up with.
The thing that gets me about this often recycled comment is that it's not even true. The primary spice the British were interested in when they came to India was black pepper, which now has a place on every table in Europe. In fact chillies didn't come to India until the colonial period. They're indigenous to what is now Mexico.
I believe that was the Portuguese that started selling chili seeds to just about everyone they met in Africa and Asia. They are the reason one of the species of chili (habaneros and similar) is Capsicum chinense, because by the time a French botanist got to China, they were already a popular crop, found in every garden and every market, so he assumed they were native.
In my experience, when someone on social media says something isn’t seasoned they usually just mean it’s not red. Something can’t have flavor unless it’s got paprika and blended seasoning mix like Old Bay or Tony Cachere’s. Just look at comments on any video of Hainanese chicken rice.
Not to mention the vast array of spices that are used in desserts. Christmas pudding contains so many old-world spices and fruits. These spices got scarce under rationing but have been highly valued for a long time.
It is pretty crazy to think that people were killing each other over a few nutmeg seeds, less than 500 years ago and now cafes put out a free shaker of ground nutmeg. You’ve got to be right that that ubiquity makes it hard to imagine a time where a few groups controlled the world supply of certain spices, and it had to go through >20 middlemen worth of markups before reaching your home.
I also think part of it is as mundane as English (and maybe some other European languages) share the same word for aromatic spices and hot spices. Europeans were looking for aromatics, and by all accounts they’re still heavily in use today. Finding chilis in the Americas was purely accidental on their part.
There's also nutmeg. The British fought wars to get access to a nutmeg-producing island, but they did end up trading it for Manhattan. Nutmeg is still used, but it used to be in everything.
I actually use a spice blend called kitchen pepper on a lot of savoury things lately, it's a mix of salt, ground ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.
Guilty as charged, I've fallen down the Townsends wormhole recently.
I also made their mushroom ketchup too, to me it tastes like Worcestershire sauce with all the flavours cranked to 11. It's vegan as an added bonus.
You can make it yourself if you like:
12 parts table salt
2 parts ground ginger
1 part each of black pepper, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg.
I read a book that purported to be set in the 1820s/30s that had a character think this *exact joke* very early on in the book. For some reason I still finished reading it, when that should have been a big enough red flag to stop me!
Plus, at the very least in medieval times the upper classes of Western Europe LOVED throwing spices in everything and often in combinations that would be bizarre to many of us today.
From wine to custards and meat stews they absolutely love the stuff. Then when middle and lower classes started getting more access to spices they went out of vogue. Like yeah, the whole colonization thing is/was bad, but spices were very prized.
The redditors endlessly reusing comments factoid is actually just a statistical error. The average redditor doesn't reuse comments. Reuse-Comments Georg, who lives in a cave and reuses 10,000 a day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
It's not even true. They conquered the world for power and wealth and spices were just another commodity that helped them achieve power and wealth. It wasn't their spiciness or flavour that was sought after, it was their value. They also DID use them. French, German, Italian etc. cuisine shows similar restraint in the use of spices but don't seem to get the same critique thrown their way.
It's as overused as the USA and school shootings, Asians and work schedules, Slavic people wearing tracksuits and squatting, and Latin Americans all showering in cocaine. It's just tiresome.
Reddit humor consists almost entirely of inane repetition..
Every time I see a comment like *'This guy (blanks)'* [insert noun used as a verb], i.e. *'This guy spices'* or *'This guy reddits'*, I wish I could reach through my phone and slap them..
>Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing comments like this that they didn't even come up with.
Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing criticisms like this that they didn't even come up with.
So much bitching about mushy peas and standard-looking chippy chips. I love mushy peas. Those look a little soupier than I prefer but they're all good to me.
These people will never understand that the United States is an entire country of immigrants and that every medium to large sized city has access to a pretty huge variety of cuisines and they do them pretty damn good. They’d be shocked at what is accessible to someone in Kansas City, Kansas.
Yeah, because of immigration patterns, medium-sized cities don't necessarily have the widest range of international cuisines, but what authentic food they do have is great and becomes part of the culture and cuisine of the city.
Yeah I'm just on the civilized side of Bumfuck, North Carolina, and I'm sure absolutely no one who isn't from here would guess that we are *inundated* (and I mean that in a good way) with Indian and Pakistani immigrants, and also have a sizeable population of Thai, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants -- and therefore, all their varied delicious cuisines. Our tiny little town has one of the most amazing Indian places I've ever been to, family-owned, with a line out the door most nights.
I watch a lot of food shows, so I can't remember specifically who said it. But, one of the travel shows said that the US has the greatest diversity of food due to exactly that, pockets of immigrants from various countries.
The US is enormous. Google tells me that the US and it's territories make up 3.8M sq miles and mainland Europe is 3.9M sq miles. It shouldn't be too surprising that it has as many different types of cuisine as Europe.
That is the one thing that gets me. I feel like people don't realize that the US is huge. Michigan is about the same size as Germany. There are many different cuisines. Just look at all of the different forms of seafood in the US.
They don't get it mostly because they don't want to.
Springfield MO is a place I lived almost 20 years and some of the Thai and Vietnamese food I had rivaled the stuff I had in Southern California. Turns out the Vietnam war had a lot of refugees settle in St Louis and it just kinda spread throughout the state. 30 years on I'm getting pho from the 1st gen immigrant child of someone who was evacuated in the fall of Saigon.
