EUROPE - which country has the best cuisine?

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the middlebrow thing. This review pretty much sums up what many people I know think about it, ie. not the absolute best but a reliable old chum of a restaurant. Whereas I've found it to be more like a not-great small-town Indian transported to a trendy location.

Oh man, I really want a curry now.

My mouth is actually watering!

oh yeah, britain isn't parochial at all, especially with regards to food, as this thread clearly demonstrates!

not as much as france or italy, but it's complicated.

Native food so crap so need to import/co-opt others

so it can be poorly cooked and overpriced as well? yeah that worked

What if instead of a service culture built on tipping otherwise underpaid waiting staff (I don't mean in the UK obv.) there was a culture of tipping the cooking staff?

A waiter in a Brick Lane curry house the other week told me quite bitterly not to leave a cash tip, and moreover not to do so in any other Indian restaurant, because the staff never see any of it!

i know that happens a lot and waiters often won't get anything here but maybe the cooks don't either - point is you don't usually know.

similar point was made re Italians upthread. so funnily enough i think Britain can (at least potentially if not always in practice) have the best of both worlds as a result and this is one of the best things about living here.

what are the two worlds?

Spanish because I just had some manchego and had some jamón serrano the other day. Italian most of the time though.

sweden. mmm reindeer steak

Baguette and salted butter from Bretagne can't be topped.

Some Saint Félicien comes close though.

there's a bar in A Coruna, all it sells is cheese, ham and sausage, I could go there every day, eat their plate of home cured ham and tetilla cheese with a basket of bread on the side and die a happy man, so yeah, you could say that Spain has decent food.

My MD at work (of Italian descent) derides the spanish waste of good ingredients with it's crudity and over-use of oil, he is just so wrong, it's just proper food, yet they can still do high end tremendously well, for example, in the Kursaal in San Sebastian, you can eat a Martin Berasetegui meal, four courses, tremendous quality, bottle of wine on the side and pay just the 12 pounds each for the privilege, which is why SPain just wins over the uk and France for me, you can go out and eat the best quality food you can wish for every night and not bankrupt yourself.

The thing that throws this to France for me is the variety. You have Germanic cooking in Alsace, Ligurian cooking on the Riviera, several distinct styles of seafood from Normandy to Brittany to the Mediterranean coast, Alpine cuisines, excellent wine in almost all of regions, world class cow's, ewe's, and goat's milk dairy products, excellent fowl and meats, delicious Arab food in several cities as well as other post-colonial/immigrant foods ranging from Chinese to Vietnamese to West-African, they know how to cook local vegetables and have local gastronomic hubs in places like Lyon, that are more than just regional capitals. I really like Iberian and Italian cuisines but there's not the same breadth of terroir and Germanic cuisines are good but simpler still, coming as they do from a far less forgiving and less propitious environments. The British palate is too sweet for my tastes, though there are lots of local specialties I adore and I have often eaten well there.

I have been to that bar with Porkpie (I think) and can attest to its greatness. One of the great things about Spain is you CAN just crawl around from bar to bar and eat something in every one and it be potentially fantastic.

For me though, France just wins out of sheer variety, consistency and quality, both at the low and high end. Italy and most places around the Mediterranean runs it close though, and Maltese cuisine is kind of underrated as well(mmmmmm bunny).

Rule of thumb = food gets worse as you get further north, the bouze gets better. The worst cuisine of any country I have visited = Denmark by a mile.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Fratelli d'Italia,
l'Italia s'è desta,
dell'elmo di Scipio
s'è cinta la testa.
Dov'è la Vittoria?
Le porga la chioma,
che schiava di Roma
Iddio la creò.

UK ties for first with 21, great stuff everyone

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/8123/jrpo3.jpg

"Salted cod! We taught the world how to eat"

lol @ 10 votes for england

noodle vague sock puppet frenzy

This is a mockery.

I call shenanigans. I voted for Belgium. Belgium has 0 votes.

http://images.worldcupblog.org/www/zidane%20butt.jpg

LOUIS I ONLY VOTED FOR ENGLAND ONCE HOW DARE YOU?

I wanted to vote for Pizza Hut.

I want to know who was repping for Serbia, Latvia and San Marino.

Serbs, Letts, San Martians?

DJ San Martian.

BRING BACK CHANGEABLE USERNAMES :(

I voted for Latvia. We're off there on holiday in a few weeks, so it was kind of a vote in hope: if I *say* they have good food, maybe I'll find some when we're there.

loving the England vote, give me a sunday roast over anything you get elsewhere in Europe. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Judging by the Polish shops/restaurants round our way I am unsurprised at Poland's showing here.

i don't know why everyone's getting so hot under the collar. the poll never mentioned "indigenous" cuisine - just cuisine in general. hence my vote for England, which I think has richer variety thanks to the broad palate of many of its residents.

In what world Irish cousine is better than Russian? In what world, I ask you? And pierogis? How come pierogies get no love?

WHAT A FARCE

Shall we just post a load of pictures of footballers and potentially racist bottle openers and chalk this one up to experience?

whcih country has the best crusade

i'm pleasantly surprised someone else voted for ireland, as i felt quite guilty doing so myself.

brother, please!

oh yeah, britain isn't parochial at all, especially with regards to food, as this thread clearly demonstrates!

alright, who voted for the Netherlands? And WHY?

Mmm, pancakes.

the dutch are good at pancakes and rijstaffel and pretty much horrible at everything else. Boiled eel is a national dish! They can't even make good beer despite bordering Belgium and Germany!

However, they do eat hagel on toast, which is the king of breakfasts.

http://www.thehollandring.com/food/food-hagelslag.gif

omg there's worms on my toast!

i don't know why everyone's getting so hot under the collar. the poll never mentioned "indigenous" cuisine - just cuisine in general. hence my vote for England, which I think has richer variety thanks to the broad palate of many of its residents.

-- CharlieNo4, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 11:37 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

INGREDIENTS

English summer food is hard to beat, when it's all freshly caught crab...

Here is a blurry photo of the best meal I've had this year.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2432/3829276997_26951387b3.jpg
Fucking hell it was delicious.

Whoever voted for Norway is crazy. Now... Wait. Nobody did. Oh well, right then.

Whoever voted for Norway is crazy. Now... Wait. Nobody did. Oh well, right then.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Tuesday, 18 August 2009 00:02 (4 years ago

lol