What is your underrated cuisine that you think people should try before they die?
For me, it’s Ethiopian food. I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t eat meat, and Ethiopian cuisine naturally has a lot of vega(n) dishes. I discovered it when I randomly went to an Ethiopian restaurant in the city.
You’re served these big plates with pancake like bread called Injera. They have a soury-sweet taste and are a delicious side dish to your meal.
You’re supposed to rip a piece of the Injera and use it as a tool to pick up the food on the plate.
The meal consists of lentils, chickpeas, kale, pepper, cabbage, veggies and fruits, which does not sound special at all to be honest, The real magic is in the spices, which are probably something you have never tasted before if you haven’t eaten Ethiopian food yet.
It looks like this:
What is your favourite, underrated cuisine?
It’s not one specific cuisine, but all the diversity in Chinese food. In the UK (and also other western countries) almost all Chinese take-aways / restaurants sell food primarily from Guangdong province (spring rolls, dumplings, chow-mein). This means most of Chinese cuisine is forgotten
Edit: same for india, most indian shops in uk are from bengal.
Chinese food is great as well. Actual Chinese food, that is. I´ve got some Chinese friends living here and whenever they make food, it looks nothing like the stuff we get in Dutch Chinese restaurants., which is basically tailor made food to cater to Dutch people (so just meat with sauce, basically). Chinese people do things with tofu that shouldn’t be allowed.
There’s this great Indian place near where I live and everytime someone mentions they like ‘spicy food’, I send them there. People come to the conclusion they never had actual spicy food.
Asian food and asian fusion restaurants in the West are disastrous for sure.
It really is abysmal how food can be that tasteless.
If you want true ‘fusion’ food. Just come to my country of Malaysia. We had cross cultural contact with the 2 regions (India and China) with arguably the highest density of food diversity for centuries, mixed with our own local and SEA inspired dishes. (And even some middle eastern influenced dishes).
I also do hate the word ‘spicy’ because it doesn’t describe the varying different types of spiciness you experience from like chili, or peppercorns, or even just the ‘amount’ of spices. The spiciness you get from typical Indian food is vastly different from Malay or even Chinese dishes or even Arab (ie. Arabian peninsula) food.
The only good restaurant in my city is from Kerela (southern india, also based but thats unrelated). The food slaps because its not tasteless english-““indian”” food, it has actual flavour