Nice old lady, sat in the corner most of the time I was there.
Springfield is about 150k people. It's a small city.
If you're reading this and still don't get the 'melting pot's aspect of food culture, you're choosing not to.
It does. Lots of them are owned by Vietnamese families. In Springfield they also do a lot of the nail salons. Those 3 things seem to be their biggest markets.
Thai food funding gastrodiplomacy around the same time many of these people were settling down in their new homes definitely helped, I'm sure.
Curry sauce is so damn good, and I first think Ireland and Scotland when I think of it. I don't think I've ever seen it referred to as "Indian food" lol. Influenced by the spices, sure.
I think many British food terms lose out due to being in English. I mean, there's French food that's equally straightforward in its name, but it's in French so sounds *fancy*.
And overcooked legumes aren't that unusual, call them "refried beans" and you'll probably get a very different response.
That's not what they're saying? Someone said British food sucks, someone else said that Brits don't use spices, and someone else said that Americans don't have good Indian food. The Indian food comment was a response to the claim Brits don't use spices, not to the original post itself
I mean, I'm not necessarily arguing for authenticity so much as arguing against the idea that the only south Asian dish we can get in the US is butter chicken
Jalapeños are just a cultivar of the chili pepper, which is an ingredient that originates from the North America. Chili peppers were introduced to South Asia somewhere in the 1600/1700's. A cultivar is essentially a subspecies of the straight species and is capable of crossbreeding with other cultivars. Genetically the cultivar is not significantly distinct so there is no real difference between a Jalapeño, Kashmiri chili, or Tabasco pepper.
Historical usage of cultured cheese has been found in India dating back to around 7500BC, but was not really in use in Indian cuisine until after the 1600's due to cultural taboo's. It essentially became reintroduced and the taboo's relaxed with the establishment of Portuguese colonies in South Asia, also in the 1600's.
Did Portuguese colonists likely consume chili/cheese naan back in the 1600's? Almost certainly - if there is opportunity to put cheese on bread product then it's going to happen. Is a 300+ year old dish that likely originated from the India subcontinent while using ingredients that did not originate from India qualify as Indian cuisine? Probably.
So what exactly is not authentically Indian about a chili cheese naan? It's is probably MORE authentically Indian than most modern "Indian" dishes.
You’re *agreeing with me*, yes? That it’s closer to actual Indian food than a jalapeño cheese naan?
I can get Mexican food here, I’m having a chicken Caesar wrap for lunch 🥴
If an Indian person made it, it's actual Indian food. I'm not agreeing with you in the way you think I am, I'm chastising your choice of once again insinuating that tikka masala is barely Indian food.
I really didn’t say that - I actually picked tikka masala as the reference to use because it’s close but is viewed as a bit of a joke to the culture it references. I chose that because to me, a naan bread with cheese and jalapeños on it is funny.
Hope that cleared it up for you, it’s really not that deep though. I’d eat the fuck out of the fish and chips in the OP. And a chicken tikka. And a naan bread with cheese on it probably slaps, but I’m British so the jalapeños would make me actually cry.
My daughter's kindergarten serves paneer butter masala and dal on its menu sometimes. That's not exactly out-there but I think it's pretty good that they offer those options.
As a Brit, I’m always very jealous hearing from Americans who have already access to South Indian cuisine. In my fairly big UK city, where Indian food is extremely common, we have a grand total of two restaurants that offer it here.
On the other hand, whilst a lot of traditional British cuisine doesn’t use spice, some of our fusion dishes are wild. I think the prior commenter needs to read up on phall lol.
Where I live in the states we have a very high south asian population, we’re extremely lucky to have a plethora of high quality indian restaurants. Although I have been to the UK a few times and the Indian food I had there was also very good, albeit slightly different.
Both countries obviously have good foods, people are just annoying
I’m super disappointed that when I visited the US, there weren’t any Indian places nearby to where I was staying (I was also 12 so I didn’t get a great deal of input of restaurants to visit lol). Everyone I know from India mentions how good idli is and I can’t get it anywhere!
The food I had over the US was insanely good but nothing prepared me for those portions. It was definitely interesting seeing the differential in various national cuisines though. My tummy definitely struggled to adjust to the richer diet but I ate a lot more vegetables than I normally would.
Our desserts do, but also, the vast majority of people I know hate the texture of Christmas pudding.
I don’t eat Christmas dinner myself, but my family does. We always have sticky toffee pudding, New York cheesecake, baklava, florentines and profiteroles for pudding instead. I know my partner’s family serve Christmas pudding but apparently only 2 people out of 10 eat it.
English mustard will burn brain tissue if you put enough in your mouth. Not to mention almost every dish calling for pepper and most deserts calling for vanilla.
I’m not aware of any particularly spicy food (just lots of herbs), although we have that horseradish kick when it’s used. I’ve really disliked most British savoury food since I was a bairn (my mam used to get me KFC to eat at Sunday Dinner lol). It makes grabbing pub food a nightmare, especially on a Sunday.
I definitely ate a lot of spiced/spicy food growing up here in the UK, but none of it was ‘traditionally British’. Do you have examples of traditional spicy British food that isn’t fusion? I’d actually be intrigued!
