In a cafe, and a woman has just complained (funny)

[QuestionableMouse]

She'd ordered a bacon sandwich and it's just been delivered to the table. She's now moaning because her bacon sandwich has a tiny crumb of black pudding on it. And she doesn't eat pork.

I feel for the poor staff having to explain which animal bacon comes from 😬

(And no, there's no vegan bacon on the menu so not a mix up!)

I had a very strange pizza in spain once... still not sure if they paniced and just made it up but I have no urge to have it again.

Im quite open with pizza, love some pinapple etc... but the 'veggie' pizza I was served had long thin slices of (quite raw) carrot, aubergine, courgette, asparagus... it was just a bunch of things I have never seen on a pizza before (and wasnt very nice, a lot of strange competing textures and flavors and as said the carrot seemed raw but the base was really mushy and soggy).

Then again DH pizza had an apricot on it and he said it was suprisingly nice... maybe Im just an uncultured swine lol.

Or half a rotisseried chicken slapped on a plate of plain spaghetti.

I would quite enjoy that. My children would love

the worst country for dining was America

Seconded!

Meat was foul, cooked stuff eg chilli, ditto - full of gristle, scarnbled eggs, bacon and pitcher "normal" foods, recognisable, and the only known vegetable appeared to be the potato. Coffee is filth and they don't know what tea is.

Also the chocolate is sh*te!

Beer was OK though

I found it very heavily meaty - and bacon was used as a flipping condiment (I mean who puts bacon in potato salad?).

The vegetarian pizzas at my university were similar. Obviously all of the previous day's uneaten vegetables (carrot, potato, peas, cauliflower etc, bumnge onto a crust base and sprinkled with cheese.

They looked GRIM 😬

*bunged, not bumnge - though it looked like "bumnge"

My colleague ordered a prawn salas - it contained ONE PRAWN.

It was a plate of some anonymous green leaf with a single prawn in the centre, as decoration.

It was quite a posh eatery, too (I hesitate to use the word "restaurant"). The best meal we had was at a Vietnamese restaurant - it was LOVELY!

We were the only group there.

*salad, not salsa

oho! Second Hobb-fan spot in 2 days 😁

Old Blood salutes you, @LiveshipParagon

Yeah I have heard baked beans arent veggie in america because they add meats like bacon, I was told by an american friend that if I went to a BBQ there nothing (even the beans or salad) would be veggie.

Yet apparently they think beans on toast is a bizaare concept.

the worst country for dining was America

I have to admit I was unimpressed - even the Chinese restaurant US colleagues had raved about was unexceptional but I was completely bewildered by their bacon and the hotel breakfast - it shattered.

20 years on it's the least bewildering thing about the US - and I've heard that they do now increasingly have European style bacon out there as well - but it was the first big out of the blue culture shock for me.

Yet apparently they think beans on toast is a bizaare concept.

It does seem an oddly British thing.

Not sure how wide spread a chip butty is either.

I was at a family BBQ - FAMILY - and the only thing I could eat were Doritos. And even they were in the wrong packet (red isn’t spicy it’s manky cheese). Bloody bacon.

It's taken me 20 years to learn how to get a decent latte in Lourdes (France) you have to ask for an Italian cappuccino! A normal cappuccino has a huge pile of whipped cream on it.

I have 'World Nomaded' quite a bit in N America, and my tip is always find the Vietnamese restaurants. There are loads of them and they are fab and plenty of veggie options. The other thing that is safe are burgers. Even the simplest and cheapest burger I had in the US was oodles better than almost all UK burgers.

To be fair I have baffled southerns asking for a chip butty before and thats in this country.

Honestly trying to explain that its chips in a bread bun while they look at you like you have 2 heads was an experiance.

In the end they wouldnt make me one and I left because in their words they kept saying 'but then what do we do with the burger?' and I'm like 'what burger? Im ordering chips and bread ffs no burger at all needed' lol.

I am about as typically Southern you can get (Southern Home Counties) and we call them chip butties! You just met an idiot.

the worst country for dining was America (not NY but other cities).

The USA isn't homogeneous when it comes to food. I've had excellent meals in the Boston and San Diego areas, but Pennsylvania (where we lived for a couple of years) was generally poor.

the worst country for dining was America

I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations (but I’m going to), but can anyone in America bake a cake without using a packet of cake mix? Or is that exclusive to YouTube? Why do all the YouTube videos involve opening a pre made mix?

And what the hell is that stuff they use to make iced coffee.

I have wondered both these things! My logical brain says they can’t all use packet mix but I am yet to see one where they weigh out flour etc, even “professionals”.

And the weird iced coffee syrup looking stuff? I am not sure what is so amazing about “coffee creamer” is either, is it not just UHT cream?

but can anyone in America bake a cake without using a packet of cake mix? Or is that exclusive to YouTube? Why do all the YouTube videos involve opening a pre made mix?

I'd be interested in find that out as well - it seems to be a thing in some US authored and set book I'd read as well.

I found this US guy very informative on food usually and it does seem that packets are considered superior even in bakeries.

Jamie and Julia you tube - he bakes from scratch as he's doing Julia recipes but generally you tube does seem to suggest they often seem to lack what I consider basic baking knowledge and their ingredients like butter and flour are often different (inferior). Though some of the older traditional US bakers point out due to distances from Stores in ye old frontier towns their baking recipes often tended to rely more on tinned and less fresh goods anyway so perhaps less of a leap to packets in some parts of US.

I have wondered both these things! My logical brain says they can’t all use packet mix but I am yet to see one where they weigh out flour etc, even “professionals”.

US baking recipes often use cup measures rather than weights. Maybe this is another 'frontier town' derived phenomenon - you might not have scales but you'd have a cup and so you can get the ratios right.

Measuring a solid by volume rather than weight has to be inferior for baking surely, em so you might be on to something?

Ok boring point but I’ve just done a bit of Googling, it seems packet mixes are so popular in the US because they are cheap, convenient and produce consistent results unlike using cups to measure ingredients with. It also appears some Americans view baking ingredients as just for baking whereas here flour, sugar, eggs etc would be used in general cooking and for tea/coffee as well. Also some Americans get very tetchy when people suggest using packet mixes is lazy and inferior to cooking from scratch. That concludes my research.

Most (if not all) of the packet mixes have high fructose corn syrup, which is not a "larder" product but is in so much commercially available food it makes packet cakes more appealing in terms of sweetness and mouthfeel.
If your "normal" is corn syrup, a cake made with sugar just won't taste right.