EUROPE - which country has the best cuisine?

What is aforesaid cracking Argentine place called? There are a couple of South American-looking places there.

Not bad actually. But I was starving. It was a take out from Whole Foods. I ate it on a wall in Union Square.

that's a salad bar, not a restaurant, but it's pretty great (if expensive) for a salad bar

I dunno about the best but there's a cracking one right on the heath in Blackheath. Also the proprietor is a weird ex-paparazzi bloke who looks like Tugay and began his career taking homoerotic shots of Che Guevara lying on a bed with his shirt off.

-- Matt DC, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 15:54 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Think this may be Buena Ayre mentioned upthread: http://www.buenayre.co.uk/chemenu.htm

Also Georgia deserves an honourable mention

I ate in a Georgian resturant in Krakow, and it was fantastic, a very refreshing change from the Polish red meat n stodge.

Yeah I presume they're owned by the same dude. The one in Blackheath is called Buenos Aires Cafe I think, served one of the best steaks I've ever eaten. I'm tipping Argentina to win the CONCACAF poll.

Ah, excellent. A good 30 seconds' jog away from the infamous Zero Degrees, too!

Any other good Blackheath eating-holes, just name 'em here. I've not been to that many.

It'll never win, but I voted for Romania, especially for its Transylvanian cuisine. But it should be said that Romanian cuisine has its own great oddball Latin sensibility and takes from the best of Hungarian and German cookinh, not to mention specialities derived from Turkish, Russian, Jewish and Greek styles. And some other places too, I'm sure. And it's dirt cheap. And the Romanians are lovely.

how come? i take it you're including Indian restauranteurs here

There actually aren't that many, the majority of so-called 'Indian' restaurants in the UK are run by Bangladeshis and what you get is heavily Anglicised. Generally speaking there are a lot of okayish bog-standard curry houses around but there's so much demand out there that there's not that much incentive for them to be much more than adequate.

Additionally there's a greater proportion of fuck-awful 'spice it to death or leave it largely tasteless' Indian restaurants in this country than there are for pretty much any other cuisine, although Chinese and Mexican may run it close. In my experience the best curry places (in London at least) tend to be either Pakistani, Sri Lankan or focussed on one region of India.

No Svalbard, no credibility!!

Where abouts are you Louis? Because there's a lovely gastro-pub type place on Royal Hill in Greenwich. It's called The Hill - love them for their lamb shank and not their uninspired name.

I'm Lee Green, myself, that well-renowned hubbub of fine dining. Royal Hill, eh...is that near Coombs Hill? Thanks for the reccy, anyway; I may give it a go! The best pub food I've had in an absolute age, incidentally, is the traditional-yet-sublime fare at The Mill in Cambridge. Their bangers and mash was streets ahead of any other I've tried.

There's actually a full-blown Greek taverna in Lee Green, but for some unfathomable reason we've only been there once. Reasons for this are unknown, but I think it may be because the restaurant is a) Greek rather than Greek Cypriot or b) not up to our relatives' home cooking standard.

Or c) we don't really eat at restaurants very often on account of cash/reluctance to organise, unless it's a special occasion in which case we'll treat ourselves to Zero D.

there's so much demand out there that there's not that much incentive for them to be much more than adequate.

depressing but applies to so many other aspects of life here i guess

italy or france are really the only two choices here.

having said that i've never eaten at/ordered from an 'indian' res and found it less than adequate but then the more you know the harder you are to satisfy xp

an 'indian' res

haha

can you stop doing this bullshit quoting thing? say what you mean or stfu

hugz

long year ahead...

sorry, i is just entertaining the north americans

an indian res (or, more often, rez) does not refer to a restaurant over here. not making fun.

what does it mean? *feels sheepish now*

1. rez

Native American slang for "reservation," as in "on the Indian reservation."

Ayy, there's always a party Saturday night on the rez, man.

serious lols @ anyone voting for anything from UK

Someone's already claimed they're voting for Russia, which is absolute insanity.

maybe they like cabbage and a whole lot? even still, there are better cabbage countries ...

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/images/articles/features/cal/trifle.jpg

serious lols @ anyone voting for anything from UK

-- remy bean, Wednesday, January 2, 2008 6:01 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

whole poll is ridic, but we get a claim on anglo-indian food and shit i dunno maybe food from the many other places we lorded it over, so we break even. eat that, france.

culinary imperialism?

wtf did tuomas just explain something to somebody else?

you know tuomas is all about indians, man

.jpg

who needs culinary imperialism when you've got a pork pie?

culinary imperialism?

-- remy bean, Wednesday, January 2, 2008 6:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yes, england, alone among european nations, has been prone to imperial adventures on occasion. our national fuckin' drink comes from the empire. there isn't really a 'british cuisine'.

good:

spain
italy
france
belgium
germany (pastry)
portugal
turkey

okay:

everything else

crap:

wales
latvia

who the fuck knows:

cyprus
faroe islands

who the fuck knows:

cyprus

who indeed

i didn't really have any good food when i went to berlin except for a hungarian goulash and 'austrian-style' fried chicken at cafe einstein

crap:

wales

Rarebit isn't to be fucked with.

crap: latvia

Your best bet in the Baltic states is the resturant chain Cilli Kamas (I think that what it was called) which serves traditional fare and is actually rather good.

isn't cypriot food mostly just greek food? wiki says halloumi comes from cyprus, and that is good. so +1 for cyprus

at any rate, all Euro food beats Newfoundland food hands down.

NEWFOUNDLAND FLIPPER PIE

* 4 seal flippers
* 1 L water
* 500 ml soda
* 125 ml fat pork, diced
* 1 cup milk
* 2 onoins, chopped
* 5 ml salt
* 60 ml flour
* 250 ml cold water
* 5 ml Worcestershire sauce

Soak flippers in 1 L of water and soda. Trim off excess fat. dry flippers and dip in seasoned flour. Brown in pork fat. Add onions and make a gravy of flour, water, and sauce. Pour over flippers. Cover and bake at 160o C for 2-3 hours. Make a pastry and cover the flippers. Bake at 220oC for 30 minutes. Serves 6-8.

FRIED COD TONGUES

* 32 cod fish tongues
* 1 1/2 cups of flour
* 3 tbsp. margarine or cooking oil
* 1 tsp. salt
* 1/2 tsp. pepper

Carefully wash fresh cod tongues and dry in a paper towel. Put flour, salt, and pepper together in a plastic page. Add tongues and shake until they are covered evenly with flour. Melt margarine in a large saucepan. Add tongues and cook until golden brown. Serve hot, with mashed potatoes, carrots, and green peas, garnished with lemon wedges on a lettuce leaf.

Cypriot food is miles better than Greek food. It has as much in common with Turkish as Greek, less of an emphasis on one big dish at a time (hence the meze, the olives'n'pitta side-dishes aplenty and the assortment of meats), and more halloumi.

i got completely sick of halloumi but probably just because i kept over-frying it.

it's not a very original answer, but i've been going through a french food renaissance lately, both as a cook and a diner.

Spain and France tie for me, so I'm voting Andorra.

And people slagging off British/English/any part of the Uk food - do you really know what the fuck you're talking about? Honestly?

yay!

I found outside of London the food was really terrible, sorry. Soggy chips served with every meal, instant coffee, poor quality overpriced red meat. Curries were nice in Brum tho.

I voted for Italy.

I'm voting germany because I think overall I prefer their combination of drink and foodstuffs over any other. there are certainly many things italy and spain can do that are above and beyond all challengers but neither approaches the total package according to me

Where's Liechtenstein?