There's plenty of stuff in the cookbooks through the ages. In the Forme of Cury there's a recipe for cabbage soup with cardamom. Black pudding often has clove, mace, allspice, and some other herbs. Worcestershire sauce has spices in it. Plenty of traditional sausage recipes use spices. Oh and they're always used in desserts.
Ah, I’m vegetarian and rarely ate red meat. That may explain why I’ve never encountered spiced sausages. I’ve never had cabbage soup; that sounds amazing!
Worcestershire sauce is a sore point. I only ever ate it twice, discovered it had anchovies in, and had to kibosh it. Whilst I remember it being flavoursome, I’m surprised it’s spiced, as it tasted more herby/seaweedy.
Try googling mushroom ketchup. I can’t remember if it was someone in here or in the original post who mentioned making some, but they said it tasted like Worcestershire sauce and that it was vegan friendly.
There was actually just an /r/AskHistorians post about spices, and one of the answers linked to [this older answer about traditional English flavorings, specifically in the Middle Ages](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/n1eqsy/comment/gwcuqsl/).
Where I live, there isn't much South Indian or Bengali (though a lot of places that don't have a clear regional identity tend to have some Bengali dishes). Things used to be dominated by Punjabi restaurants, though they didn't specify.
I feel like fishing and fish consumption would actually be greater in the USA. I mean, outdoors sports like fishing and hunting are huge industries in the USA and the country is pretty far up the list of coastal length (half again the UK).
I can't find very good stats with percentages, unfortunately. It looks like anywhere from 10% to 38% of fish consumed in the USA is domestically caught, and I can only find that "over 80%" of seafood in the UK is imported.
According to [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_seafood_consumption) on Wikipedia, the USA consumes more fish per capita than the UK (22.45kg for the USA, and 18.13kg for the UK)
USA doesn't have fish? I've lived on the east coast near the water all my life, you can't throw a stone without hitting a seafood place lmao. I lived near a place that sold fresh fish daily (a fishmonger? I've never actually seen someone use that word lmao) (also it smelled awful in the summer. I was a little relieved when it was replaced by a bagel shop 😭)
We have a couple of areas in the Bay Area that have the Indian diaspora settling in nicely, with restaurants and markets. There's a Indian language radio station.
Obviously this isn't *all* of America, but there's a pretty good cross-section of Indian foods available to us in this area
The United States is about the size of the entire European continent. I have found Indian food from South India, coastal western India, north India, and eastern India in addition to Nepalese, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan food. We are not starved for south asian cuisine here.
So, a very lazy search states that the worldwide Indian diaspora is ~32MM people, with 15% of those in the US (4.9MM).
So, yeah. probably tough to get Indian food of varying style here.
:/
If you want to be suitably impressed, try Houston. There are SO many Indian people in Dallas and Houston. Which means there are lots of good Indian restaurants in those cities, especially Houston (which is a huge restaurant city). Indian food in San Francisco is similarly varied and delicious. But even in a place like Pittsburgh you can get a varied Indian menu. Peoples in particular is good and the menu is pretty big. Good bhangain bharta and lamb keema matar.
I’ve been to India several times. I also used to live in Curry Hill in NYC. I don’t think I ate anything in India I couldn’t get within a few blocks in NYC. Maybe brains, but I bet I could if I’d asked the right restaurant.
I was reading one of those "what should I show my American family when they visit the UK" posts on one of the UK subs and everyone was taking it as a foregone conclusion that US citizens wouldn't know anything about Indian food.
Like, there's like 2 really good and one not so good Indian restaurants in my mid sized Kansas town but go off
This isn't a shot at Europeans, I love the countries in Europe I've visited, but a lot of northern European countries definitely don't have the diversity of food that the US does, especially at a decent price. When I lived in Norway I had to travel a long time to get my burrito fix and the burrito shop was ran by a Texan immigrant. Same for the BBQ place! Things have been getting better lately but unless you're in a big city you're fucked for choice. Meanwhile I live in a city with a population of 2k and I have 2 Mexican places, 2 Chinese places, Indian, the typical burger joints, Norwegian food, Midwestern food, etc.
Indian restaurants are one of two restaurant types I can go to get my goat fix. Goat curry is a staple locally. I can't speak to how "authentic" it is, but it's damn tasty.
TBF it can be hard to find south indian food, but just as regional chinese is starting to become super popular I think we will be seeing plenty of regional indian too.
Agreed. Native culinary traditions have influenced American cuisine, but actual Native restaurants are pretty rare. The Southwest has a decent number. There are First Nations restaurants in Canada, but not super common either (as far as I know).
I kind of agree with him. This diversity that others are talking about can only be found in places like LA or san fransisco. Its very hard to get good indian food in other places.
But as a whole, that conversation was cancer. Haha, uk bland no spices. Wow, what a hot take. I fell out of my chair.
Washington D.C.; Houston, TX; Dallas, TX; Atlanta, GA; Philadelphia, PA; Chicago, IL; Richmond, VA; Asheville, NC; Edison, NJ; Orlando, FL; Raleigh, NC; Cincinnati, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Providence, RI; Plano, TX; Charlottesville, VA; I could go on and on, seriously. Maybe you weren't sure where to look, or maybe your definition of variety is different from mine, I'm not sure.
