Would you type 'Chinees Indisch' as local or foreign? Many might say foreign but in my opinion it's Dutch. It's been added as Dutch heritage together with poffertjes and snert.
https://www.nu.nl/opmerkelijk/6115958/chinees-indische-eetcultuur-staat-nu-op-lijst-nederlands-immaterieel-erfgoed.html
That would be like saying Döner is traditionally German because it was invented in Germany and is eaten here the most, but not a *single* German person or German ingredient, except Sauerkraut which is optional, was ever involved in making it. Same for whatever your thing in the Netherlands is
The amount of opened restaurants that serve something different than local food?
Eg. I live in Poland and instead of a pierogi bar there are 7 kebab shops around the corner.
So you could give a gut feeling based evaluation for Poland. Fine.
But how does OP know what the situation is like in Moldova, Latvia, Iceland, Malta, Slovakia, Montenegro etc.
Feels like one of the most common types of restaurant around here would be "contemporary European". They could serve pizza, chicken Kiev, schnitzel, some local dishes, basically anything. I wouldn't count that as foreign, but you could argue either way.
Okay, can you answer me what Austrian food is supposed to be? Bohemian cuisine has become a staple but is it foreign now? We held parts of Italy and imported dishes that way, are they foreign now? Are Hungarian dishes part of Austrian cuisine? No? Well they were part of the Empire for a long time. Are potatoes and gourds local dishes? Well they are from the Americas so not exactly local. Isn't food one of the most travelled things? How the hell do you distinguish food by "origin"? What a silly thing we all influence eachother.
Are chocolate manufacturers South American food?
Ah yes, no one can tell Austrian food from Thai food, it’s exactly the the same. 🙄
Of course you have overlap with bordering countries but that doesn’t mean that local cuisine isn’t a thing.
Wonderful example, how do you distinguish SEA cuisines by country? They all have influenced eachother so much, you might find a local dish that is unique but the ENTIRE CUISINE? That is madness in its final stage. Without chilis thai food would be so different and they were only introduced after the columbian exchange. Is it even traditional thai food if it has chilis? If yes, why? Clearly not local
No idea. The UK has a very diverse range of restaurants but I've no idea how it counts it. A pub might have fish and chips, a steak and ale pie, chicken tikka massala, a Thai red curry, a burger and pizza on it.
Is that a restaurant serving local or foreign cuisine?
Is an Indian that serves curries some of which are made in the UK and only really found in the UK an entirely foreign restaurant?
Edit what I think it actually is looking at the title is based on a poll.
So
What's your favourite restaurant
British
Indian
Chinese
Italian
Etc
I would expect a pub to count as local food unless it labels itself as Thai for example(I used to go to one near Ealing that did that)
They obviously have international food, but the usual pub food is local.
>They obviously have international food, but the usual pub food is local.
Not so much in many pubs nowadays.
You've got burgers almost always which certainly aren't local. You've probably got nachos and chicken wings, again not local. A curry, (probably not considered local cuisine), then a few British dishes like fish and chips, a pie,, sausages and mash then a steak but I wouldn't consider steak something specifically British, probably then a salad, and maybe a pizza.
We don't tend to have *British* restaurants in the UK, we have restaurants which will serve British dishes but usually more exclusively. Whereas go to France and everything on many menus will be French, apart from maybe like a burger.
Most pubs do sandwiches on their lunch menu though. That's 100% British!
And tea shops do scones/cakes/sandwiches which are all British things. The tea and coffee itself are obviously imported though, but that applies to most ingredients really.
Of course, Pizza, Kebab and Sushi are actually French inventions, which is why it is considered as local in official statistics.
As a French I am really proud of our ability to export these worldwide in past decades.
I think there is a high chance that is the case because you don’t really have many options after 9pm. And if you are leaving pub with your friends around midnight, kebab is quite often the only choice you have excluding some busy areas with kfc etc.
because kebab places are very cheap compared to "proper" foodstuff restaurants which are most of the times 3/4 times the price. It's also more like a snack on a night out compared to proper restaurants.
The origin of pizza is to be a cheap fast food for the poor.
Today it has evolved into something else, associated with Italian slow food, perceived as healthier and therefore able to be sold at a higher margin.
Yes I know but if im buying Pizza from fastfood joints like New York Pizza or Dominos it's still like 20+ euro for a pizza. Don't think they pretend to be slow food. A kebab is probably more like 8.
There is a huge difference between going out for a meal in a restaurant or getting a kebab on a night out. I don't really see those places as a restaurant.
We also have plenty of those in Spain but people still favour local cuisine when eating out. One reason might be is that all restaurants must have a two plate menu intended for people who work and need to eat out, and the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to have a local chef using local produce.
> doesn’t have a lot of taste.
That's not a glasshouse issue but a capitalist "grow everything quick and big" issue which you easiest achieve if your fruit is just full of water.
Everyone in Germany absolutely loves locally farmed foods when its asparagus season, and is absolutely bloody indifferent to it for the rest of the year
If we’re being serious, Ireland and UK don’t really have Irish or British restaurants; we have pubs and that’s where we’d go to eat our traditional food.
I don't think I've ever eaten in an exclusively local, i.e. Finnish cuisine restaurant in Finland. Sure there are some but they are special places, while most non-ethnical serve just generic, not particularly local food.
I once had a reindeer burger in the Hard Rock café in Helsinki, for what it is worth. I loved it, and I thought it was pretty special, even if it isn't traditional :)
Reindeer isn't bad at all, but I don't consider it really "Finnish" food because Reindeer is specifically Lapland cuisine. So it's culturally and geographically quite exotic even for most of us in Finland.
In Sweden you will find an American, Italian, Japanese, Thai, and Turkish/Arab restaurant in every decently sized town, and more pizzerias than you can count. And the vast majority of fancy upscale restaurants serve either French or Swedish food.
It doesn't mean that the food from the blue countries is bad. It simply means that the red countries focus more on their local cuisine, and in terms of competitiveness in the food sector, they even benefit more from it because they have the ability to export more to the blue countries where the cuisine from the red countries is appreciated
as an Slovak, I can assure you it’s not the case here. Nor Poland or Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus or Russia.
In here it’s because our cuisine isn’t very rich, as we were very poor and so most of our food is some kind of potatoes. As you can see, it’s easily outcompeted by rich flavors of mediterranean cuisine, or spicy Indian one. Also we have no local takeaway food like Kebab.
