For instance, in Australia, Tim Tams are always a treat, while you either really love or hate Vegemite. In Hong Kong, I can’t really think of a divisive food, since almost all of it is 10/10 amazing!
Beloved: Pizza
Divisive: Pizza with pineapple on it
From Canada I’ve never met anybody who hated poutine, although it’s almost impossible to find vegetarian unless you make it yourself. Maple syrup is also much beloved although whether that’s a food or an ingredient might be open to interpretation
For something more divisive I look at the lobster roll, or probably just lobster in particular. The traditional recipe comes from a time when lobsters were still poverty food, and it’s literally just lobster, mayo, and lettuce served on a hotdog bun. It became popular in fancy-ish restaurants and tourist traps and costs far more than it should. The simplicity of the recipe does little to hide that a lobster is a sea bug, although the flip side is that simple food is often really quite good and homey.
Honorary mention goes to dulse, a type of seaweed. This one’s a fairly popular tourist export along the coast, and while I do like a nori or roasted seaweed, I think this shit is nasty. Although I suppose the tradition is to eat it raw so I’ve never tried cooking with it, it certainly left an impression that scared me off of it
I’ve never met anybody who hated poutine
You’ve met one now. I don’t like gravy, and by extension, poutine. I love (real) cheese curds and French fries though!
That’s funny, if I had to guess I’d have assumed if someone had issue it would be with the curds. Squeaky cheese is not for everyone
In New York, pizza is both the most beloved and the most divisive.
We’ll argue for hours about who makes the best. The oregano question alone has taken dozens of lives over the decades.
Japan, there is this trope of the perfect home cooked meal being curry, that katsu type stuff and how it’s a lucky husband that has a wife ready with it when he gets home. Its just fucking stock cubes? I don’t get it.
For divisive its either natto, yet another variation on fermented soy beans, or umeboshi, a pickled plum sort of thing.
Stroopwafels are the generally accepted goat Dutch foodstuff.
Divisive would be either raw brined herring eaten like this:
Or the myriad of licorice types in our candy stores:
I have never felt more like a seafaring bird than I have eating herring from a cart on the streets of Amsterdam stoned out of my gourd.
Kaw!
Divisive in HK: Durian or fermented tofu.
Durian is divisive ANYWHERE.
I once brought home durian ice cream from the asian market and it smelled so strongly that my wife wouldn’t let me put it in the freezer with the rest of the food
Tasted pretty good though, but it really did smell like feet. I thought that was just a meme until I tried it
Wait till you try the authentic high quality stuff someday.
To me, durian snelled of old rotting onions, but I thought it tasted pretty good.
is it really that bad? i tried it like once in thailand and it didn’t smell bad at all. maybe because it was fresh?
I’m a durian lover, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask. But the smell is unmistakable, and almost universally polarising. The better quality — variety, not just freshness — the durian, the stronger the smell. Did you not smell it, or did you just not mind the smell?
my memory is vague but it just didn’t smell special at all… weird
That’s quite possible, if you had an unripe or just crappy quality one. How did it taste?
i don’t have any special memory about it other than it not being special (as in smell etc…)
i actually don’t really like fruits generally, i just tried it since i was on a trip. guess i should try once more if i get the chance.
Yeah there’s a decent chance a seller took the chance to pass some crappy stock onto the tourists 😂
divisive in korea: Cheonggukjang. made with fermented soybeans, kinda smells bad… but it tastes pretty good once you try.
Southeast Pennsylvania has a number of unique foods.
For the wider population, our most famous food that people enjoy is the Philly cheesesteak, thinly shaved ribeye steak, grilled on a flat top, with American (or preferably sharp provolone) melted either on top or mixed in, on a long Italian roll. Sounds pretty basic, but the ribeye keeps the meat tender and juicy with its fat content, and the proper roll balances the taste and texture correctly, and I think that local roll is the key, and what makes a tasty cheesesteak hard to find once you get too far from the area.
Most divisive is scrapple, which was traditionally a mix of leftover cuts of meat and organs (“everything but the squeal”) of the pig, thickened with cornmeal, and formed into a loaf that looks like a meaty slab of uncured cement. Grilled up proper, it looks somewhat like a square hand formed sausage, but it’s the grey mystery meat story that keeps people away. I was tortured too much by the story by taunting relatives as a kid, so I still don’t eat this, but my wife and brother love it.
For local foods from my culture, the Pennsylvania Dutch have given us way more odd foods than just scrapple!
