Is that potato chips? I do not remember that from my time in Rome.
Seems like this is on you if you’re going to places with this. Had nothing but great food in rome, went to see someone who had lived there the past two years. Told them to pick where we went, then paid for every meal
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You’re gonna need to name names. Where exactly did you go? What exactly did you get? Even a single example would be helpful in determining how broken your palate is (it may not be, could just be bad restaurant selection).
Man, I don’t know. I stayed in Rome for 5 nights with my wife 10 years ago. We did no research in advance, just walked around and ate at random restaurants and I don’t remember ever having a bad meal.
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I don’t know, The chicken gnocchi soup at the OG is pretty good, probably all salt, but still…
Just got back from Rome/Venice/Florence - can confirm no bad meals found. All places picked at random.
Coperto is bullshit.
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Yeah, we did 2 nights in Venice as part of the same trip (took the train, that was a lot of fun too), and had no bad meals in Venice either.
Italian food region power rankings from our honeymoon last year (out of the places we went):
- Liguria. Incredible focaccia and the best pesto I’ve ever had. Solid seafood.
- Tuscany. Great beef (aided by the fantastic regional wine), good pasta at the places we ate though I don’t know if it was particularly Tuscan.
- Rome, which was still good but not as memorable as the above. Mostly had various pastas (carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana) which were all good but not quite destination food, some good Roman style pizza.
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I feel like a lot of people expect the food they get when they travel to be way better than what they can get at home… but a lot of us live in fairly nice by international standards cities that have incredible food. Yes I think I can get better Italian food in Italy than you probably can in Austin.
But guys Red Ash is a really good restaurant anywhere. If you get better pasta somewhere it’s going to be at most 5% better because there’s a point where that’s just how good that dish can be and the execution at Red Ash is going to be pretty close to that.
Every single major city in the US has a few restaurants that people from anywhere would be super impressed by… and if someone isn’t impressed by the food at that restaurant honestly they’re probably not much fun to be around and entirely full of shit about liking anything.
At this point if I’m traveling it’s not for food necessarily. I’m generally super happy when the food I get traveling is as good as what I would be eating not traveling. It’s objectively difficult to find food on the level you know about in a city you’ve lived in for years anywhere else because you spent years trying places to find the stuff you get in your own city.
If I’m traveling I’m pretty much only eating the regional specialties whatever those might be, or eating for convenience, or it’s LA and the food is legit good everywhere almost. Austin has great food too, but you have to try way harder. The first couple of years coming from Louisville were pretty rough actually lol.
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I think a big difference is the density though. Like yeah, you can go to a great Italian restaurant in Austin (or <insert city here>) and get great food comparable to the real thing, but there’s not that many restaurants for which that’s the case, and they’ll all be more expensive to reflect the quality. There’s not an equivalent of the hole-in-the-wall place in Florence serving rich, delicious, authentic lunch meals for €15 (with glasses of quite good house wine for €4), let alone walking around a city full of places like that.
San Francisco has a Little Italy neighborhood with lots of Italian restaurants and most of them are tourist traps and not very good.
(edit: this may apply more to European food, we have tons of inexpensive Asian food around here that my uneducated palate enjoys and I’m sure some of it must be the real deal)
I think there’s also something to be said for an increase in the variety of dishes and the tiers of cuisine. You might well be able to find high quality Italian food in most American cities, but are you going to find really good street food, mid range dining, and fine dining in all of them? Is the menu going to be dishes that are standard in American Italian restaurants, or are you going to see some dishes that may even be traditional but that many Americans haven’t heard of?
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Like, just off the top of my head (albeit spurred by @goofy’s post), bistecca alla fiorentina is a dish you’ll find ~everywhere around Tuscany, and ~nowhere in America. Yes, it’s basically just a steak, but it’s a distinct enough preparation and presentation that it’s worth trying if you’re in the region. A lot of German dishes I ate in Germany are nowhere to be found in American German restaurants, too, even if those American German restaurants have great schnitzel, wurst, and sauerkraut.
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Yup the regional specialties are where it’s at. There’s stuff everywhere you can’t get anywhere else. Often those regional specialties are profoundly meh (the Hot Brown) but sometimes they’re great (the Breakfast Taco).
authentic german food is mind blowing compared to here
Georgia Satellites “Keep Your Hands To Yourself”
Is a better sing along in the car song than anything in the last 20 years.
Georgia Satellites “Keep Your Hands To Yourself”
Is one of the worst songs in music history
This has to be a hot take from at least one of us.
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What the fuck
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You have your candy stolen from you by the big kids enough times and you get a little salty…
Halloween is a top tier holiday. It doesn’t require family interaction, i can dress up and party the weekend before, candy, horror movies everywhere. The only annoying part is my dog barking all night at the kids coming to the door.
Binge-watching horror movies is the shizz, best holiday ever.