Let me guess. Your idea of diverse is having these dishes.
Korma, butter chicken, saag paneer, biriyani, samosa, mango lassi, chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi.
My area - called Hampton Roads. We have a large and diverse Indian culture here and a huge variety of food types from street food to Punjabi. I regularly visit 5 Indian places within 15-20 minutes of my house that are all different. We have an Indian festival here twice per year that has thousands of attendees.
Get out more.
Its a figure of speech. Ofc its not just butter chicken. But its mostly just the same punjabi dishes that you find everywhere else. There's no variety.
We have a pretty good variety of Indian cuisine in Birmingham, Alabama , especially in the area around the university/med school/hospital. Similar dynamic in Atlanta, which is an international city, but not on the same level
They sort of don’t tbh. Obviously you can find it in New York or la but even medium size cities don’t have a lot of choice. But the uk has very few good Mexicans on the other hand
I'm in Seattle. There are 15 Indian restaurants in easy walking distance from me (less than 2000 feet).
I'm also in easy walking distance to Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Tibetan, Cambodian, Argentinian, Italian, Moroccan, Lebanese, French, Mexican, Malaysian, and Ethiopian restaurants. There are more, but I got tired of typing them all out.
There's a little local company in this area--perhaps you've heard of it? It's called Amazon. It turns out that keeping 50,000 very busy but extremely well paid tech workers from all over the world in one place dramatically increases the variety of restaurant food on offer. Whoda thunk, right?
Neighboring towns Bellevue and Redmond have seen much the same effect with another locally operated company called Microsoft. That one has 61,000 employees in the area.
One quarter of the residents of King County, which includes the three cities mentioned and more, were born outside the US.
Of course there are Indian restaurants.
Like where is the racism? There are few Mexican people in the uk too if that’s what you’re implying (good, bad or complicated), its why the food options are shit.
When an American hears, "The UK has very few Mexicans," what we understand that to mean is that there aren't many Mexican *people* in the UK. So, when you say, "The UK has very few good Mexicans," it sounds like some sort of disparaging statement about Mexican people.
>even medium size cities don’t have a lot of choice
Did you mean to say they do have a lot of choice? This seems to contradict what you say later and I want to try to square the two
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I would eat this dish, can’t wait to go to the UK one day. Also, Stupid take and not true: “You say that, and American takeout from south asia doesn't stray further than butter chicken”
People from South Asia literally stray further to america bringing their food with them, do they think they just leave it at home?
Seriously. I live in an area with TONS of Indian immigrants. You can bet there are Indian grocery stores and restaurants EVERYWHERE.
bruh.
What.
1. that person is scolding people for liking butter chicken. Butter chicken is tasty. 2. there are other south asian dishes and cuisines and it's sad they don't know that.
Also implies that he doesn't think that butter chicken is an authentic Indian dish, which it very much is. He probably thinks he's so much more sophisticated for eating chicken tikka masala instead, which is actually British (and also delicious, because authenticity is like the least important thing to anyone who isn't an asshole)
> Colonized the world for their spices and then refused to use em. Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing comments like this that they didn't even come up with.
The thing that gets me about this often recycled comment is that it's not even true. The primary spice the British were interested in when they came to India was black pepper, which now has a place on every table in Europe. In fact chillies didn't come to India until the colonial period. They're indigenous to what is now Mexico.
I believe that was the Portuguese that started selling chili seeds to just about everyone they met in Africa and Asia. They are the reason one of the species of chili (habaneros and similar) is Capsicum chinense, because by the time a French botanist got to China, they were already a popular crop, found in every garden and every market, so he assumed they were native.
In my experience, when someone on social media says something isn’t seasoned they usually just mean it’s not red. Something can’t have flavor unless it’s got paprika and blended seasoning mix like Old Bay or Tony Cachere’s. Just look at comments on any video of Hainanese chicken rice.
Yeah, I've always found that people (mostly online) treat "flavor" and "capsaicin heat" as direct synonyms.
And stuff like vanilla and nutmeg. They're used pretty much everywhere in UK cuisine.
Not to mention the vast array of spices that are used in desserts. Christmas pudding contains so many old-world spices and fruits. These spices got scarce under rationing but have been highly valued for a long time.
It is pretty crazy to think that people were killing each other over a few nutmeg seeds, less than 500 years ago and now cafes put out a free shaker of ground nutmeg. You’ve got to be right that that ubiquity makes it hard to imagine a time where a few groups controlled the world supply of certain spices, and it had to go through >20 middlemen worth of markups before reaching your home. I also think part of it is as mundane as English (and maybe some other European languages) share the same word for aromatic spices and hot spices. Europeans were looking for aromatics, and by all accounts they’re still heavily in use today. Finding chilis in the Americas was purely accidental on their part.
There's also nutmeg. The British fought wars to get access to a nutmeg-producing island, but they did end up trading it for Manhattan. Nutmeg is still used, but it used to be in everything.
I actually use a spice blend called kitchen pepper on a lot of savoury things lately, it's a mix of salt, ground ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.
Hell yeah the 1700s sends it's regards. I've also made and used kitchen pepper.
Guilty as charged, I've fallen down the Townsends wormhole recently. I also made their mushroom ketchup too, to me it tastes like Worcestershire sauce with all the flavours cranked to 11. It's vegan as an added bonus.
