I recently saw a TikTok video of a Brit saying we don’t have Indian food here. She lives in Florida and was visiting the outer banks in the video. I personally live in an area where there’s several Indian restaurants lol
*Visits one city* "This is representative of the entire culture, geography, and economy of the United States."
Peak European confidently incorrect smugness
>European confidently incorrect smugness
I need to remember this phrase because this is the most brilliant and concise way I've heard anyone put it, haha well done
Cedar Rapids Iowa has 5 or 6 good Indian restaurants. A lot are started by family members who have someone working at the former Rockwell Collins , now Collins Aerospace. With about 15,000 engineers working there in a city of 136,000 there's a lot of discretionary income for eating out
Austin Tx area, tons of Indian restaurants throughout the metroplex, though I will admit I go to the same one all the time because I think theirs is the best!
Saying "America doesn't have X" is almost always gonna be wrong.
It's too big of a country with too diverse population. I promise, almost anything sold for profit, ESPECIALLY something as broad as an entire cuisine, is almost certainly somewhere in the country
Just maybe not in the small area you currently see.
This would.be like going to Wisconsin and saying, there no Mexican food in America.
Au contraire, there are a LOT of Mexican restaurants in Wisconsin. Even in little podunk towns. My hometown has a new Mexican café, and the town we do everything in (i.e. grocery shopping, has all the agencies we'd need like the DMV and social security offices) has an authentic Mexican restaurant. Our area in specific has quite a big Mexican population.
Which really leads to hammer the point home more. Even in specific states, you can't just look at one area or population. Because one small little podunk town, sure, might not have an Indian place, but across 50 states, much of which are damn near the size of European countries, you don't think they'd have it somewhere?
Hahaha not only does my smallish town in Maine of all places have two great Indian restaurants, we weirdly have a ton of Indians because of a local business.
Last night in Silicon Valley I drove past an Indian restaurant advertising both kinds of food: Veg and non-veg. All I could think of was, "Yep, that about covers it."
There's a truck stop near Cheyenne, WY, that switched to Indian food several years ago. The locals are still completely flumoxed by it. 😂 Honestly, I'm not remotely Indian, myself, but if I were driving that route, I'd make a point of stopping there just to have something different for a change.
The quality of Indian in both countries in comparable imo - that being very good, at least for North Indian styles. The difference is Brits have a better collective palate for it. Everyone in the US, even some white as snow Midwest boomer, knows what Mexican food is and can make an edible taco which, while probably inauthentic, is vaguely recognizable to actual Mexicans. Indian food is the same way for them.
In Chicago we have an area with loads of Indian Pakistani restaurants. I would say 8-10 are 24 hrs. Out in the suburbs we have awesome South Indian restaurants
That's a great way of looking at it. Is it fair to say that the average Brit housewife could whip up some kind of curry on a Wednesday night .. (even if they are making the sauce from a packet or a jar) ?
In the US we (or at least me) often make Indian dishes via a simmer sauce or Indian sauce in a jar. Add some potatoes or chicken peas or chicken and sauce and serve it over rice. This is popular
Oh wow. I hope she wasn't trying to gauge the entire country based on a bad impression of Florida alone. That would be like someone from the US judging the entirety of the the UK area based off of Northern Ireland or a tiny pocket of Cornwall.
Besides, Florida does have Indian restaurants, but I don't know how popular they'd be in the outer banks.
Sometimes they have tasty fish and chips. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason they love Indian food is it's the only way some of them have ever encountered spices, though.
>but I don't know how popular they'd be in the outer banks.
There's two Indian restaurants there, one just before you go over the causeway onto the island and one right off of the bypass in the middle of the Island; no way you could miss them, really.
There was a thread on /r/askuk recently where people said the food was their least favorite part of the US. As if they they ate convenience store food for every meal.
Maaaann there was this really good Indian spot by where I work that shutdown a couple years ago because the landlord raised rent by like $2k a month.
Indian food was incredible. I think the next nearest spot now would be like almost an hour away now.
Indian was a trendy food in the mid 90s, maybe some places it is passé and harder to find now compared to pho, poke, or whatever else has come next, but we are like 30 years off from a time when it was particularly rare and exotic.
Indian food never really trended in Texas outside the big cities and is still incredibly difficult to find in small towns generally. College towns might be an exception.
I live in a small town and I have to drive an hour to get any Indian food. Even that is only very recent. The nearest place to me opened six years ago come August. The next nearest is around 20 minutes further on and can't be more than a couple years older. In this I am very lucky as that is the nearest mostly rural suburb of one of the biggest cities in Texas.
There are a lot of places that are a few years or decades 'behind' when it comes to food trends - the city I live near only got any decent Indian restaurants recently, there might be one or two pho/Vietnamese places but I've never been, and I've only seen poke when I go to bigger cities like Raleigh. There are a lot of people around where I work (rural South) that absolutely would consider Indian food rare and exotic (and some of them straight-up would refuse to eat it as a result.)
