Reveal Your Uncool Culinary Beliefs Here

I know what I am purchasing when I eat out: it's not the food so much as the experience of having it be someone else's problem. Buying ingredients, coming up with recipes, chopping things, setting the table, cleaning up afterward, all that business.

You know how most ancient Romans ddidn't have kitchens? There was a whole infrastructure of mass-produced convenient food. Those fuckers knew how to live.

I recently became unemployed but, perversely, immediately thereafter went out and spent something like four hundred dollars on a five-course tasting menu for two at a ridiculously fancy restaurant. I regret nothing.

i often do it to 'get out' but i get stressed when friends and/or my mother want to do it too often because that shit adds up monthly if yer not careful.

I'll enjoy a $55 Fogo de Chao night which I don't get to do often as a treat. but going to like an Applebee's type place multiple times a week, it makes me anxious due to the cost, plus since my time out of the house is much more limited, I prefer not to spend most of it sitting in a booth waiting for mediocre food (though a Fogo type experience where they just bring you meat for hours and you say 'yes' or 'no' to the cut is p amazing and in fact I want to do it right now).

fortunately my best friend is a foodie so we like to find great Thai places where the meal and ambience are always lovely

even if the one place plays "Michael Learns to Rock" and nothing else on the PA

xpost to YMP

but I bet that was a memorable meal. I've had those and never feel ripped as a much as I did the other day when I took my daughter, my niece, mom and SO to a fairly mediocre "nice" bar and spent close to $200 with tip

wing scarcity causing high wing prices is a travesty IMO

time was you could at least go to a good wing place affordably

the fav place for me and my other friend now lists the pricing as "market price" for each wing

jfc

Wing scarcity? as far as I know chickens have the same number of wings as they always have had. Has something changed?

it technically ended in Feb but it caused wing prices to shoot up for a while. probably be a while before it swings back, esp if people willingly paid higher for it

https://buffalonews.com/business/local/the-great-chicken-wing-shortage-has-ended-the-great-chicken-wing-price-spike-has-not/article_4265684c-a3d4-11ed-9bd7-93f2a893dfd1.html

I've got lots of options for Vietnamese, Thai and """Mediterranean""" food (only one proudly admits to being owned by Iraqi immigrants, everyone else would like to avoid vandalism). Works for me because bomb pho or chicken shwarma is still cheaper than a Wendy's combo so I eat out a couple of times a week because I am simply not capable of making good pho or pad see ew at home.

yeah we are blessed with a huge array of pho places in the Twin Cities, I've looked into making it and it seems like it would be twice as expensive and (much less than) half as good to try it yourself

Pho sure

My uncool culinary opinion is that I'm not crazy about pho. To be fair, I haven't had it all that much, but I'd much rather have ramen.

I never have the appetite for either. Pho and ramen places serve utterly insane portions

...hereabouts anywas

Anyways

Ramen places have mostly been a dud here, the one great one is standing bar service only, usually packed and I'm still not that comfortable being butts to nuts with strangers.

xxp Mostly true, but there's a ramen place here in Atlanta that gives you reasonably sized bowls that don't make you feel as though you're being waterboarded.

yeah the ramen dish I had at this local favorite, ,I ate for about a half hour and was like "there's still so much left!"....though I did take it with me.

I love quinoa

My best friend and I, when we lived together, would make a weekly enormous thing we called “bland” that we’d just use as a staple side all week (or even eat it on its own)

Quinoa and parsley and maybe mint and diced peppers and salt and pepper and oil and lemon. Sometimes a can of rinsed black beans if we felt like it

It tastes nourishing and I like it and still make it

I heard that apparently quinoa is “bad” socioeconomically as almonds are bad environmentally, never read an article about it but maybe I should

Pho sure

― hootenanny-soundtracking clusterfucks about milking cows (Neanderthal)

surely there must be a pho place that has stolen this name already, applause

I believe the issue w/quinoa is that it was a staple crop that turned into a cash crop so now nobody in e.g. Bolivia can afford it which messes up the rest of the food supply (aiui)

Certain preparations of quinoa can be very enjoyable, especially on an occasional basis (though IME none of these involve boiling it into mush). It sucks in the sense that as a daily staple, it's very unappealing compared to e.g. rice or pasta, so its potential as a healthier replacement for those foods is overhyped.

i take it fgti disagrees, and tbf one of my favorite quinoa recipes indeed uses copious amounts of mint, lemon zest and evoo. been waiting eagerly/anxiously for you to show up and post in defense of British cuisine, btw.