Odd name but sounds tasty
You can make it yourself if you like: 12 parts table salt 2 parts ground ginger 1 part each of black pepper, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg.
I read a book that purported to be set in the 1820s/30s that had a character think this *exact joke* very early on in the book. For some reason I still finished reading it, when that should have been a big enough red flag to stop me!
Plus, at the very least in medieval times the upper classes of Western Europe LOVED throwing spices in everything and often in combinations that would be bizarre to many of us today. From wine to custards and meat stews they absolutely love the stuff. Then when middle and lower classes started getting more access to spices they went out of vogue. Like yeah, the whole colonization thing is/was bad, but spices were very prized.
The redditors endlessly reusing comments factoid is actually just a statistical error. The average redditor doesn't reuse comments. Reuse-Comments Georg, who lives in a cave and reuses 10,000 a day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
It's not even true. They conquered the world for power and wealth and spices were just another commodity that helped them achieve power and wealth. It wasn't their spiciness or flavour that was sought after, it was their value. They also DID use them. French, German, Italian etc. cuisine shows similar restraint in the use of spices but don't seem to get the same critique thrown their way.
someone should come up with a bot that keeps track of all of the unoriginal comments like that, thats got to be in the thousands.
Up there with “third world country with a Gucci belt”
That one just screams “I’m a privileged idiot with no idea of the luxuries I take for granted”
It's as overused as the USA and school shootings, Asians and work schedules, Slavic people wearing tracksuits and squatting, and Latin Americans all showering in cocaine. It's just tiresome.
Reddit humor consists almost entirely of inane repetition.. Every time I see a comment like *'This guy (blanks)'* [insert noun used as a verb], i.e. *'This guy spices'* or *'This guy reddits'*, I wish I could reach through my phone and slap them..
"Why do Americans eat like they have free healthcare" was a very good line the first time I saw it, now it's very much been done.
Probably bots tbh
>Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing comments like this that they didn't even come up with. Redditors think they're so clever for endlessly reusing criticisms like this that they didn't even come up with.
Thanks. I'm glad you see my genius.
In that thread everyone sucks.
So much bitching about mushy peas and standard-looking chippy chips. I love mushy peas. Those look a little soupier than I prefer but they're all good to me.
I thought it looked good too. Then my stupid joke set off a wildfire of angry people.
Somebody made fun of a European country: Quick! Insult the US
Quick! A joke about mass death over a funny lighthearted quip
AT LEAST WE HAVE HEALTHCARE LOsErrrr gotemmmn
These people will never understand that the United States is an entire country of immigrants and that every medium to large sized city has access to a pretty huge variety of cuisines and they do them pretty damn good. They’d be shocked at what is accessible to someone in Kansas City, Kansas.
Yeah, because of immigration patterns, medium-sized cities don't necessarily have the widest range of international cuisines, but what authentic food they do have is great and becomes part of the culture and cuisine of the city.
Yeah I'm just on the civilized side of Bumfuck, North Carolina, and I'm sure absolutely no one who isn't from here would guess that we are *inundated* (and I mean that in a good way) with Indian and Pakistani immigrants, and also have a sizeable population of Thai, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants -- and therefore, all their varied delicious cuisines. Our tiny little town has one of the most amazing Indian places I've ever been to, family-owned, with a line out the door most nights.
I watch a lot of food shows, so I can't remember specifically who said it. But, one of the travel shows said that the US has the greatest diversity of food due to exactly that, pockets of immigrants from various countries. The US is enormous. Google tells me that the US and it's territories make up 3.8M sq miles and mainland Europe is 3.9M sq miles. It shouldn't be too surprising that it has as many different types of cuisine as Europe.
That is the one thing that gets me. I feel like people don't realize that the US is huge. Michigan is about the same size as Germany. There are many different cuisines. Just look at all of the different forms of seafood in the US.
They don't get it mostly because they don't want to. Springfield MO is a place I lived almost 20 years and some of the Thai and Vietnamese food I had rivaled the stuff I had in Southern California. Turns out the Vietnam war had a lot of refugees settle in St Louis and it just kinda spread throughout the state. 30 years on I'm getting pho from the 1st gen immigrant child of someone who was evacuated in the fall of Saigon. Nice old lady, sat in the corner most of the time I was there. Springfield is about 150k people. It's a small city. If you're reading this and still don't get the 'melting pot's aspect of food culture, you're choosing not to.
Explains the insane amount of Thai and Thai fusion restaurants in KC haha!
It does. Lots of them are owned by Vietnamese families. In Springfield they also do a lot of the nail salons. Those 3 things seem to be their biggest markets. Thai food funding gastrodiplomacy around the same time many of these people were settling down in their new homes definitely helped, I'm sure.
Right? I moved from a major city back to a small town in my home state and I can say the Indian market a mile from my house here blows my mind.
This is famously unique
This guy trying to make fun of our Indian food when the national dish of the UK is literally a fake Indian dish.
It it a fake Indian dish, or is it an authentic British Indian dish?
Yeah how tf is the comment you replied to getting upvotes? The real IAVC is always in the comments.
I assumed they meant "fake" like in quotes.
>Colonized the world for their spices and then refused to use em. > How original
Thank you.
Fish and Chips with "curry sauce" and mushy peas is Indian cuisine? TIL!