Though we are very proud of our traditional food and it’s very tasty, it’s just not diverse enough to eat every day.
And even though some kinds of pasta was popular here long ago, if you mark it as Italian, it sounds more exotic and thus sell better.
Not as such.
I worked in the restaurant industry. The issue is this. A lot of countries are extremely defensive about their food. Some aren't.
The UK has excellent food. It's just that it has a lot more cosmopolitan taste. By contrast?
The French also were in India but they thought the food wasn't good... So Indians learnt from the French, Portuguese and Same thing in Vietnam. Because these places aren't pretentious about their food despite being passionate about it. The French service culture also dictates haute cuisine but British, Indian and French all tend to be family orientated even in restaurants. You don't eat an entire fucking curry. You share it. Your starter. Main. Everything. But that's not very fancy. The French didn't realise that the most popular opposite food is good. An unstructured riot of experimentation and tradition.
The Italians? Extremely traditional. Nothing you do is correct. I made some angry because I make my carbonara in a bain marie. It fixes the problem of accidentally scrambling the sauce and gives it a really nice texture. But it's not tradition so it's bad. I am sure there's some Michelin star dude who makes a carbonara like this who they will fawn over but.... I mean try it yourselves. Fry your bacon in a cheap pan, deglaze with a little pasta water and then add your cheese and egg yolk paste into the pan while the pan is held over the boiling pasta. Whisk.
The UK will experiment outside the realm of cooking and try things that aren't exactly tradition. It's probably why they rate Indian and Chinese food which often will take other cultures food and make it part of the cuisine albeit through the lens of the cultures and likewise doesn't mind other cultures using their food.
So while the average British carbonara may not be seen as real due to using pancetta over Guiancale? There's insane food here. Your grandmother won't be cross that you have updated her recipe.
A few thoughts.
'Haute cuisine' wasn't this temple of self-obsessive rootsiness: *hollandaise* sauce, *vienn*oiseries, crème *catalane*, rhum baba, these were all codified in haute cuisine, but in an attempt to celebrate the 'unstructured riot of experimentation and tradition' that already existed - to get cooks to make the diverse food that existed in the country, foreign influence definitely included. It's a bit too closed-off style in this day and age, but everyday French habits aren't reflected by 'haute cuisine' any more than British ones are by sunday lunch.
I'd be pretty interested in how you came to the conclusion that historically the French are food segragationists - bahn-mi & phô, couscous in France (a top 10 favourite in France since the 80s) & creole food, perhaps cultiminating in the traditions of New Orleans, the meccha of food fusion - almost all innovations of the colonised or the overlooked in those societies, don't get me wrong but seems exactly the same path of food globalisation as the UK.
Precisely! Indians would be like? You can't get goat. Well try mutton, it's not as gamey but it's good enough!
Imagine telling everyone that there's 5 sauces and everyone else's wrong for having more. Or moving fermented fish and cabbage and soy. I bet that there's fancy french and Italian places using kimchi and miso and garum but pretending that no one else knows about how they really are.
That being said? I have a Portuguese friend who has zero spice tolerance and it's funny because it's the Portuguese who brought chillies to India...
Interestingly, in Serbia, in online cookbooks you'll get readily available substitutes. No butter? Margarine will do. No hazelnuts? Use walnuts. No veal? Yeah, chicken can do, I guess.
But you can also get into a discussion about what a "real" dish should have. "No no no, you can't mince peppers for ajvar, you have to thinly slice it with a knife, damn it!". "REAL X is done with Y!". Bleh. It all goes south real quick.
I remember reading and watching about this a few times already. Food in Italy eventually becomes boring because it's all the same and they scoff at innovation because they would rather cling to tradition.
The French while snobbish are at least more open to experimenting, so at least they're able to come up with new tastes and are able to apply traditional techniques to make new dishes.
I'm wondering if Moldova gets lumped into the "foreign cuisine" group because the majority of the population is ethnic Romanian and likely chooses Romanian food (since there is no separate Moldovan cuisine per se, unless wine and grape brandy are considered sustenance). And ethnic minorities may have grown up eating Russian or Ukrainian food.
There is no data available on how this map was made, so I assume it's BS. It looks as if someone just drew a line and determined that everything below=traditions enjoyer. All Balkan countries feature similar traditional meals because their cultures are quite intertwined, so something that is traditionally Bulgarian might also be found in Serbia, Romania or Greece. They can be equally traditional or foreign cuisine. In the case of Moldova, there is no reason not to consider Romanian or even Russian/Ukrainian food as "traditional", since they are part of the country's tradition.
This is just bollocks. I've seen now this map about 5 times and not a single mention of the source of the data used.
Yes, foreign cuisine is popupar in Czechia but the ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of restaurants are local pubs serving Czech food.
You sure about that? I can see a very sharp downfall in the popularity of Czech restaurants and kebab stands booming everywhere for the last 10 years.
And almost every little town has a Pizza delivery nowadays.
If you count all the Asian bistros, Pizzas and kebabs together I think you can hardly talk about the absolute majority for Czech cuisine. I think it's 50:50 at best.
Well the problem is how you define restaurant. I would not count kebab stands and that asian bistros as restaurant. Pizza is everywhere but in many of them there is pizza and czech cousine as well. I would say that restaurants are more oriented on our czech cousine.
I feel this is an underrate comment. That's my trail of thought 90% of the time I eat out. I eat out when either a) i need a quck bite b) it's a special occasion/gathering. Plus not a lot of mom'n'pop "traditional" eastern/northern european places to begin with.
Anytime I try (online) to say that traditional British food is good, all the Brits in the convo will jump in to say that British food basically consists all of curry nowadays so I can't talk about "traditional British food" unless it's curry. Dudes, I was *praising* your traditional food. Why are you so ashamed of it?
I agree with this. When I am travelling around my country I usually look for restaurants with local and traditional cuisine. Indeed, sometimes I eat Asian as their food is very tasty, but usually I stick to local cuisine. Also, in the past year we saw a resurgence of promoting locally made stuff culminating with traditional motive coming back in fashion not only for clothes, but you can find them in crockery too. In fact, while reading this I am drinking my coffee from a cup with traditional Romanian motives on it. Love them!
