Saturday, November 29, 2008

Bringing the best of the world to the US

The US has made great strides in the last decade or two. Great international foods such as Lindt and Toblerone chocolate, Nutella, etc. have become easy to find in any major grocery store. You can find cheese fondue and pickled herring, if you're lucky. Mexican food has been easy to find for an even longer time.
It's even possible to find high quality bread like they make in France and Germany. Hearty, filling, good-tasting even without adding anything to it. It's sometimes difficult to find, and it's certainly pricey, but it does exist (and it's so much better than American bread). I've even had the pleasure of tasting some high-quality pastries here (even harder to find than good bread, and even more expensive). In Germany and France, most people buy their bread and pastries at bakeries, and almost all of it is high quality. Even the grocery store bread is good. I wish more people in the US would refuse to eat low-quality bread and cheap glazed donuts, and demand the better stuff; demand would go up, supply would go up, and ultimately, because it would no longer be a specialty item, prices would come down.
What are some other foreign things the US should adopt?

7 comments:

alison said...

We've got a Fresh & Easy across the street from us, a European supermarket, and we love it. We especially like the huge bars of Belgian chocolate. (okay, mostly me.) But we love the yummy breads they sell. I know it's not a real bakery with lots of good hefty choices, but I just love good bread. I tend to make my own because it's easy and tastes so much better than almost any bread we've tried, but they have some ciabatta that's so yummy...

I haven't been outside of the US other than a couple months in Canada, and I mostly stayed in the America-parts. (It was half my life ago, for an excuse.) But I'd be very pleased to see lefse (a Scandinavian potato flat-bread) more widely available (we love it, and it's everywhere in Wisconsin, but nowhere around here). On the other hand, good tortillas were hard to find in Wisconsin and are everywhere here. I think good food needs appreciation. There aren't too many tortilla-appreciaters in Wisconsin.

So, if good tortillas and lefse were available everywhere I wander, I'd be happy.

Unknown said...

Now that I've found kvass in Albuquerque, I'm pretty good. I've found some pretty decent rye bread at the store, but it's nothing like the stuff we got on the mish.

Brentwell said...
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Tim said...

Tang. Hmmm...Can't say I'm a fan. Of course I'm only familiar with the orange flavor.
The Durian link doesn't seem to work.
Belgian chocolate, European rye bread--good stuff. The rye bread here is definitely inferior.

Brentwell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brentwell said...

I wish there were more flavors of Tang around here. In the Philippines they had Orange, Pomelo, Grape, Guyabano, and Pineapple. I know it sounds funny but man Pomelo and Guyabano are the best drink mix flavors around!

By the way has anyone tried Durian (read the Flavour section for a good laugh)?

Tim said...

Thanks for the correction.