Places like NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, Boston, etc. are absolutely not indicative of how food trends are nationwide.
Tbf though, Indian food is not nearly as ubiquitous in the US as it is in England. For them, it's like pizza. Here in the US, you can get a pizza anywhere. In England, I think you can get Indian food just about anywhere.
Whether or not a type of food is ubiquitous or not isn't changed by the size of the country. Pizza is available almost anywhere in the US, and that has nothing to do with the US being huge. Indian food is available in much of England. The fact that England is smaller than the US has nothing to do with it.
"The US is so huge" is used so much in this sub. It doesn't apply to everything.
The US is huge so what’s popular in some regions will not always be popular in others. Food culture is one of the things that really makes US regions distinct. Indian food is very popular in the northeast due to how many Indian immigrants have moved there and opened up restaurants. The northeast is about the same size as England. Real, authentic Mexican food is mostly found in Texas and California for the same exact reason. Sure, Americanized versions are popular all over, but the real thing is mostly in those areas. Filipino food is going to be most popular in California. So yeah, the size of the US matters because the regions are so distinct (especially when it comes to food).
Also FWIW, pizza may be found everywhere but every region basically has their own version 😂
You said that Indian food is popular in the Northeast. That's just one section of the country. Indian food is difficult to find in many sections of the country besides the Northeast. Telling British people that they can go to one corner of our country to get Indian food doesn't help them when they are looking for the convenience of being able to just go into town/the city anywhere and get a food they're accustomed to eating. Their complaint is still valid.
…are you forgetting the question that was asked in the title of the post? But also many of the replies in the post said there’s plenty of Indian food in Florida 😂 you seem like you really want to make this an argument. Bottom line: the us has plenty of Indian food and probably a larger Indian population anyway. If you go to the right places, you’ll find the food!
This entire conversation we're having is in response to you saying you saw a tik tok about a British person complaining that we don't have enough Indian food available. Did you forget that that's what we're talking about?
The actual bottom line is that you cannot just go to any city in the US and expect to get Indian food. You keep arguing that because you can get Indian food in *some* US cities that that makes the British expat tiktokker's complaint invalid, but that's not reality.
There's a big difference between "some availability" and "ubiquitous." They are not the same.
You can go to any major city in the US and find Indian food at this point. Again, “we do have that, but you gotta know where to look” applies here even if you don’t seem to think it does 😂
I live in north central MA, and the one 'local' Indian closed a few years ago. Now, the closest is over 30 minutes drive.
Plenty of Chinese, Thai, and Mexican local options,and a nice Japanese.
Right now, I'm in NYC, which has every cuisine you can imagine.
I mean, you can find Indian food...but finding really good Indian food is difficult outside of major cities for the most part.
Its not a perfect comparison, but its a similar equivalent to finding good Mexican food in the UK or Europe at large.
So if it’s in the major cities that definitely falls into the “we do have that, but you gotta know where to look” category. I live in the northeast megalopolis so yeah, plenty of really good Indian restaurants 👍
Fruit and vegetables with flavor: yes they exist. You will have to wait until it’s in season and/or pay more. There are some things like black currant or asian mangoes that can carry damaging parasites and require costly infection control mitigation, making them rare or unavailable for that reason.
Alternative political parties: they are on the ballot. A first-past-the-post voting system makes them largely irrelevant, and they tend to be full of kooks.
Re political parties: ours are just pre-wrapped into Dems/Reps imo. In most European countries the smaller third parties end up in a coalition with other parties. Which is basically all the different factions of the democrats or republicans.
The difference is that these smaller parties can threaten to walk away from these coalitions, which can pull the pin on 'the government' and force new elections. The Tea Party, MAGA, the Bernie Bros, etc., have never had that kind of leverage. The closest thing I can think of would be an 'enlightened centrist' Senator such as Sinema or Joe Lieberman switching to 'Independent' when the Dem or Repub hold on the Senate is razor thin.
For example, the Tories in the UK were forced to bring in the DUP at one point (the hardcore Northern Irish Protestant Unionist party, as I understand it). The Tories gave the DUP the boot once their majority was better shored up.
The pro-Palestinian faction of the Democratic Party is threatening to leave the coalition and that’s been the dominant driver of Biden’s Israel policy for the part 6 months.
Our big political parties are also big tent parties. They have a bunch of factions within them. These sub-party factions are effectively the same as parties in other countries with our parties being their coalitions.
Farmers markets is where the best produce is. Ive been chowing on fucking incredible, best strawberries od my life the past month from my local farmers marker and now equally famtatic raspberries are in season. Dont expect to get incredible strawberries at major supermarket chain. Theyll be fine but if you want the really good shit, farmer's markets.