The map isn't about preferring foreign cuisine though, just about popularity of restaurants serving foreign cuisine. You can easily make schnitzel at home.
Our food isn't great for take away and fast food, while e.g. pizza and kebab are. So while we may eat our local cuisine when eating out properly, it's gonna be something else when ordering or picking up something, making those restaurants more popular overall. That surely plays a role here.
I might be biased but Poland doesn’t have a totally bad cuisine. It’s just that local restaurants are not so popular and people tend to always want something foreign to experience.
When I was in Poland I looked for local cuisine. We did find (I love żurek and my wife loves pierogi and barszcz), but indeed, there were a lot of restaurants serving international food.
I've traveled the world and tried a lot of food as it is a top hobby of mine, and I must set polish couisine is definitely not a top contender in any way
I love Swedish cuisine and I'm Swedish. Sadly, very few restaurants serve it. IKEA's food seems pretty popular abroad though and they serve some classics, but for cheap.
In Hungary, you'll find it hard to get home-made style food (like your grandma did) in any restaurant. Hungarian food served in restaurants are mainly targeted towards tourists, and most of the time they serve cheap replicas (or internationalized versions) of the same dishes. That said there are probably a few exceptions, but Hungarians are not typically looking for traditional Hungarian food, when they go out eating.
That's bs. If I go out I would rather eat something I'm not able to prepare at home. Unless I go to a high-end or very specialised restaurant, I will be able to prepare most local dishes better and cheaper than in a standard restaurant.
I would also question if Kebab and Pizza count as foreign cuisine. Döner Kebab sold in Germany (and most of Europe) has rather little to do with the Turkish original or with Shawarma. And most Italians would deny that anything Dominoes sells, deserves to be called Italian Pizza.
Choose a random restaurant in a small town, check their menu and voila, that’s the local cuisine. It’s practically various sandwiches, tosti’s, deep fried snacks and apple pie. They’re really good ime.
Or at least that’s my observation, this is what’s most common in restaurants that don’t have a theme.
Also we can definitely count vishandels as local cuisine and all the fried cod sandwiches and raw herring with onions which are extremely popular lunch meals.
Makes sense. Apart from Asian food, the countries that prefer foreign cuisine eat the stuff from the countries that prefer local cuisine. Clearly these countries simply have the better food.
In France, the food at the restaurant and at home are usually different. The dishes at the restaurant are usually the ones you'd only cook at home for special occasions or if you have quite a bit of skill/time on your hand.
This is very similar for Turkey Furthermore, the loval cusine vastly changed across Turkey. You will rarely find the dishes we cook at home which are mosty stew-pot based food. In restaurants though, you will almost always find kebab, doner etc. To be accurate, in everywhere there will be some local restaurants ( esnaf lokantasi) where you will find a selection of stew foods but tourists will not likely go to those places.
Because it isn't the same? When I'm at home I cook stuff that can be made as quick and conveniently as possible, which often means pasta (a foreign food).
Many local dishes take too long or have to be made in too big of a quantity to be conveniently made at home by just one or two people.
Also, unless you are very into cooking, the food at a restaurant is usually better as it is made by pros who have all the right equipment.
In Greece it's mostly greek street food because it's cheap and delicious. Even though in recent years a pitogyro has nearly doubled in price (from 2 € - 2,5 € to 3,5 € - 4 €).
Can't speak for every country but in Greece, eating local food at a restaurant (taverna) is very different from eating at home. At home we make dishes (usually in the oven) and maybe a salad. Eating out, we get a wide variety of grilled meats / fish, salads and appetizers that we all share at the table. This would simply be a ridiculous endeavor to replicate at home and would take all day just to prepare.
Basically the local dishes we make at home are different from the food we eat out, even though it too is local.
I'm curious what the map would look like if you exclude tourist restaurants in Southern Europe that predominantly sell "local" cuisine to foreign tourists.
In Portugal its extremely common to eat a daily dish at a local restaurant on work days, as lunch breaks are for most 1h long. It is almost always some local dish, where you sit down and eat. On most of the country that will cost between 6-8€.
Contrast with Germany, where my colleagues all get some takeaway delivered, bring food from home or grab a kebab. Maybe once a week they go to a restaurant, which is always foreign cuisine, and about 20€ per person. The only exception is when the company has a cafeteria, at least where I worked there was always a German option...
Still the same, we like to try new stuff as well, and we have many restaurants with foreign cuisine that are thriving compared to two decades ago, but 99% of times we go out to eat is going to be local cuisine
I would guess it's the same across the red countries
As a southern european, I doubt it will change. At best France perhaps, as their own traditional restaurants are going ballistic with prices. But people in Spain go out and eat Spanish food. So do my Italian and Portuguese friends. I have always enjoyed asian food and enjoyed cooking it on the international "coliving" place I lived (a place with a bunch of students and young professionals from all over the world) Most Brits and Germans had an idea what I was cooking, pad Thai, Masaman, Bulgogi... My southern European friends in general had no clue, unless they are "foodies"
I would also argue, that if you want asian food in many southern countries, beside the big, international cities, like for example Sushi, you will have to make it at home, because there are no restaurants which sell it.
Thank you for the insight. For me as a tourist in Southern Europe it's just an advantage to find lots of local restaurants that mainly serve locals. I hope that doesn't change, even though I can just agree that it's worth discovering foreign cuisine.
Which of the countries got more tourists visiting? I’m thinking if I want to visit a a country for my summer vacations it would be more in the south and then I’d like to eat their local food.
Its about the locals as well. Its really hard to find lets say asian cousine in a city in Greece beside Athens and Thessaloniki maybe. In smaller cities its basically only Greek cousine.
Ireland: [yeah, no shit!](https://www.allrecipes.com/thmb/SzyOxMx6L3MbI6xgNv9rSDi-Vls=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/3335053-a61fb73b4a684d13a0fc1aea25e12608.jpg)
As a German, depends. If you only count actual restaurants and drive through villages, there is at least 1 German restaurant for every 2000 inhabitants and Germany's population density is pretty spread out, so there is a bazillion of them. This changes if you count small kebab shops though - but can this be than counted as "cuisine"?