My favorite is shoo fly pie. This reminds me of my grammom every time I think of it! 🥰 It is a molasses pie (though our family uses table syrup for a more delicate flavor) that has a bottom treacle type layer and a cakey top layer, topped with crumbs like on a struesel/coffee cake. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else, but for Funny Cake, another PA Dutch pie, which is essentially a chocolate syrup/vanilla cake version of shoo fly. Both good, and local markets will sell a half/half version where you get half a shoo fly and half a funny cake together (cut and repackaged, not baked together).
The divisive food that is still pretty common is Lebanon bologna. It is a cured, smoked, and fermented beef bologna. Very smokey and a bit sour, it can be a strange combo to the uninitiated, and is also available in a sweet version, and even that sweet vs regular can be a matter of contention among fans.
There are a lot more odd PA Dutch foods like stuffed pig stomach, souse, our pot pie that is actually a soup, ham balls, but that stuff you generally have to seek out anymore.
Scrapple sounds a bit like Dutch Balkenbrij.
O wait, according to the wiki it is related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkenbrij
That is neat seeing the “Old World” version of it! It seems to be the filler is one of the key differences. Scrapple has cornmeal, while Balkenbrij looks to usually have wheat or buckwheat. The wiki says barley is common in Germany, and my neighbors in Ohio make goetta that uses steel cut or pinhead oats.
I asked my wife if she’d eat scrapple with raisins as mentioned in the wiki, and she puts jelly on her scrapple so she said it didn’t sound bad.
I’ll still take a pass due to the mystery meat, but I feel I should make my own with meat that doesn’t ick me out someday so I can try it. Plenty of people seem to love it, and I’m glad our ancestors found a seemingly tasty way to make the best out of the worst! 😄
Yeah I’m not overly fond of the stuff, yet I have friends being very enthusiastic about it. So definitely divisive, and a bit Dutch.
Most divisive is scrapple
Hah, that takes me back.
I was kind of surprised when I had it as a kid, as it didn’t really taste like hot dogs nor sausage, and oddly tasted more like a hashbrown-variant with some kind of pleasant, mystery seasoning. But after I took my first nutrition course in college, that was the end of my scrapple days. :PHmm, so you’re Pennsylvania Dutch it kinda sounds like?
Btw for the Philly area, I also want to add two favorites: soft pretzels & water ice. Total junk food really, but surprisingly tasty. Soft pretzels themselves are actually kind of odd, since they’re not unlike eating half-baked bread, but with a vaguely crusty outer layer, salt crystals, and hopefully stone ground mustard. They really shouldn’t taste as good as they do.
I could eat infinite soft pretzels! 🤤
I usually eat them plain, I love them so much as-is, but uber processed melty cheese or mustard are good too. I like stone ground, but it always seems to make me a little…windy. 😅
And you have to say water like “wooder” to keep it proper.
I feel both of those have become US foods now though. They seem pretty popular in a lot of places.
My granpop could speak PA Dutch with the Amish still when we would go to Lancaster to do business things out there, but that was the last somewhat traditional generation of our family.
And you have to say water like “wooder” to keep it proper.
“Crick” for creek, “earl” for oil … takes me back. I just looked up a couple more and some sources are saying dentist was also pronounced “Dennis,” apparently(!) Haha, I don’t remember that one.
I feel both of those have become US foods now though. They seem pretty popular in a lot of places.
Well, nominally… or to extent, yeah. But not unlike a proper cheesesteak, I find that they need to be made fresh and locally for best taste. For example, going to the freezer section and buying water ice and soft pretzels is invariably disappointing. And for me it’s been decades, but the last time I tried making homemade pretzels, they were a crushing disappointment. I believe that’s because the dough is prepared to fairly tight standards which you really need to get right for best ‘Philly’-style results.
Last time I was at 30th Street Station (which was years ago) I remember a popular stand called… “Anne’s Pretzels” or something like that with a blue logo. I thought to myself "great! they’re right in the heart of Philly, so they can’t possibly screw up a soft pretzel. Err, nnnnnnope! 😅
My granpop could speak PA Dutch with the Amish
Hmm, I wonder how far back you have to go before PA Dutch and German Deutsch were co-intelligible… 🤔
I guess we do have more strange pronunciations than I think of… I feel I don’t hear as much Dutchiness as I used to though, which I miss.
The PA Dutch wiki doesn’t seem to give a real answer about the exact origins of the language. I’m not very knowledgeable on European history, but all the warring and stuffing of borders and people and then the migration and solution is the language loses me even more. It’s probably one of those things that even they would find each other to have localized accents and different terminology among themselves here.
I’ve made some ok pretzels, but I don’t think it’s the same without something a little more dangerously alkaline to really get the outside right. Baking soda water works ok, but it’s not the same. I like the homemade stuff more as pretzel buns, where it’s still a key player in whatever food it’s holding, but it isn’t a solo act.