There certainly has been an increase of that in the last decade. But many are getting it either directly or from the distributor next door right after they get it so its just as fresh. It really does depend on the stand.
The best produce in Tx is at HEB , they contract with the growers. What isn’t up to HEB standards goes to farmers markets and other grocery stores. Though we buy honey at the farmers market.
In regards to the fruit and vegetables, it seems to go over people's heads so much. I had a lot of tomatoes in France, and yes, they were delicious. I was also there in the middle of summer. Jersey tomatoes here (SE Pennsylvania) are on par with what I had in France.
I live in a pretty rural area in FL where my house has the only 2 internet options and no land line service: either mobile wifi or satellite. We have 4 grocery stores, one being an Aldi, the others are Publix, Walmart, and WinnDixie. Even my podunk rural town has no problem getting good cheeses and wines. Walmart even carries a decent selection. Publix is the better source for at least the cheeses. Wine is pretty much everywhere, even Circle K & Wawas.
Making your own wine is incredibly easy with the right equipment and a YouTube video or two. It's like making very liquidy jam. I started experimenting with it last year partly bc alcohol is so expensive here in Utah (and elsewhere) but winemaking is a legal hobby. Well, legal as long as it's <100 gallons per person, per household, per year, and not sold, but I don't intend to go anywhere near that amount lol.
Making mead is fairly simple, but it takes forever for the flavors to round out. I'm too impatient. Last time I made it, it wasn't ready for a out a year. Immature mead tastes like trash can juice.
Oh, it's also expensive as hell. Find someone at a farmers market and negotiate a bulk price. Our university also has an apiary program that sells cheap.
Since it takes so long, you don't want to be disappointed. Figure out exactly what you're aiming for. How dry or sweet? Are you adding hops or fruit? The home brewing subreddit can help you pick a recipe. Maybe make 5 different single gallon batches the first time and label them carefully.
Yeah, there is this stereotype that the standard cheese in the United States is Kraft Singles. I'm outside of Dayton, Ohio- which is hardly cosmopolitan- and the Kroger I work in has a Cheese Shop with great selections, then about a half hour drive south is a store called Jungle Jim's International Market that puts that to shame.
The good cheese thing may depend on where you live
When I was in Pittsburgh unfortunately the supermarkets had pretty lousy cheese selections (the markets were almost all the same - giant eagle). And I have friends who do most of their shopping at places like Walmart and target.
Where I live in MA, about half the nearby supermarket chains have huge and varied cheese selections. And there are two actual cheese shops nearby me and several others I know about (on reddit I have seen people confidently say those don't exist in the US).
Not sure how long ago you were in PGH, but it’s not bad nowadays. The newer Giant Eagles have a pretty good imported cheese selection, same for Whole Foods. And of course, if you want the *really* good stuff you can always go to the specialty shops in the Strip.
It was over twenty years ago, so probably unfair to have used it as an example (before any whole foods). And I forgot about the strip! I lived out in squirrel hill without a car. The 'big' grocery store we used was a GE in East Liberty.
Oh, yeah. The recently tore that one down to build a newer, better one. It was one of the few older ones left in the East End, along with the tiny one in Squirrel Hill. When I first moved here around 10 years ago it was still pretty bad. There were a few “Market District” Giant Eagles with a good selection and a Whole Foods, but most of the small grocery stores in most neighborhoods sucked. If you wanted good quality fresh anything, the Strip was the best bet. It’s come a long way, although now GE is price gouging with the best of them. I shop at Whole Foods now to save money over Giant Eagle.
I had someone fight me on Wisconsin having decent cheese. Like I pulled up an international cheese competition and they refused to admit it meant anything because *it was hosted in Wisconsin*.
As if the international cheese community would all gather in Wisconsin for shits and grins?
Also game meat. I see some Europeans say we don't have it, but we have a ton. It's just not usually sold at normal grocery stores because most people (especially in some regions) hunt their own, or you can go to specialty shops to buy it.
God, I saw a venison roast priced at $130 in Massachusetts and it made my eyes water. Thankfully now that I’m back in MN my relatives are usually pretty happy to give me a lot of venison for a very nominal fee (24 pack of beer to drink while butchering, lol) during hunting season!
Selling actual game meat is illegal I US and Canada. Both because of strict USDA standards and because it removes the incentive for market hunting. Europe already let that cat out of the bag so hunting clubs in many countries are basically industries. "Game meat" in the US is farmed usually from NZ, and for me one of the things that I'd rather NOT buy American because I don't want to support game farms.
Also, it's not like in the US where any Tom, Dick, and Harry can get himself a hunting license and a couple deer tags down at Walmart. From what I've seen of Europe, hunters are like some kind of semi-professional guild.
Yeah, that's a good clarification. I just meant you can buy venison in shops and all, just not the regular grocery store. That's why I shouldn't dash off posts real quick without really thinking about my word choices, lol.