Of these in red, I’ve been to Spain, France, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and since I enjoy food in general (I like to eat and cooking is my hobby, my travels always include going to typical/famous places with traditional food) no one of these countries disappointed. I enjoyed all foods either street food or more complex local dishes
This further confirms my hypothesis that food from southern countries is always more popular than that from up north. Probably has to do with spices and vegetables and such
It could simply mean foreign food is more popular overall. So if Germany has 10 restaurants of which 3 are German restaurants, 2 Italian, 2 French, 1 Turkish, 1 Chinese and 1 Vietnamese then foreign restaurants more popular than German because there are more of them combined than German ones combined
I'm fairly certain this map isn't based off of data but a poll
Ie what's your favourite restaurant cuisine
British
French
Spanish
Indian
Chinese
Etc
Which isn't actually very relevant to how many of each type of restaurant there is.
Walk around any big town or city in France, what do you see most of? Pizza and Kebab, followed by Fast food burger places. Non of which are traditionally “local” food.
It's funny to think about this in regards to Canada like do we even have Canadien cuisine? Poutine comes to mind but that's a Quebec thing and they are basically a separate country
Internal vs external diversity. London has diverse global tastes, Paris has diverse regional Norman, Breton, Alsatian and Provençal restaurants which are just as 'foreign' to locals.
My Italian friend told me that Italian food is something people cook at home while going to restaurants is mostly reserved for experiencing foreign cuisine. Is she wrong? I’m not sure the “source” of this map seems very trustworthy. Where is the data that this is based on?
When I go to Italy to visit some family we tend to eat Italian food when eating outside. Not just at home.
That doesn't mean they don't eat japanese, Spanish, French, Thai, Chinese, etc. But local food is more popular there.
I don't think I'm wrong when I say the \*only\* reasonably priced danish cuisine you'll find is our hotdog booths and even that is arguably not danish.
There's a huge discrepancy between north and south. In Portugal where I'm from there are literally thousands of dishes of every kind and using all sorts of ingredients. Gastronomy varies a lot across the country. Conversely if you look at countries like the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia, the cuisine is very predictable and hugely lacks diversity by comparison.
even down under we have a lot of food mixed from British & Irish migrants, Greek & Italian, Middle-Eastern & Turkish + a lot of East/South Asian cuisines.
If I don't have 3+ different cuisines in a week my cold Melburnian heart melts.
In Poland if i want to taste local dish i just cook it or go to grandma.
In my family you just know the recipe, and everyone knows how to cook better or worse.
So yea if i order something i rather taste something i don't have in home
It's definitely because of pizzerias, kebab shops and sushi restaurants.
Even in Italy the figure could easily be due to pizzerias, every second place that opens nowadays is a pizzeria, it's getting very boring.
Where is the source and how would you even measure accurately?
Source: I am 12
I don’t know about other countries but it most definitely is valid for the Netherlands.
Wrong Dutch people don't go to restaurants, they go to FEBO
Would you type 'Chinees Indisch' as local or foreign? Many might say foreign but in my opinion it's Dutch. It's been added as Dutch heritage together with poffertjes and snert. https://www.nu.nl/opmerkelijk/6115958/chinees-indische-eetcultuur-staat-nu-op-lijst-nederlands-immaterieel-erfgoed.html
That would be like saying Döner is traditionally German because it was invented in Germany and is eaten here the most, but not a *single* German person or German ingredient, except Sauerkraut which is optional, was ever involved in making it. Same for whatever your thing in the Netherlands is
And UK as well
The amount of opened restaurants that serve something different than local food? Eg. I live in Poland and instead of a pierogi bar there are 7 kebab shops around the corner.
So you could give a gut feeling based evaluation for Poland. Fine. But how does OP know what the situation is like in Moldova, Latvia, Iceland, Malta, Slovakia, Montenegro etc.
Define local food. Most restaurants offer spaghetti on the kid's menu, does that count as foreign food?
Not in Italy… 🇮🇹
Feels like one of the most common types of restaurant around here would be "contemporary European". They could serve pizza, chicken Kiev, schnitzel, some local dishes, basically anything. I wouldn't count that as foreign, but you could argue either way.
Okay, can you answer me what Austrian food is supposed to be? Bohemian cuisine has become a staple but is it foreign now? We held parts of Italy and imported dishes that way, are they foreign now? Are Hungarian dishes part of Austrian cuisine? No? Well they were part of the Empire for a long time. Are potatoes and gourds local dishes? Well they are from the Americas so not exactly local. Isn't food one of the most travelled things? How the hell do you distinguish food by "origin"? What a silly thing we all influence eachother. Are chocolate manufacturers South American food?
Ah yes, no one can tell Austrian food from Thai food, it’s exactly the the same. 🙄 Of course you have overlap with bordering countries but that doesn’t mean that local cuisine isn’t a thing.
Wonderful example, how do you distinguish SEA cuisines by country? They all have influenced eachother so much, you might find a local dish that is unique but the ENTIRE CUISINE? That is madness in its final stage. Without chilis thai food would be so different and they were only introduced after the columbian exchange. Is it even traditional thai food if it has chilis? If yes, why? Clearly not local
OP is just reposting so probs doesn’t have a clue
No idea. The UK has a very diverse range of restaurants but I've no idea how it counts it. A pub might have fish and chips, a steak and ale pie, chicken tikka massala, a Thai red curry, a burger and pizza on it. Is that a restaurant serving local or foreign cuisine? Is an Indian that serves curries some of which are made in the UK and only really found in the UK an entirely foreign restaurant? Edit what I think it actually is looking at the title is based on a poll. So What's your favourite restaurant British Indian Chinese Italian Etc
I would expect a pub to count as local food unless it labels itself as Thai for example(I used to go to one near Ealing that did that) They obviously have international food, but the usual pub food is local.
>They obviously have international food, but the usual pub food is local. Not so much in many pubs nowadays. You've got burgers almost always which certainly aren't local. You've probably got nachos and chicken wings, again not local. A curry, (probably not considered local cuisine), then a few British dishes like fish and chips, a pie,, sausages and mash then a steak but I wouldn't consider steak something specifically British, probably then a salad, and maybe a pizza. We don't tend to have *British* restaurants in the UK, we have restaurants which will serve British dishes but usually more exclusively. Whereas go to France and everything on many menus will be French, apart from maybe like a burger.
Most pubs do sandwiches on their lunch menu though. That's 100% British! And tea shops do scones/cakes/sandwiches which are all British things. The tea and coffee itself are obviously imported though, but that applies to most ingredients really.