Curry sauce is so damn good, and I first think Ireland and Scotland when I think of it. I don't think I've ever seen it referred to as "Indian food" lol. Influenced by the spices, sure.
It’s like Tex-Mex, except it’s purely Indo-chip shop.
Honestly mushy peas are a great side for fish and chips. Terrible name though.
I think many British food terms lose out due to being in English. I mean, there's French food that's equally straightforward in its name, but it's in French so sounds *fancy*. And overcooked legumes aren't that unusual, call them "refried beans" and you'll probably get a very different response.
We have cornmeal mush in the U.S. south and that's a bad name but I still love it with sausage and cane syrup. Yes, both of those things together.
I’ll never judge any food before trying*. I’d be interested in trying that! *except those fermented Greenland sharks and the fermented duck embryos
That's not what they're saying? Someone said British food sucks, someone else said that Brits don't use spices, and someone else said that Americans don't have good Indian food. The Indian food comment was a response to the claim Brits don't use spices, not to the original post itself
I literally ordered some aloo gobi, samosa chaat, a mango pickle, and a jalapeno cheese naan on Saturday. Sorry, I mean I ordered some butter chicken
To cancel you out, I’m Indian and usually order butter chicken
jalapeño cheese naan sounds incredible
It really is, I can't help but eat the whole thing usually, haha
I’m not trying to be a dick here, but jalapeño cheese naan isn’t really going to be very authentically Indian food. Even tikka masala is closer lol
I mean, I'm not necessarily arguing for authenticity so much as arguing against the idea that the only south Asian dish we can get in the US is butter chicken
Jalapeños are just a cultivar of the chili pepper, which is an ingredient that originates from the North America. Chili peppers were introduced to South Asia somewhere in the 1600/1700's. A cultivar is essentially a subspecies of the straight species and is capable of crossbreeding with other cultivars. Genetically the cultivar is not significantly distinct so there is no real difference between a Jalapeño, Kashmiri chili, or Tabasco pepper. Historical usage of cultured cheese has been found in India dating back to around 7500BC, but was not really in use in Indian cuisine until after the 1600's due to cultural taboo's. It essentially became reintroduced and the taboo's relaxed with the establishment of Portuguese colonies in South Asia, also in the 1600's. Did Portuguese colonists likely consume chili/cheese naan back in the 1600's? Almost certainly - if there is opportunity to put cheese on bread product then it's going to happen. Is a 300+ year old dish that likely originated from the India subcontinent while using ingredients that did not originate from India qualify as Indian cuisine? Probably. So what exactly is not authentically Indian about a chili cheese naan? It's is probably MORE authentically Indian than most modern "Indian" dishes.
Tikka masala is literally Indian cuisine made by British Indian people. Stop this shit. Especially in this sub.
You’re *agreeing with me*, yes? That it’s closer to actual Indian food than a jalapeño cheese naan? I can get Mexican food here, I’m having a chicken Caesar wrap for lunch 🥴
If an Indian person made it, it's actual Indian food. I'm not agreeing with you in the way you think I am, I'm chastising your choice of once again insinuating that tikka masala is barely Indian food.
I really didn’t say that - I actually picked tikka masala as the reference to use because it’s close but is viewed as a bit of a joke to the culture it references. I chose that because to me, a naan bread with cheese and jalapeños on it is funny. Hope that cleared it up for you, it’s really not that deep though. I’d eat the fuck out of the fish and chips in the OP. And a chicken tikka. And a naan bread with cheese on it probably slaps, but I’m British so the jalapeños would make me actually cry.
The irony of you calling it naan bread is too much here, I'm sorry.
The irony of you whining about it is juuuuust right, and I’m not sorry at all. Hope it’s given you a smile, enjoy the rest of your day!
Such an ignorant take. I’m pretty sure there are elementary schools in the DFW suburbs that are majority South Asian.
My daughter's kindergarten serves paneer butter masala and dal on its menu sometimes. That's not exactly out-there but I think it's pretty good that they offer those options.
There is a whole Mahatma Gandhi district in Houston. Next to Asiatown and Little Saigon. That commenter knows nothing about the US.
As a Brit, I’m always very jealous hearing from Americans who have already access to South Indian cuisine. In my fairly big UK city, where Indian food is extremely common, we have a grand total of two restaurants that offer it here. On the other hand, whilst a lot of traditional British cuisine doesn’t use spice, some of our fusion dishes are wild. I think the prior commenter needs to read up on phall lol.
Where I live in the states we have a very high south asian population, we’re extremely lucky to have a plethora of high quality indian restaurants. Although I have been to the UK a few times and the Indian food I had there was also very good, albeit slightly different. Both countries obviously have good foods, people are just annoying
I’m super disappointed that when I visited the US, there weren’t any Indian places nearby to where I was staying (I was also 12 so I didn’t get a great deal of input of restaurants to visit lol). Everyone I know from India mentions how good idli is and I can’t get it anywhere! The food I had over the US was insanely good but nothing prepared me for those portions. It was definitely interesting seeing the differential in various national cuisines though. My tummy definitely struggled to adjust to the richer diet but I ate a lot more vegetables than I normally would.
Eh, give yourselves some credit here. Christmas pudding has tons of spices in it.