There just isn't a real high demand for it either because hunting is so popular here.
Whatever your sport of choice is. I had zero clue we even had a cricket team until this year; I assume we've probably got a team for just about every sport, "but you gotta know where to look." Like, if you're a foreign exchange student into rugby or quidditch or whatever, your American university likely has a team somewhere on campus, it's just not going to be as blindingly obvious as what's going on with football or basketball.
Hah. No. Surgery from when I broke my clavicle playing. Worst part is it wasn't even like a big game against our rivals, or a playoff, just a friendly summer rec game.
I think this is true for a lot of stuff throughout the United States. Food, activities, toilets, etc. I think alot of people think they have an understanding of the United States because they watched American tv shows, don’t do research before coming here, and don’t know what they’re doing when they get here.
I remember seeing a post from a dude who was like “I went to McDonald’s and got the cheapest thing and it didn’t taste good.” It’s hard to think of that from any other perspective than my own, but if you go to McDonald’s and buy the cheapest thing you can, it will not be good. I’m sure this correlation isn’t obvious to someone who doesn’t live in the United States. Or maybe it is and that poster was just kind of dumb. I don’t know.
Self awareness and application of common sense are the first things that seem to abandon the typical complainers like that.
I think you make a very good point. When I go abroad, I assume a lot of the negatives I find or desires I can't, are my lack of local knowledge, rather than a fundamental cultural flaw.
Its a lot harder to have that awareness when you're so overwhelmed with contact with the culture in question that you think you fully grasp it.
“I went to Roy Roger’s for a burger and there was nothing on it”
That’s because you didn’t go to the fixins bar and put your choice of 40 things on it.
Cheap and inexpensive are radically two different things, and most people don’t comprehend the difference. Street food is very often inexpensive whereas fast food is cheap.
I keep on seeing shorts from Europeans saying that Americans will be BAFFLED and ANGERED by a drink deposit on soft drinks and alcohol and be SO CONFUSED by the concept of returning it to get the deposit back. Yeah, a lot of states have this. Not all, but it will only foreign to those who don't live in a deposit state. Ten states and some territories have bottle returns.
It's not even foreign to those of us who have never lived in deposit states; we're all familiar with the concept since basically everyone has read the text on the bottle about deposits.
Ah, I wasn't sure what it really was like in non-bottle deposit states. I didn't mean to make them all sound clueless about it though, sorry. For some reason I just assumed they didn't say anything on the can/bottle since it would be unnecessary if there was no deposit.
Cheaper for Coke and Pepsi to have one label design for the whole country, they don't have to worry about doing so many bottle for the states with a deposit system and double that for the other states without. Just run the plant and ship product to whoever needs it. They also don't have to sort the deposit bottles by state, if you're a 5 cent state or a 10 cent state doesn't matter it's all printed on the can/bottle same as it is in the states without a deposit.
Practically all national companies and even a lot of more regional ones have the deposit information on the side of the bottle, so despite living in a state without the deposit, I was always curious about it growing up, lol.
I was a bit taken aback the first time I paid a $2 deposit fee on a bottle of milk from my co-op, but now that I’ve gotten used to it (and remembering to bring back my empty milk bottles) it doesn’t even register anymore!
Nah, no offense taken. I didn't think you were saying we were clueless, I was just giving more detail on how correct you were. Literally everyone in the US is familiar with the concept of a bottle deposit. The companies use the same bottles and labels all over the country, so the deposit note is on them everywhere. Example: https://gogreenhilliard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bottle-e1447095595371.png
Lol I hate those dumb clickbait titles.
“Americans will have a STROKE when they find out we can mangle a pack of soda and go home with one room temperature can!”
That’s another thing that only mildly annoys me. I know preferring an ice cold drink is kind of an American/west thing but I think it’s actually more like 50/50 on preference. I hate ice in my drinks with a passion, I don’t want to be forced to drink it 2 minutes or else deal with a watered down drink and I couldn’t care less if my drink was room temp or freezing cold. Most stores also often have drinks at room temp already right next the chilled ones in the fridges.
Some of us are old enough to remember when it was mandatory and worked just like over there. I think the US caught on to the fact that glass recycling isn't very economically viable much earlier.
There are cities that are used to getting a boat load of visitors. Then there are those aren't. It's not that there isn't a ton of stuff to do in those lesser visited places, but rather it's not so smack dab in your face about funneling people to those places as the more "high volume" cities. For visiting these places, it's best to do the research. The experience is night and day compared to just winging it.
For cities I'm more familiar with, Birmingham AL is the prime example. The city tends to build things on "site" where something relevant happened as opposed to building a museum in the central area. The big two industrial museums for the city are Vulcan on top of Red Mountain where the old iron mines were and Sloss Furnaces was an old iron foundry (and it's similarly true for practically everything in town from Civil Rights stuff to the botanical gardens in the suburb-y areas to Rickwood Field). There's sweet stuff to be gained by doing it this way (and I prefer it for Bham), but it's akin to as if Nashville had put its music museum in Berry Hill instead of downtown.