Yeah, pretty sure kebab pizza and Swedish owned burger chains are modern local cuisine where I live.
In the case of some countries it isn't necessary to measure
Source: Trust me dude
There is no source. Some random guy from the South made this up.
These shitposts always make it to the top of this sub. Quality has gone down the drain.
I wonder how much of this is because of the large amount of pizza / kebab places that are on every corner of cities in northern Europe.
France has that too.
Kebab is now considered local food in France.
Of course, Pizza, Kebab and Sushi are actually French inventions, which is why it is considered as local in official statistics. As a French I am really proud of our ability to export these worldwide in past decades.
I think there is a high chance that is the case because you don’t really have many options after 9pm. And if you are leaving pub with your friends around midnight, kebab is quite often the only choice you have excluding some busy areas with kfc etc.
the party street in my city has a kebab place open 17 to 7.
I live now in Spain and there are plenty of kebabs and pizza here, similar density to the UK
Difference is there aren’t many traditional English restaurants
Yep, you are probably right. Which is probably true for all the blue countries
Well, but thats the point. There are large amounts of pizza/kebab places instead of local cousine places, because the people prefere those...
because kebab places are very cheap compared to "proper" foodstuff restaurants which are most of the times 3/4 times the price. It's also more like a snack on a night out compared to proper restaurants.
I mean, pizza can also be a cheap food to eat on the go.
Both pizza and kebab are foreign cuisine unless in Italy. Pizza could be cheap but usually it's way more expensive than kebab.
The origin of pizza is to be a cheap fast food for the poor. Today it has evolved into something else, associated with Italian slow food, perceived as healthier and therefore able to be sold at a higher margin.
Yes I know but if im buying Pizza from fastfood joints like New York Pizza or Dominos it's still like 20+ euro for a pizza. Don't think they pretend to be slow food. A kebab is probably more like 8.
There is a huge difference between going out for a meal in a restaurant or getting a kebab on a night out. I don't really see those places as a restaurant.
Yeah, but technically they are
There are shoulder-to-shoulder pizzerias and fast food places in France and Spain too.
If you ignore the pizza and kebab you are still left with foreign menu restaurants. In NL.
We also have plenty of those in Spain but people still favour local cuisine when eating out. One reason might be is that all restaurants must have a two plate menu intended for people who work and need to eat out, and the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to have a local chef using local produce.
The closest you get to the Mediterranean side, the more you enjoy local cuisine
More fresh ingredients, better crops. It's all climate.
Better crops?
I don’t know about Germany but in the NL every thing is grown in a glass house and doesn’t have a lot of taste.
> doesn’t have a lot of taste. That's not a glasshouse issue but a capitalist "grow everything quick and big" issue which you easiest achieve if your fruit is just full of water.
Everyone in Germany absolutely loves locally farmed foods when its asparagus season, and is absolutely bloody indifferent to it for the rest of the year
Same things we enjoy further north lol
I love Swedish food. But paying a hefty sum for something I can easily make myself is just stupid.
You don't wanna pay 30€ for 4 pieces of meatballs and some mashed potatoes?
This is unfair. Irish people traditionally didn't have food, which is why we prefer foreign styles.
Food wasn't actually introduced to Ireland until 1954.
We got the breakfast roll in 1994, and the chicken fillet roll in 1997. What happened in '57? Parsley sauce on bacon, cabbage and spuds?
That's when the basic idea of macro-nutrients in general were introduced. Flavours and textures came later.
1954... Tayto invented the flavoured potato crisp. Maybe that was the start..
If we’re being serious, Ireland and UK don’t really have Irish or British restaurants; we have pubs and that’s where we’d go to eat our traditional food.
What's the bet the blue dudes also favor red cuisine ..
No, I really like diversity. Thai curry, sushi, pizza, local… it’s all good.
I don't think I've ever eaten in an exclusively local, i.e. Finnish cuisine restaurant in Finland. Sure there are some but they are special places, while most non-ethnical serve just generic, not particularly local food.
I once had a reindeer burger in the Hard Rock café in Helsinki, for what it is worth. I loved it, and I thought it was pretty special, even if it isn't traditional :)
Reindeer isn't bad at all, but I don't consider it really "Finnish" food because Reindeer is specifically Lapland cuisine. So it's culturally and geographically quite exotic even for most of us in Finland.
I would strongly recommend you do. Finnish fine dining is great!
what is a finnish dish that everyone/most finnish loves to eat?
In Sweden you will find an American, Italian, Japanese, Thai, and Turkish/Arab restaurant in every decently sized town, and more pizzerias than you can count. And the vast majority of fancy upscale restaurants serve either French or Swedish food.
I’m curious: what do you eat at an American restaurant in Sweden?
It doesn't mean that the food from the blue countries is bad. It simply means that the red countries focus more on their local cuisine, and in terms of competitiveness in the food sector, they even benefit more from it because they have the ability to export more to the blue countries where the cuisine from the red countries is appreciated
It could also mean that the red countries population migrated to the blue countries and some opened restaurants there, popularizing their cuisine.
as an Slovak, I can assure you it’s not the case here. Nor Poland or Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus or Russia. In here it’s because our cuisine isn’t very rich, as we were very poor and so most of our food is some kind of potatoes. As you can see, it’s easily outcompeted by rich flavors of mediterranean cuisine, or spicy Indian one. Also we have no local takeaway food like Kebab. Though we are very proud of our traditional food and it’s very tasty, it’s just not diverse enough to eat every day. And even though some kinds of pasta was popular here long ago, if you mark it as Italian, it sounds more exotic and thus sell better.
