While it's hard to disagree with their opinion about the French, it seems to me the height of chutzpah for people who think that critter innards are haute cuisine, and have names for their weird gustatory atrocities like "bubble and squeak" and "spotted dick," to be saying that the US has lousy food.

I will visit all the graves, locations known, of my immigrant ancestors and thank them for leaving Europe behind them.

"The E.U. is a huge mistake and those idiot (place your least favorite European country here)will ruin it for all of us!" Heard it a dozen times from various Europeans. For all their supposed liberality and inclusive attitudes, most Europeans I've ever met or worked with were arrogant and clanish about there own country.

Until of course when they began to talk about their fellow countrymen. In which case the north was better than the west was better than the highlands was better than the industrialized southern coastal, nah nahnah, nah, nahnah, na.

Europeans need to take lessons from us. Here in the U.S we all get along. People in New York LOVE southerners and we LOVE them too. Everyone LOVES Californians and vice versa. There is never a bad word between the U.S. and our neighbors north or south.North America is one big happy place to be.

Say, what is that in that pig's eye?

That should have read, LEGAL immigrant ancestors.

Yes. Between the time of the birth of our nation and the present, one could compare the deaths and destruction of their internecine wars, in a somewhat comparable geographic area, with our one Civil War and reach a similar conclusion as that of Steve's. One might also want to note that we don't fear for our lives at a football match, as one would at, say, England vs. ---.

As for the chow, I'm not sure exactly what is American food, for all who came here from every corner of the world brought their cuisine with them - a happy occurrence. Though I'm not precise in my knowledge of what "traditional" American food is, what was described as such was always ...good: Not an assault on one's gastric system and did not generally feature the remains of creature staring back at me.

One question for our historians: With all this hooplah over French cuisine, I am highly suspicious of its origins. Could it not have originated in Italy, when Catherine de Medici married Henry something or other and brought her court with her to France?

As for the French, they remain...French. I'll take Maurice Ravel, Madame Curie, a few of their myopic Impressionist painters, and those who recall who liberated Paris twice in the past century.

Rand,

Save up. Come to London. Eat at Rules. Right a complaint about traditional British food. Fly home

only jo,
American food is hamburgers, pizza, french fries, tacos, bagels, egg rolls, corned beef, etc. We are a cultural melting pot of cuisine also.

TRADITIONAL American food would be corn, pumpkins, venison, buffalo, tomatoes and peppers the stuff the indigenous Americans ate.

I have to go now, I am suddenly very hungry.

American food largelly consists of better cuts lacking in the neural tissues necessary to induce prion based neural wasting diseases.

"As for the French, they remain...French. I'll take Maurice Ravel, Madame Curie. . . ."

Although she did most of her best work in France, Marie Sklodowska Curie was, in fact, born in Poland. Note: A number of famous Polish-born people did their best work outside Poland; e.g. Frederick Chopin, Joseph Conrad, the guy who developed reverse-Polish algorithmic notation, etc.

I stand corrected, Bruce. I should have realized.

Feeling more generous today, I'll add Claude Debussy and Camille Saint-Saens to the list.

Also: Apologies to Steve. I got kinda hungry, too.

If the Brits' biggest complaints against us are our food and our lack of style, then we have nothing to complain about. They gave us the foundations of democracy, the modern civil service, the rule of law, and an erstwhile ally, so we should be able to live with a few quibbles.

Fried possum, anyone?

Jim,
never fry possum, it makes it dry. Braised like pot roast is the best way. With some potatoes, carrots and onions. Possum pot roast open faced sandwichs from the left overs...

There I go again!!

"Feeling more generous today, I'll add Claude Debussy and Camille Saint-Saens to the list."

Good choices. I'd also add Gustav Eiffel, the designer/builder of the Statue of Liberty.

Good choice, Bruce. I'll assume he designed the handsome tower which bears his name, as well. I suppose I could always add...no...no, I can't! The French are so annoying!

Besides. I'm afraid the thought of possum, either "fried" or "braised," has squelched my appetite, which has become increasingly more provincial (in the "limited" sense) as I advance in age....

...and my generosity along with it.

Look, I like the USA. Most of it, the places I've been to, from Stratford to Akron to LA. And some of the food was wonderful - Baked Scrod, Clam Chowder, Alaskan King Crab, Fajitas and Guacamole....

But the bread... woeful. The butter as bad. Massive quantities of Sugar (or rather, Corn Syrup) and salt in everything.

The USA does have lousy food. No-one else on Earth could come up with Pork Brains and Milk Gravy for example.

It also has magnificent food, Jambalaya, 5-Alarm Chilli, Potato skins....

Gosh, so on one relatively unpopulated continent you've only had the one civil war in 200 years?

You've had no other wars and lived in total harmony in that time with your neighbours to the North and South. You've not fought using proxies in your back yard either? No sneaky little broken treaties with weakre states and nations within the US?

Excellent. Much better than the sad old Europeans and that crowded continent full of ancient waring states.

The US has some great food, some average food and some downright pitiful food. As do most places.

The UK has been doing a lot of work in my lifetime to improve the standard. My advice to a traveller remains - have a hearty breakfast and have a curry for dinner.

Excellent. Much better than the sad old Europeans and that crowded continent full of ancient waring states.

Of course, before "we" got here, North America was also full of ancient warring states. And in the Caribbean there was an entire tribe of natives wiped out by another tribe of natives.

All that has stopped now, though.

Liberated Paris... twice?

I don't recall the Kaiser making it quite that far during the Great War.

Now, saved their national bacon twice, certainly...

Sure, McGhee. It's all stopped now.

The colonists and their descendants killed them all.

Only the English could invent a dessert that sounds like a venereal disease. Let's not forget "bloater", "scrag end" and "dead man's leg", though.