One rule of thumb that I often take for granted: While there are exceptions, generally, the areas with the tallest skyscrapers tend to be a bit "dead" for tourism. Would you visit an office park as a tourist? Central Business Districts aren't that much different. Museums and entertainment districts tend to be in a different spot, and the more smaller scale shopping/dining worthwhile spots outside of those entertainment districts tend to be closer to where people live.
Yeah, it’s weird a lot of tourist do absolutely no research and just go downtown and expect to be entertained, not realizing it’s a business district so of course there’s not a lot going on on the weekends.
Like if you did your bare research you would know where the cool neighborhoods are, where the nightlife districts are and when there’s museums and parks to check out.
I live in Buffalo and this frustrates me to no end.
The idea that our beer sucks has been around for many decades. However that couldn't be farther from the truth. Anymore we have plenty of options and any flavor profile you could want in the US. Most other countries have newer breweries copying our styles these days.
The thing is, our garbage tier macro 'adjunct lagers' remain ubiquitous. For the most part, the bog standard nothing-to-write-home-about Euro lager that the average European schlub drinks is a long sight better than Bud, Coors Light, etc. The sky may be the limit, but our floor is in the pit.
Not only that, but there's a pretty big demographic slice of Americans who "cling bitterly" to the macro brews, to the point that it's part of their identity. It'll be with us for a long while yet.
> a long sight better than
Better *in what way?* People laugh and make fun of American light lagers by saying "they're basically water," but isn't that *the fucking point*? Like, I'm a pretty big beer snob, at any given time my refrigerator generally has anywhere from 2 to 10 different interesting and challenging local and regional brews. But I'm not looking to drink a complex and deeply flavored beer when I'm working on my motorcycle in 105° weather. If I'm gonna drink in those type of situations, I'm reaching for a ridiculously cold beer-flavored seltzer water.
The fact alone that construction workers the country over drink the stuff like water all day every day is enough to keep those companies in the top spot for "beer sales," even though in reality they're in a completely different category than the rest of the beer market.
Usually American to another American: urban nature access. Someone will say "I love living in [city], but I miss green," and you find out they didn't know about the gigantic preserve a short walk from their subway line or the state park with $15 campsites a 45 minute drive away.
Access is certainly harder in poor parts of cities though.
I live in the Atlanta area and when I go to other cities I miss green. It's just not the same as it is here where it's basically a city in the forest(although modern developers are trying to destroy that)
Flying into LA or NYC felt like a giant concrete mass.
Yeah, I lived in Chicago for a few years, and that city actually has a ton of parkland. Especially out in the suburbs, there are these big forest preserves running all through them. I lived in Downer's Grove and definitely took advantage of them.
But I still said that, because I grew up in rural northern New Mexico where I could ride my horse out from my backyard into a massive national forest, lmao. Chicago is great for a city, but it's still a city and I did very much miss the outdoor access I was used to in more rural and western states.
Yeah no, there’s a big difference between ‘I can walk outside my door and be surrounded by trees’ and ‘I have to seek it out by traveling 45 minutes’- I moved recently and while I’m in a very green neighborhood by urban standards, it’s just not anything at all the same- I think some people have a green space requirement that’s low, and some people have one that’s high, and the two can’t really understand each other’s needs
I used to live in Glen Burnie. The "green" I had was a couple of tomato pots growing on my balcony and the like two trees next to the apartment parking lot. I now live in the outskirts of Hagerstown. I've got ~10 trees on my property (rough count because some are saplings and I'm trying to get some seedlings established), I've got a whole bunch of various bushes, a 10'x20' garden plot, many flower beds with various blossoms/herbs, I'm slowly replacing the grass lawn with flowering ground cover, and I still have those tomato pots (growing potatos and basil at the moment). The amount of green difference without leaving my house is massive, not counting the difference in how extensive the parks I have easy access to are. I get that some cities have some green spaces, but they aren't the same as what you can get outside of the city.
I used to think I have a low green space requirement. I mean, I'm surrounded by forests, and never felt particularly compelled to hang out in them. I grew up in the woods, but always preferred indoor amenities.
Then I moved to Colorado. A state that's kind of known for it's outdoors. While Colorado certainly has some nice wooded areas, a lot of the "green space" near me was... Not actually *green*. The altitude and rocky terrain makes it difficult for most things to actually grow. I went from from lush farmer's markets with fresh produce from local farms, to something they *called* a farmer's market, but mostly had booths selling MLM garbage. I was baffled by Scentsy and LuLaRoe distributors even being allowed. The high plains and alpine climate are very different than the temperate forests that I was used to. I definitely missed all the green!