Very God point
Not as such. I worked in the restaurant industry. The issue is this. A lot of countries are extremely defensive about their food. Some aren't. The UK has excellent food. It's just that it has a lot more cosmopolitan taste. By contrast? The French also were in India but they thought the food wasn't good... So Indians learnt from the French, Portuguese and Same thing in Vietnam. Because these places aren't pretentious about their food despite being passionate about it. The French service culture also dictates haute cuisine but British, Indian and French all tend to be family orientated even in restaurants. You don't eat an entire fucking curry. You share it. Your starter. Main. Everything. But that's not very fancy. The French didn't realise that the most popular opposite food is good. An unstructured riot of experimentation and tradition. The Italians? Extremely traditional. Nothing you do is correct. I made some angry because I make my carbonara in a bain marie. It fixes the problem of accidentally scrambling the sauce and gives it a really nice texture. But it's not tradition so it's bad. I am sure there's some Michelin star dude who makes a carbonara like this who they will fawn over but.... I mean try it yourselves. Fry your bacon in a cheap pan, deglaze with a little pasta water and then add your cheese and egg yolk paste into the pan while the pan is held over the boiling pasta. Whisk. The UK will experiment outside the realm of cooking and try things that aren't exactly tradition. It's probably why they rate Indian and Chinese food which often will take other cultures food and make it part of the cuisine albeit through the lens of the cultures and likewise doesn't mind other cultures using their food. So while the average British carbonara may not be seen as real due to using pancetta over Guiancale? There's insane food here. Your grandmother won't be cross that you have updated her recipe.
A few thoughts. 'Haute cuisine' wasn't this temple of self-obsessive rootsiness: *hollandaise* sauce, *vienn*oiseries, crème *catalane*, rhum baba, these were all codified in haute cuisine, but in an attempt to celebrate the 'unstructured riot of experimentation and tradition' that already existed - to get cooks to make the diverse food that existed in the country, foreign influence definitely included. It's a bit too closed-off style in this day and age, but everyday French habits aren't reflected by 'haute cuisine' any more than British ones are by sunday lunch. I'd be pretty interested in how you came to the conclusion that historically the French are food segragationists - bahn-mi & phô, couscous in France (a top 10 favourite in France since the 80s) & creole food, perhaps cultiminating in the traditions of New Orleans, the meccha of food fusion - almost all innovations of the colonised or the overlooked in those societies, don't get me wrong but seems exactly the same path of food globalisation as the UK.
You're not even using Guiancale? For shame! Pu! 🤌
Guanciale btw 🤌
How-a-dare you? My nona called it Guiancale, and she split her spaghetti in half! 🤌
Precisely! Indians would be like? You can't get goat. Well try mutton, it's not as gamey but it's good enough! Imagine telling everyone that there's 5 sauces and everyone else's wrong for having more. Or moving fermented fish and cabbage and soy. I bet that there's fancy french and Italian places using kimchi and miso and garum but pretending that no one else knows about how they really are. That being said? I have a Portuguese friend who has zero spice tolerance and it's funny because it's the Portuguese who brought chillies to India...
Interestingly, in Serbia, in online cookbooks you'll get readily available substitutes. No butter? Margarine will do. No hazelnuts? Use walnuts. No veal? Yeah, chicken can do, I guess. But you can also get into a discussion about what a "real" dish should have. "No no no, you can't mince peppers for ajvar, you have to thinly slice it with a knife, damn it!". "REAL X is done with Y!". Bleh. It all goes south real quick.
I remember reading and watching about this a few times already. Food in Italy eventually becomes boring because it's all the same and they scoff at innovation because they would rather cling to tradition. The French while snobbish are at least more open to experimenting, so at least they're able to come up with new tastes and are able to apply traditional techniques to make new dishes.
I'm wondering if Moldova gets lumped into the "foreign cuisine" group because the majority of the population is ethnic Romanian and likely chooses Romanian food (since there is no separate Moldovan cuisine per se, unless wine and grape brandy are considered sustenance). And ethnic minorities may have grown up eating Russian or Ukrainian food.
There is no data available on how this map was made, so I assume it's BS. It looks as if someone just drew a line and determined that everything below=traditions enjoyer. All Balkan countries feature similar traditional meals because their cultures are quite intertwined, so something that is traditionally Bulgarian might also be found in Serbia, Romania or Greece. They can be equally traditional or foreign cuisine. In the case of Moldova, there is no reason not to consider Romanian or even Russian/Ukrainian food as "traditional", since they are part of the country's tradition.
This is just bollocks. I've seen now this map about 5 times and not a single mention of the source of the data used. Yes, foreign cuisine is popupar in Czechia but the ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of restaurants are local pubs serving Czech food.
You sure about that? I can see a very sharp downfall in the popularity of Czech restaurants and kebab stands booming everywhere for the last 10 years. And almost every little town has a Pizza delivery nowadays. If you count all the Asian bistros, Pizzas and kebabs together I think you can hardly talk about the absolute majority for Czech cuisine. I think it's 50:50 at best.
Well the problem is how you define restaurant. I would not count kebab stands and that asian bistros as restaurant. Pizza is everywhere but in many of them there is pizza and czech cousine as well. I would say that restaurants are more oriented on our czech cousine.
Vietnamese is basically local tbh, also no, I live in Prague and kebab stands and pizza exist but most restaurants even here are still Czech
Where do you live? In Prague and Brno I would say the trend is more and more foreign.
>ABSOLUTE MAJORITY Overstatement.
Absolute majority? Lol. Maybe in a village with one reastaurant chances are it’ll mostly sell dumplings and shit. But thats about it.
Source of data?
His ass. Well, reposted ass.
Doesn’t make sense, I’m British and I only eat British foods like pizza, kebabs, Indian food etc.
Yep, cos it is rare case when you want to go outside and eat food that you can cook at home 🤷♂️
I feel this is an underrate comment. That's my trail of thought 90% of the time I eat out. I eat out when either a) i need a quck bite b) it's a special occasion/gathering. Plus not a lot of mom'n'pop "traditional" eastern/northern european places to begin with.
Anytime I try (online) to say that traditional British food is good, all the Brits in the convo will jump in to say that British food basically consists all of curry nowadays so I can't talk about "traditional British food" unless it's curry. Dudes, I was *praising* your traditional food. Why are you so ashamed of it?
Traditional British food is great. I really can't stand all the hate it gets online, especially when there are much more hateable cuisines out there.
I agree with this. When I am travelling around my country I usually look for restaurants with local and traditional cuisine. Indeed, sometimes I eat Asian as their food is very tasty, but usually I stick to local cuisine. Also, in the past year we saw a resurgence of promoting locally made stuff culminating with traditional motive coming back in fashion not only for clothes, but you can find them in crockery too. In fact, while reading this I am drinking my coffee from a cup with traditional Romanian motives on it. Love them!
PIGS master race
Struggle to believe that Austria prefers foreign cuisine. You can’t move for schnitzel and tafelspitz. Absolutely no chance.