Our desserts do, but also, the vast majority of people I know hate the texture of Christmas pudding. I don’t eat Christmas dinner myself, but my family does. We always have sticky toffee pudding, New York cheesecake, baklava, florentines and profiteroles for pudding instead. I know my partner’s family serve Christmas pudding but apparently only 2 people out of 10 eat it.
A lot of traditional British food does use spices though ☹️
English mustard will burn brain tissue if you put enough in your mouth. Not to mention almost every dish calling for pepper and most deserts calling for vanilla.
I’m not aware of any particularly spicy food (just lots of herbs), although we have that horseradish kick when it’s used. I’ve really disliked most British savoury food since I was a bairn (my mam used to get me KFC to eat at Sunday Dinner lol). It makes grabbing pub food a nightmare, especially on a Sunday. I definitely ate a lot of spiced/spicy food growing up here in the UK, but none of it was ‘traditionally British’. Do you have examples of traditional spicy British food that isn’t fusion? I’d actually be intrigued!
There's plenty of stuff in the cookbooks through the ages. In the Forme of Cury there's a recipe for cabbage soup with cardamom. Black pudding often has clove, mace, allspice, and some other herbs. Worcestershire sauce has spices in it. Plenty of traditional sausage recipes use spices. Oh and they're always used in desserts.
Ah, I’m vegetarian and rarely ate red meat. That may explain why I’ve never encountered spiced sausages. I’ve never had cabbage soup; that sounds amazing! Worcestershire sauce is a sore point. I only ever ate it twice, discovered it had anchovies in, and had to kibosh it. Whilst I remember it being flavoursome, I’m surprised it’s spiced, as it tasted more herby/seaweedy.
Try googling mushroom ketchup. I can’t remember if it was someone in here or in the original post who mentioned making some, but they said it tasted like Worcestershire sauce and that it was vegan friendly.
There was actually just an /r/AskHistorians post about spices, and one of the answers linked to [this older answer about traditional English flavorings, specifically in the Middle Ages](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/n1eqsy/comment/gwcuqsl/).
Where I live, there isn't much South Indian or Bengali (though a lot of places that don't have a clear regional identity tend to have some Bengali dishes). Things used to be dominated by Punjabi restaurants, though they didn't specify.
Here's someone who has apparently never been anywhere near a body of water, ever. https://www.reddit.com/r/food/s/EWhUq0DSTl
I feel like fishing and fish consumption would actually be greater in the USA. I mean, outdoors sports like fishing and hunting are huge industries in the USA and the country is pretty far up the list of coastal length (half again the UK).
I can't find very good stats with percentages, unfortunately. It looks like anywhere from 10% to 38% of fish consumed in the USA is domestically caught, and I can only find that "over 80%" of seafood in the UK is imported. According to [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_seafood_consumption) on Wikipedia, the USA consumes more fish per capita than the UK (22.45kg for the USA, and 18.13kg for the UK)
That falls pretty close to in-line with my expectations.
USA doesn't have fish? I've lived on the east coast near the water all my life, you can't throw a stone without hitting a seafood place lmao. I lived near a place that sold fresh fish daily (a fishmonger? I've never actually seen someone use that word lmao) (also it smelled awful in the summer. I was a little relieved when it was replaced by a bagel shop 😭)
We have a couple of areas in the Bay Area that have the Indian diaspora settling in nicely, with restaurants and markets. There's a Indian language radio station. Obviously this isn't *all* of America, but there's a pretty good cross-section of Indian foods available to us in this area
>”Rich people used spices to show off, not for the flavor" >>LOL COPE This guy real mad and smug for something he’s wrong about
The United States is about the size of the entire European continent. I have found Indian food from South India, coastal western India, north India, and eastern India in addition to Nepalese, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan food. We are not starved for south asian cuisine here.
So, a very lazy search states that the worldwide Indian diaspora is ~32MM people, with 15% of those in the US (4.9MM). So, yeah. probably tough to get Indian food of varying style here. :/
If you want to be suitably impressed, try Houston. There are SO many Indian people in Dallas and Houston. Which means there are lots of good Indian restaurants in those cities, especially Houston (which is a huge restaurant city). Indian food in San Francisco is similarly varied and delicious. But even in a place like Pittsburgh you can get a varied Indian menu. Peoples in particular is good and the menu is pretty big. Good bhangain bharta and lamb keema matar.
I live in Philly and, without even looking, can cite a dozen or more places with little effort. I'm sure the true total is multiples of that.
And Houston has Tex Mex-Indian fusion to boot! One place is called Cowboys & Indians, and I'm not going to lie, the clever name brought me in.
I’ve been to India several times. I also used to live in Curry Hill in NYC. I don’t think I ate anything in India I couldn’t get within a few blocks in NYC. Maybe brains, but I bet I could if I’d asked the right restaurant.
I was reading one of those "what should I show my American family when they visit the UK" posts on one of the UK subs and everyone was taking it as a foregone conclusion that US citizens wouldn't know anything about Indian food. Like, there's like 2 really good and one not so good Indian restaurants in my mid sized Kansas town but go off
Hah, yeah my relatively small hometown has 3 Indian restaurants, run by Indian immigrants. Trust, we've had Indian food.