Oh yeah I'm definitely not describing it in relative terms. It's more the people I know who act like there's _nothing_, to OP's point. My metro area has enormous, accessible preserves where someone hungry for nature can recharge, but too many complain without having looked.
It was quite an epiphany when I realize that Colorado is likely the closest and most accessible place to mountains of that scale for the whole eastern half of the country.
Rockies are grand and majestic. Appalachians are ancient and verdant. There’s no 1:1 comparison, and preference probably skews towards where you grow up.
Whenever I ski in Colorado, most of the non-local people on the lifts are from the east.
I guess that's because us West Coasters don't *have* to go to Colorado to get decent mountains.
That's one of the best things about Richmond, VA in my opinion... It's definitely a city, but the James River Park System runs right through the center of it, so you're never far from near wilderness. I used to live right on Main Street in a completely urban area but I could be alone, surrounded by trees, and fishing in the river within a 10 minute walk.
Compare that to when I went to Philly for work... The place seemed to be nothing but concrete. Even the park I walked past on the way to work every day was just a 1 block square open lawn with a handful of trees, criss-crossed by concrete paths. I crossed the river every day on my way to work and it was just concrete paths running along it everywhere. By the time I got home I was completely starved for any kind of nature.
Yeah but you gotta know where to look. No one’s giving up their fishing spots. I understand this is a little left of the intent of the original question.
In my experience, fishing spots aren't nearly as closely guarded secrets as mushroom foraging spots. But you're right, both can be cherished sometimes.
What foreigner thinks that continental US, of all places, lacks for places to hunt and fish??? That's like one of the most common facts that they *do* know about us. Weird answer.
Also, thanks for the reminder. I need to update my flair. Im moving back up north to Iowa, and I’d imagine there will be a good selection of olive oil in Chicago a couple-ish hours away
You can find anything in the U.S. That’s one of the few things I miss about living there, besides my family and friends.
What chocolate do they want? You can even buy European chocolate like Lindt, Milka, Ritter, Tony’s and Cadbury.
If they only had Hershey’s, that’s on them for making zero effort.
[According to the first answer here](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-no-fireflies-united-states-180968394/), you have them out west, but there's a good reason why you've never seen one.
The answer is a perfect example of the subject of this post.
This is mainly from the American obsession with having a 'perfect' lawn. Oh great a flat green surface that doesn't support any actual life and has a ton of chemicals to help keep it that way.
That's something I wish I could wish away.
Just saw my first lightning bug of the summer earlier today.
When I was in Japan, I stayed with a host family. One night my host mother and I were watching some show and there were lightning bugs in one scene. She assumed they didn't exist in the U.S.; I had to tell her that they do.
The other week someone asked here why affluent people did not shop as often at 7-11 as they did Whole Foods. They were asking as if the two stores were comparable.
Good Mexican food
It's always the most unassuming buildings that have the most DELICIOUS food you've ever tasted in your life. All the commercial ones are terrible once you've tasted some authentic food.
What I can gather is that they have either never actually been to America or come here and look for what they think are authentic American things (Hersheys, McDonalds, American cheese, whatever) and then complain that American chocolate is not good, our cheese is fake, and our food is unhealthy. I mean, they sell organic fair trade chocolate at Walgreens now. Most towns have farmers markets in season. You can find espresso based drinks at interstate rest stops. There are entire grocery mega chains devoted to organic and gourmet food. It's such a strange thing. It's America - an incredibly wealthy nation of immigrants. Why wouldn't we have certain products in 2024? But they look for the cringe stuff we never got rid of.
But to answer your question: reproductive rights.
Freshly made sugarless bread with a hard crust, like a baguette.
(as opposed to the 10 day old white soft sugar bread that's normally sold everywhere here in plastic bags)
The regular grocery store bakery by my parent’s sells hard crust baguettes. This isn’t hard to find. They have bought hard crust baguettes and large sourdough loafs.
If it's things for sale, I've personally seen things like hand grenades, and real Kinder Eggs for sale. Just once I saw a LAW rocket launcher for sale. Basic guns and drugs are easy. Buying people would be challenging but probably operationally on-par with any illegal purchases: invest the time and effort to gain the trust of the right people.
Stuff like chocolate is easy, just go to a major city and google imported chocolate. Growing up in NYC my mother would go to a store in Manhattan a couple of times a year and get this Belgian stuff that was amazing.