I don't know if they're still open but someone actually used the Pho King joke here for their restaurant.

i don't have any strong uncool cuilnary opinions because i'll eat anything, but i'm a little tired of pickled everything maybe.

Chili, however, definitely benefits from waiting a day and reheating.

Day-old chili > fresh chili. Absolutely. Day-old chili over rice = amazing.

Fast food burgers, ranked: Wendy's > Five Guys > White Castle > letting someone who's eaten five burgers in two days shit in your mouth > Burger King > McDonald's

NJ pizza > NYC pizza

(So far, I have only had Montana pizza once; based on that sample size, Montana pizza is to be avoided.)

Cheese does not belong on tacos. Tacos should consist of meat, diced onions, and chopped cilantro on a soft tortilla, with lime juice and hot sauce.

Yes, unperson otm.

There is a very popular taqueria here with a convenient ordering shorthand - if you say "Mexican Way" it is meat/onion/cilantro/lime. "American Way" is lettuce/pico/cheese.

(I confess I will sometimes do Mexican Way but add guacamole)

this place in St. Paul is hilarious (and very good)

https://iphomn.com/

Cheese does not belong on tacos. Tacos should consist of meat, diced onions, and chopped cilantro on a soft tortilla, with lime juice and hot sauce.

come on, this is not uncool. uncool would be "give me all the debased tex mex with cheese on everything". tbc i also prefer authentic street tacos or w/e.

give me gloopy chicken tikka masala over just about anything else on the menu at the indian restaurant *shrugs*

I agree with unperson but every once in a while I need the ground beef, Ortega taco mix packet, hard shells, iceberg lettuce and shredded cheese tacos of my Midwest childhood

one of the best things you can do every once in a while is make those at home on a weeknight!

I agree with unperson but every once in a while I need the ground beef, Ortega taco mix packet, hard shells, iceberg lettuce and shredded cheese tacos of my Midwest childhood

I have been known to eat tacos with hard Ortega shells, shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and mild salsa from a jar. Still no cheese or sour cream, though.

You reminded me that 8 times out of 10 I still prefer old school Cantonese-American fare over any of the various authentic regional cuisines from China I've tried. Tough some of those are amazing, too, and I briefly became addicted to Xi'an Famous Foods when they had a branch open in my neighborhood.

Relatedly, the food court at the New World Mall is a daunting place for a vegetarian/vegan. That i can read Chinese somewhat hasn't helped much.

Tacos should consist of meat, diced onions, and chopped cilantro on a soft tortilla, with lime juice and hot sauce.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, March 25, 2023

agree with this

Ah yes, the classic PB&P
― carne asana (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, March 24

peanut butter and dill pickle (even sandwich pickle) sandwiches are so awesome. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone character (A Is for Alibi, etc…) taught me that

I've been evangelizing for the peanut butter + pickles + Sriracha sandwich, it has it all (salt, fat, acid, heat).

While I generally agree with the taco purism expressed above, in general, "authenticity" is a crock.

Ireland did not have potatoes, nor did Italy have tomatoes, until the Columbian exchange. But you can no longer imagine their cuisines without those imports.

The chili peppers that make spicy Asian food spicy? Same deal. New World imports.

wow Italy not having tomatoes is wild

ikr?

chocolate, coffee, corn, etc etc

see also vietnamese/french fusion

now I want a banh mi

but I am making lomo saltado (Peru) and a Korean cucumber salad tonight

what to do

chocolate, coffee, corn, etc etc

See also: POLL: New World crops/plants

Given how expensive even shit quality food is these days, we have given up and do a majority of our shopping at Whole Foods. If you’d told me this ten years ago, I would have looked at you like you were crazy.

also: sugar could be grown in southern Europe but not very well, which explains A LOT about slavery, the Caribbean, and colonialism

Tacos should consist of meat, diced onions, and chopped cilantro on a soft tortilla, with lime juice and hot sauce.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, March 25, 2023

agree with this

Pho sure

― hootenanny-soundtracking clusterfucks about milking cows (Neanderthal)

surely there must be a pho place that has stolen this name already, applause

I believe the issue w/quinoa is that it was a staple crop that turned into a cash crop so now nobody in e.g. Bolivia can afford it which messes up the rest of the food supply (aiui)

― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Saturday, March 25, 2023 5:51 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there is, it's less than 10 minutes from my house https://www.phosureshrewsbury.com/

lmao xp I forgot what thread I was in. Carry on

anyway I don’t think it’s “uncool” to prefer “authentic” tacos from certain region or w/e