Are you talking about Auntie Anne’s Pretzels?
I looked it up and was surprised they’re actual from Pennsylvania. I always thought they were ok bread sticks, but not pretzels.
I think Wawa pretzels suck too, but they are cheap and darn near everywhere so I’ve adapted to the taste, but there still meh but ok enough to scratch the itch.
Oh gosh, Auntie Anne’s, that’s right!
(could also read “Anti-Anne’s,” meaning lowkey disappointing pretzels?) XDMyeh, I don’t want to be all stupid-ass ‘gatekeeping’ here. BUT:
Anon, you just described the perfect cheesesteak in your earlier comments. That is the common FORMULA, oh yeah.Now for whatever reasons, people all across the nation and all across the world somehow just can’t manage to follow the basic directions… like… EVER!
Now I SUPPOSE there are wilder things I’ve seen in my life, however…
To me, Auntie Anne’s are a butter and cinnamon sugar delivery device, not a pretzel. Totally different food if you ask me.
Besides getting the bread wrong (and sometimes the steak), people mess up by ignoring the simplicity, adding peppers, mushrooms, or who knows what else. I think Pittsburgh adds a fried egg. It doesn’t need all that, just let it be what it is.
Some folks here like cheesesteak hoagies, which seems wrong to me, because who wants hot lettuce? That’s at least 2 area foods though, so hey, do what makes you happy.
To me, just a Philly roll, sliced ribeye, real cheese, not Wiz, and fried onions optional. It’s not healthy food, don’t try to disguise it as something with a well-balanced nutritional profile. 😄
don’t try to disguise it as something with a well-balanced nutritional profile. 😄
Oh god, what’s that Broadway hit… The Impossible Dream, or whatever?
Still, tho-- I think you kinda put your finger on the pulse of it, via ‘the bread.’
I absolutely love molasses and don’t think enough foods contain it. I’ll pour some in a spoon and eat it straight! I’ll have to look into recipes for shoo fly pie; the pictures look delicious!
There are a million recipes, all a bit different, and none is right or wrong, everyone will say their family’s style is best of course.
So if you ask me, this is the best!
My writing is slightly clearer than the card I have from my gram, plus the measurements on the right column are for two 8 inch pies, where the left is her original recipe for three pies. That’s too much pie for just the two of us! 😄
I prefer to bake by weight, since scaling with imperial volumetric measures can get into weird fractions.
Syrup in this recipe is Turkey syrup, but if you want the molasses taste, use molasses for the syrup. Soda is baking soda.
Mix the first 4 batter ingredients into fine crumbs, and reserve about 1/3 to 1/2 cup, then mix in the remainder of the batter ingredients.
Pour filling mixture into your pie shells.
Add batter on top. It will push a lot of filling up top, but as it bakes, the batter will puff and come back to the top and the syrupy part will sink.
Bake 350F for 1 hour
Put the reserved crumbs on top when it comes out the oven.
Hey thanks for the recipe!! I think two pies might still be too much! Appreciated nonetheless
I keep one and take one to dinner at someone’s house. You could split that recipe again down to one pie if you have a cooking scale (or estimate some fractions with the volumetric amounts). It keeps me from having leftover syrup that I don’t use for anything else.
Other random recipes should still get you something you should enjoy. It’s hard to go wrong with all those ingredients, you’re going to end up with something good!
Swedish meatballs and surströmming (fermented herring).
surströmming
I don’t know how strong the smell is, but it makes hilarious YouTube videos.
You should always open it up under water. If you don’t, the smell is pretty overwhelming.
We did open it under water. Still it very much reminded me of cesspit smell. Maybe worse actually, because cesspit was managable.
That’s because they eat it wrong. It’s good with potatos, butter, onions, herbs, and aquavit. It sucks where I live no one dares to even try it. The smell will stay on everything you touched.
Divisive in France:
- Every washed-rind cheese, especially Maroilles and Époisses, it smells like hell on earth.
- Andouillette, some kind of sausage which smells like shit because it’s literally made with the shitty part of the intestine. Some people do like to eat shit, I don’t know why.
Nique sa race l’andouillette c’est infâme. Les fromages à pâtes lavées c’est souvent dur au nez mais bon au goût si c’est pas trop maturé. Le meilleur reste le munter géromé.
Battered mars bar
Well we have a whole festival for šaltibarščiai, so that is probably the most beloved…
And most divisive… maybe šaltiena, or kruvainė. I mean šaltiena feels more common out of the 2, especially for this kind of divisive food debate, but kruvainė is one I know many people refuse to even entertain the idea of trying
BBQ