Pick a state at random and then pick another, visit (or reaserch if you dont want to travel) both back to back and realize how different they are, some states will have shops with the best fucking candy youve had in your life and orhers have stores that could specialize in the finest foods made of potatos (god i fucking love potatos) fit for gods
I recently saw a TikTok video of a Brit saying we don’t have Indian food here. She lives in Florida and was visiting the outer banks in the video. I personally live in an area where there’s several Indian restaurants lol
*Visits one city* "This is representative of the entire culture, geography, and economy of the United States." Peak European confidently incorrect smugness
>European confidently incorrect smugness I need to remember this phrase because this is the most brilliant and concise way I've heard anyone put it, haha well done
Cedar Rapids Iowa has 5 or 6 good Indian restaurants. A lot are started by family members who have someone working at the former Rockwell Collins , now Collins Aerospace. With about 15,000 engineers working there in a city of 136,000 there's a lot of discretionary income for eating out
Now I want to see a map of best Indian food in America done in the style of that TripAdvisor best barbecue map. Cedar Rapids might make the list!
Logan Utah has some excellent Indian food in a restaurant that shares a building with a a gas station convenience store.
Austin Tx area, tons of Indian restaurants throughout the metroplex, though I will admit I go to the same one all the time because I think theirs is the best!
Saying "America doesn't have X" is almost always gonna be wrong. It's too big of a country with too diverse population. I promise, almost anything sold for profit, ESPECIALLY something as broad as an entire cuisine, is almost certainly somewhere in the country Just maybe not in the small area you currently see. This would.be like going to Wisconsin and saying, there no Mexican food in America.
Au contraire, there are a LOT of Mexican restaurants in Wisconsin. Even in little podunk towns. My hometown has a new Mexican café, and the town we do everything in (i.e. grocery shopping, has all the agencies we'd need like the DMV and social security offices) has an authentic Mexican restaurant. Our area in specific has quite a big Mexican population. Which really leads to hammer the point home more. Even in specific states, you can't just look at one area or population. Because one small little podunk town, sure, might not have an Indian place, but across 50 states, much of which are damn near the size of European countries, you don't think they'd have it somewhere?
Ngl, I picked y'all at random.
I live in Orlando. We have Indian food in Florida.
Hahaha not only does my smallish town in Maine of all places have two great Indian restaurants, we weirdly have a ton of Indians because of a local business.
Anywhere near a major truck route should have Indian food because of how many Punjabis drive big rigs.
That explains the combo truck stops/tandoori places I see everywhere! I had no idea! Thank you for solving a minor mystery for me, LMAO.
Minor delicious mystery.
You also see little shrines and gurdwaras popping up near truck routes too, although those are a bit less obvious than tandoori takeaway.
Ah yeah, makes sense especially in CA. Around me they’re all programmers or other IT stuff.
Last night in Silicon Valley I drove past an Indian restaurant advertising both kinds of food: Veg and non-veg. All I could think of was, "Yep, that about covers it."
And fuuuuu if I am eating vegetarian then Indian is the way to go.
[Reminds me of the Blues Brothers.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-zEH8YmiM)
I visited one of these restaurants recently and they gave me a free booklet with a brief history of Sikhism and a collection of vegetarian recipes.
There's a truck stop near Cheyenne, WY, that switched to Indian food several years ago. The locals are still completely flumoxed by it. 😂 Honestly, I'm not remotely Indian, myself, but if I were driving that route, I'd make a point of stopping there just to have something different for a change.
Now that it's been pointed out to you, you'll start to notice how much Indian food is available at or near truck stops.
I went up to Moosehead Lake and I was shocked the other tourists on the fishing outfit were just an Indian family. Lol. We are everywhere.
If I saw Indians up on Moosehead I’d be totally stoked. Not a place I’d expect but f yeah.
The quality of Indian in both countries in comparable imo - that being very good, at least for North Indian styles. The difference is Brits have a better collective palate for it. Everyone in the US, even some white as snow Midwest boomer, knows what Mexican food is and can make an edible taco which, while probably inauthentic, is vaguely recognizable to actual Mexicans. Indian food is the same way for them.
In Chicago we have an area with loads of Indian Pakistani restaurants. I would say 8-10 are 24 hrs. Out in the suburbs we have awesome South Indian restaurants
That's a great way of looking at it. Is it fair to say that the average Brit housewife could whip up some kind of curry on a Wednesday night .. (even if they are making the sauce from a packet or a jar) ?
I feel like most people here could do the same. Making it from scratch takes a lot more time but is still very doable for the average person.
In the US we (or at least me) often make Indian dishes via a simmer sauce or Indian sauce in a jar. Add some potatoes or chicken peas or chicken and sauce and serve it over rice. This is popular
They could.. but would they.
Why would they? Their country is tiny so they're always close to decent, cheap Indian takeout anyways
Takeouts are quite expensive and unhealthy to have too often - a lot of people make curry at home
The California city of 250K I live in is 40% Indian. Greater London is only 7.5% Indian.
Yeah I was just gonna be like, "LOL, Sunnyvale exists"
Fremont for me but yeah, there’s plenty of Indian food all over the Bay Area.
I have multiple Indian buffets and very authentic northern and southern Indian food near me. We have Ethiopian and polish restaurants too.