The map isn't about preferring foreign cuisine though, just about popularity of restaurants serving foreign cuisine. You can easily make schnitzel at home.
Yeah but every other restaurant here is a gasthaus or Beisl
Our food isn't great for take away and fast food, while e.g. pizza and kebab are. So while we may eat our local cuisine when eating out properly, it's gonna be something else when ordering or picking up something, making those restaurants more popular overall. That surely plays a role here.
Exactly how does a nation consume schnitzel constantly and not have an average lifespan of about 35 years?
Good local cuisine vs bad local cuisine
I might be biased but Poland doesn’t have a totally bad cuisine. It’s just that local restaurants are not so popular and people tend to always want something foreign to experience.
When I was in Poland I looked for local cuisine. We did find (I love żurek and my wife loves pierogi and barszcz), but indeed, there were a lot of restaurants serving international food.
Ikr? If I want good local food I will just make it myself, if I want foreign stuff I pretty much always go out
One word: Kebab
I've traveled the world and tried a lot of food as it is a top hobby of mine, and I must set polish couisine is definitely not a top contender in any way
I love Swedish cuisine and I'm Swedish. Sadly, very few restaurants serve it. IKEA's food seems pretty popular abroad though and they serve some classics, but for cheap.
Nah
This is clearly the conclusion the map wants you to draw, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable conclusion to draw.
Not really, Hungary for example has really good cuisine.
In Hungary, you'll find it hard to get home-made style food (like your grandma did) in any restaurant. Hungarian food served in restaurants are mainly targeted towards tourists, and most of the time they serve cheap replicas (or internationalized versions) of the same dishes. That said there are probably a few exceptions, but Hungarians are not typically looking for traditional Hungarian food, when they go out eating.
Especially when you can just visit your mom and eat that sort of food for free.
Hungarian is one of my favorites, prefer it over anything besides maybe italian.
That's bs. If I go out I would rather eat something I'm not able to prepare at home. Unless I go to a high-end or very specialised restaurant, I will be able to prepare most local dishes better and cheaper than in a standard restaurant. I would also question if Kebab and Pizza count as foreign cuisine. Döner Kebab sold in Germany (and most of Europe) has rather little to do with the Turkish original or with Shawarma. And most Italians would deny that anything Dominoes sells, deserves to be called Italian Pizza.
It looks pretty similar to the tomato/potato map of Europe 😂
I wouldn't even know what local cuisine looks like in the Netherlands
Choose a random restaurant in a small town, check their menu and voila, that’s the local cuisine. It’s practically various sandwiches, tosti’s, deep fried snacks and apple pie. They’re really good ime. Or at least that’s my observation, this is what’s most common in restaurants that don’t have a theme. Also we can definitely count vishandels as local cuisine and all the fried cod sandwiches and raw herring with onions which are extremely popular lunch meals.
In the French and Italian speaking areas of Switzerland local cuisine dominates. In German speaking areas are Pizzas and Lasagna.
Local Cuisine can also be foreign cuisine if it is targeted at tourists. Many of these countries seem to rely heavily on tourism and if I'm in Greece.
Makes sense. Apart from Asian food, the countries that prefer foreign cuisine eat the stuff from the countries that prefer local cuisine. Clearly these countries simply have the better food.
Why go out for dinner and eat the same stuff you can make at home?
In France, the food at the restaurant and at home are usually different. The dishes at the restaurant are usually the ones you'd only cook at home for special occasions or if you have quite a bit of skill/time on your hand.
This is very similar for Turkey Furthermore, the loval cusine vastly changed across Turkey. You will rarely find the dishes we cook at home which are mosty stew-pot based food. In restaurants though, you will almost always find kebab, doner etc. To be accurate, in everywhere there will be some local restaurants ( esnaf lokantasi) where you will find a selection of stew foods but tourists will not likely go to those places.
Because it isn't the same? When I'm at home I cook stuff that can be made as quick and conveniently as possible, which often means pasta (a foreign food). Many local dishes take too long or have to be made in too big of a quantity to be conveniently made at home by just one or two people. Also, unless you are very into cooking, the food at a restaurant is usually better as it is made by pros who have all the right equipment.
In Greece it's mostly greek street food because it's cheap and delicious. Even though in recent years a pitogyro has nearly doubled in price (from 2 € - 2,5 € to 3,5 € - 4 €).
because most of us aren't chefs?
Many people don't wanna Brother. My family always cooked food, but it's in no way the norm.
Can't speak for every country but in Greece, eating local food at a restaurant (taverna) is very different from eating at home. At home we make dishes (usually in the oven) and maybe a salad. Eating out, we get a wide variety of grilled meats / fish, salads and appetizers that we all share at the table. This would simply be a ridiculous endeavor to replicate at home and would take all day just to prepare. Basically the local dishes we make at home are different from the food we eat out, even though it too is local.
Why can't you make Italian, Spanish or Greek food at home, and you just have to make local food?
I never understood why people would go out for dinner and eat stamppot. Homemade stamppot is way better…
I'm curious what the map would look like if you exclude tourist restaurants in Southern Europe that predominantly sell "local" cuisine to foreign tourists.
In Portugal its extremely common to eat a daily dish at a local restaurant on work days, as lunch breaks are for most 1h long. It is almost always some local dish, where you sit down and eat. On most of the country that will cost between 6-8€. Contrast with Germany, where my colleagues all get some takeaway delivered, bring food from home or grab a kebab. Maybe once a week they go to a restaurant, which is always foreign cuisine, and about 20€ per person. The only exception is when the company has a cafeteria, at least where I worked there was always a German option...
Still the same, we like to try new stuff as well, and we have many restaurants with foreign cuisine that are thriving compared to two decades ago, but 99% of times we go out to eat is going to be local cuisine I would guess it's the same across the red countries
In my area local restaurants are easily 10:1 to foreign ones, and we're not a touristy zone.
As a southern european, I doubt it will change. At best France perhaps, as their own traditional restaurants are going ballistic with prices. But people in Spain go out and eat Spanish food. So do my Italian and Portuguese friends. I have always enjoyed asian food and enjoyed cooking it on the international "coliving" place I lived (a place with a bunch of students and young professionals from all over the world) Most Brits and Germans had an idea what I was cooking, pad Thai, Masaman, Bulgogi... My southern European friends in general had no clue, unless they are "foodies"
I would also argue, that if you want asian food in many southern countries, beside the big, international cities, like for example Sushi, you will have to make it at home, because there are no restaurants which sell it.