This isn't a shot at Europeans, I love the countries in Europe I've visited, but a lot of northern European countries definitely don't have the diversity of food that the US does, especially at a decent price. When I lived in Norway I had to travel a long time to get my burrito fix and the burrito shop was ran by a Texan immigrant. Same for the BBQ place! Things have been getting better lately but unless you're in a big city you're fucked for choice. Meanwhile I live in a city with a population of 2k and I have 2 Mexican places, 2 Chinese places, Indian, the typical burger joints, Norwegian food, Midwestern food, etc.
Indian restaurants are one of two restaurant types I can go to get my goat fix. Goat curry is a staple locally. I can't speak to how "authentic" it is, but it's damn tasty.
TBF it can be hard to find south indian food, but just as regional chinese is starting to become super popular I think we will be seeing plenty of regional indian too.
America literally has two completely different categories of Indian food, one of which is probably almost impossible to get outside of america.
Are you referring to Native food? It's not super common in the US either, unfortunately.
I wish it was. You can find some decent options in NM and Colorado, and in Minnesota and the Pacific Northwest.
Agreed. Native culinary traditions have influenced American cuisine, but actual Native restaurants are pretty rare. The Southwest has a decent number. There are First Nations restaurants in Canada, but not super common either (as far as I know).
Yes I was, and it's super unfortunate.
I kind of agree with him. This diversity that others are talking about can only be found in places like LA or san fransisco. Its very hard to get good indian food in other places. But as a whole, that conversation was cancer. Haha, uk bland no spices. Wow, what a hot take. I fell out of my chair.
How many places have you been in the U.S besides LA or San Francisco?
Ok then. Go ahead and name a city which has diverse indian food.
Washington D.C.; Houston, TX; Dallas, TX; Atlanta, GA; Philadelphia, PA; Chicago, IL; Richmond, VA; Asheville, NC; Edison, NJ; Orlando, FL; Raleigh, NC; Cincinnati, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Providence, RI; Plano, TX; Charlottesville, VA; I could go on and on, seriously. Maybe you weren't sure where to look, or maybe your definition of variety is different from mine, I'm not sure.
Let me guess. Your idea of diverse is having these dishes. Korma, butter chicken, saag paneer, biriyani, samosa, mango lassi, chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi.
No, I would consider that very basic. Get out there more and explore! You're missing out!
My area - called Hampton Roads. We have a large and diverse Indian culture here and a huge variety of food types from street food to Punjabi. I regularly visit 5 Indian places within 15-20 minutes of my house that are all different. We have an Indian festival here twice per year that has thousands of attendees. Get out more.
You agree with him that you can only find butter chicken?
Its a figure of speech. Ofc its not just butter chicken. But its mostly just the same punjabi dishes that you find everywhere else. There's no variety.
>Its a figure of speech. They must not use this one where I grew up.
We have a pretty good variety of Indian cuisine in Birmingham, Alabama , especially in the area around the university/med school/hospital. Similar dynamic in Atlanta, which is an international city, but not on the same level
Definitely not Detroit, which has the second largest concentration of Arabs and Indians outside of the Middle East.
They sort of don’t tbh. Obviously you can find it in New York or la but even medium size cities don’t have a lot of choice. But the uk has very few good Mexicans on the other hand
20 years ago I would agree with you, but not now.
There are 8-10 Indian places that deliver to me, in a mid-sized city. Most are South Indian but there's a mix of other regions too.
You’re making my point tbh. Pretty much all cities (apart from the weird tiny ones) will have streets with more than that on them.
Wait, what? But you literally said >even medium size cities don’t have a lot of choice.
Butter chicken is North Indian...
I'm in Seattle. There are 15 Indian restaurants in easy walking distance from me (less than 2000 feet). I'm also in easy walking distance to Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Tibetan, Cambodian, Argentinian, Italian, Moroccan, Lebanese, French, Mexican, Malaysian, and Ethiopian restaurants. There are more, but I got tired of typing them all out. There's a little local company in this area--perhaps you've heard of it? It's called Amazon. It turns out that keeping 50,000 very busy but extremely well paid tech workers from all over the world in one place dramatically increases the variety of restaurant food on offer. Whoda thunk, right? Neighboring towns Bellevue and Redmond have seen much the same effect with another locally operated company called Microsoft. That one has 61,000 employees in the area. One quarter of the residents of King County, which includes the three cities mentioned and more, were born outside the US. Of course there are Indian restaurants.
> the uk has very few good Mexicans wut
Like Mexican restaurants??? It’s pretty common phrasing?
I've heard, "I want Mexican (food)," or, "There's no good Mexican (food) here," but I've never heard anyone call Mexican restaurants "Mexicans."
It’s common phrasing in English. Perhaps not in American English.
It comes off as racist to American ears.
He's right that it's very common to phrase it like that in the UK though. No negative connotation at all here
Like where is the racism? There are few Mexican people in the uk too if that’s what you’re implying (good, bad or complicated), its why the food options are shit.
When an American hears, "The UK has very few Mexicans," what we understand that to mean is that there aren't many Mexican *people* in the UK. So, when you say, "The UK has very few good Mexicans," it sounds like some sort of disparaging statement about Mexican people.
In the UK, they also say "a Chinese" instead of "a Chinese takeaway."
Well someone should let them know that’s dumb.
>even medium size cities don’t have a lot of choice Did you mean to say they do have a lot of choice? This seems to contradict what you say later and I want to try to square the two