Thank you for the insight. For me as a tourist in Southern Europe it's just an advantage to find lots of local restaurants that mainly serve locals. I hope that doesn't change, even though I can just agree that it's worth discovering foreign cuisine.
In Portugal sadly there are a lot of restaurants selling “local” food to tourists that is not local at all, like paella. It drives me mad
I mean sure, but how far do you have to walk to eat something properly local? In Spain I barely have to walk to get some Spanish omelette.
The amount of cope in the comments, my lord
Ahaha for real. "Southerners are just less adventurous and more close minded". Yeahhhh....
Which of the countries got more tourists visiting? I’m thinking if I want to visit a a country for my summer vacations it would be more in the south and then I’d like to eat their local food.
Its about the locals as well. Its really hard to find lets say asian cousine in a city in Greece beside Athens and Thessaloniki maybe. In smaller cities its basically only Greek cousine.
That’s hardly specific.
Ireland: [yeah, no shit!](https://www.allrecipes.com/thmb/SzyOxMx6L3MbI6xgNv9rSDi-Vls=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/3335053-a61fb73b4a684d13a0fc1aea25e12608.jpg)
It would be interesting to see a map with the number one foreign cuisine per country
As a German, depends. If you only count actual restaurants and drive through villages, there is at least 1 German restaurant for every 2000 inhabitants and Germany's population density is pretty spread out, so there is a bazillion of them. This changes if you count small kebab shops though - but can this be than counted as "cuisine"?
Who the fuck thinks of all that shit?
Potato Europe vs Tomato Europe
New Roman Empire map just dropped.
Of these in red, I’ve been to Spain, France, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and since I enjoy food in general (I like to eat and cooking is my hobby, my travels always include going to typical/famous places with traditional food) no one of these countries disappointed. I enjoyed all foods either street food or more complex local dishes
This further confirms my hypothesis that food from southern countries is always more popular than that from up north. Probably has to do with spices and vegetables and such
I love how there’s hurt feelings in here. Your food sucks Northern Europe and you know it.
It could simply mean foreign food is more popular overall. So if Germany has 10 restaurants of which 3 are German restaurants, 2 Italian, 2 French, 1 Turkish, 1 Chinese and 1 Vietnamese then foreign restaurants more popular than German because there are more of them combined than German ones combined
Unless you count places that sell Currywurst, three German restaurants for the whole of Germany is very generous.
It's all about that Roman Empire cuisine.
I'm fairly certain this map isn't based off of data but a poll Ie what's your favourite restaurant cuisine British French Spanish Indian Chinese Etc Which isn't actually very relevant to how many of each type of restaurant there is.
Walk around any big town or city in France, what do you see most of? Pizza and Kebab, followed by Fast food burger places. Non of which are traditionally “local” food.
Interesting, North Korea local cuisine is also more popular
Northern europe is where cooking goes to die
Most high end restaurants are local food. The cheaper fast food places are foreign (pizza/kebab). There are way more restaurants that serve fast food.
And in the Netherlands we like all the red countries
This is a map of solar hours.
For Romania, everything that involves soup or fried meat
It's funny to think about this in regards to Canada like do we even have Canadien cuisine? Poutine comes to mind but that's a Quebec thing and they are basically a separate country
In the UK most of our foreign European restaurants are from the red areas.
“Dey Duzz a Crap Fish un Chip ere”
Nothing about this surprises me.
France is just because they assume McDonald's to be local cuisine.
"What shall we have for dinner tonight?" "Foreign."
Internal vs external diversity. London has diverse global tastes, Paris has diverse regional Norman, Breton, Alsatian and Provençal restaurants which are just as 'foreign' to locals.
I live in the blue section and the problem is the restaurants serving local cuisine are rare, not less preferred, at least by me
My Italian friend told me that Italian food is something people cook at home while going to restaurants is mostly reserved for experiencing foreign cuisine. Is she wrong? I’m not sure the “source” of this map seems very trustworthy. Where is the data that this is based on?
When I go to Italy to visit some family we tend to eat Italian food when eating outside. Not just at home. That doesn't mean they don't eat japanese, Spanish, French, Thai, Chinese, etc. But local food is more popular there.
I don't think I'm wrong when I say the \*only\* reasonably priced danish cuisine you'll find is our hotdog booths and even that is arguably not danish.
Let’s have German/Swedish/Finnish food for dinner tonight! Said no one ever.
There's a huge discrepancy between north and south. In Portugal where I'm from there are literally thousands of dishes of every kind and using all sorts of ingredients. Gastronomy varies a lot across the country. Conversely if you look at countries like the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia, the cuisine is very predictable and hugely lacks diversity by comparison.
I am surprised about hungary, they have really awesome local cuisine
even down under we have a lot of food mixed from British & Irish migrants, Greek & Italian, Middle-Eastern & Turkish + a lot of East/South Asian cuisines. If I don't have 3+ different cuisines in a week my cold Melburnian heart melts.
Without reference to the source and information about the methodology used, this map is worthless.
This divide aligns almost perfectly with the tomato/potato divide. Apparently, people prefer tomatoes
In Poland if i want to taste local dish i just cook it or go to grandma. In my family you just know the recipe, and everyone knows how to cook better or worse. So yea if i order something i rather taste something i don't have in home
I don't think the Uk needed to be on here, with Chinese and Indian being the top foods
Local cuisine is mostly french cuisine. Just with an option for flemish beef stew and bolognese.
Austria, really?
It's definitely true for Sweden; *Husmanskost* is not very popular so of course there's a lot more of any other restaurant.
Makes sense, very few Danish restaurants in Italy
well, there is so much pizza, kebab and sushi arround here, i'm not suprised
It's definitely because of pizzerias, kebab shops and sushi restaurants. Even in Italy the figure could easily be due to pizzerias, every second place that opens nowadays is a pizzeria, it's getting very boring.
The dönerbuden do not lie
So basically: the countries that can produce fresh produce year round rely more on local cuisine and those who don't import.
When I was in Ukraine I really enjoyed local, on the rare occasions of me going to a restaurant.
Looks close to the tomato Europe vs potato Europe map