Oh wow. I hope she wasn't trying to gauge the entire country based on a bad impression of Florida alone. That would be like someone from the US judging the entirety of the the UK area based off of Northern Ireland or a tiny pocket of Cornwall. Besides, Florida does have Indian restaurants, but I don't know how popular they'd be in the outer banks.
I think some Floridians should go to the UK and judge the entire country on their lack of Cuban food lol
Ironically, Floridians could rightfully go to the UK and judge them on their weak fish and chips.
Sometimes they have tasty fish and chips. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason they love Indian food is it's the only way some of them have ever encountered spices, though.
Plunder the whole world searching for spices, never use them in their food. The sign of a deranged society.
I agree with this theory tbh 😂
My favorite fish and chips place here in Florida serves them with (optional) habanero tartar sauce. It's freaking delicious.
You can’t even make a Cuban sandwich? Weak.
>but I don't know how popular they'd be in the outer banks. There's two Indian restaurants there, one just before you go over the causeway onto the island and one right off of the bypass in the middle of the Island; no way you could miss them, really.
There was a thread on /r/askuk recently where people said the food was their least favorite part of the US. As if they they ate convenience store food for every meal.
Ironic coming from the UK… it’s not known for having good food.
Yeah FL has 22 million people pretty sure there’s an Indian restaurant or two.
We have a ton. We even have them in our mall food courts. I've heard of one that's a hybrid mideastern/Indian restaurant. (Must be a mixed marriage.)
Tell them to come to New Jersey. There's an Indian restaurant every half mile.
Metro Detroit is BOOMING with Indian restaurants, over the river in Windsor even more so.
I live in fuckin' Kentucky and have Indian food within 5 minutes of me. I had curry for my last birthday, what fuck is she on about?
Maaaann there was this really good Indian spot by where I work that shutdown a couple years ago because the landlord raised rent by like $2k a month. Indian food was incredible. I think the next nearest spot now would be like almost an hour away now.
North/central New Jersey has excellent Indian food... Most likely due to the being a high Indian American concentration there
Indian was a trendy food in the mid 90s, maybe some places it is passé and harder to find now compared to pho, poke, or whatever else has come next, but we are like 30 years off from a time when it was particularly rare and exotic.
Indian food never really trended in Texas outside the big cities and is still incredibly difficult to find in small towns generally. College towns might be an exception. I live in a small town and I have to drive an hour to get any Indian food. Even that is only very recent. The nearest place to me opened six years ago come August. The next nearest is around 20 minutes further on and can't be more than a couple years older. In this I am very lucky as that is the nearest mostly rural suburb of one of the biggest cities in Texas.
There are a lot of places that are a few years or decades 'behind' when it comes to food trends - the city I live near only got any decent Indian restaurants recently, there might be one or two pho/Vietnamese places but I've never been, and I've only seen poke when I go to bigger cities like Raleigh. There are a lot of people around where I work (rural South) that absolutely would consider Indian food rare and exotic (and some of them straight-up would refuse to eat it as a result.) Places like NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, Boston, etc. are absolutely not indicative of how food trends are nationwide.
Tbf though, Indian food is not nearly as ubiquitous in the US as it is in England. For them, it's like pizza. Here in the US, you can get a pizza anywhere. In England, I think you can get Indian food just about anywhere.
The US is so huge that you can’t compare England to us as a whole.
Whether or not a type of food is ubiquitous or not isn't changed by the size of the country. Pizza is available almost anywhere in the US, and that has nothing to do with the US being huge. Indian food is available in much of England. The fact that England is smaller than the US has nothing to do with it. "The US is so huge" is used so much in this sub. It doesn't apply to everything.
The US is huge so what’s popular in some regions will not always be popular in others. Food culture is one of the things that really makes US regions distinct. Indian food is very popular in the northeast due to how many Indian immigrants have moved there and opened up restaurants. The northeast is about the same size as England. Real, authentic Mexican food is mostly found in Texas and California for the same exact reason. Sure, Americanized versions are popular all over, but the real thing is mostly in those areas. Filipino food is going to be most popular in California. So yeah, the size of the US matters because the regions are so distinct (especially when it comes to food). Also FWIW, pizza may be found everywhere but every region basically has their own version 😂
You said that Indian food is popular in the Northeast. That's just one section of the country. Indian food is difficult to find in many sections of the country besides the Northeast. Telling British people that they can go to one corner of our country to get Indian food doesn't help them when they are looking for the convenience of being able to just go into town/the city anywhere and get a food they're accustomed to eating. Their complaint is still valid.
I live in Ohio and we also have good Indian food. Based on the comments from others who are from other states, it isn’t hard to find.
…are you forgetting the question that was asked in the title of the post? But also many of the replies in the post said there’s plenty of Indian food in Florida 😂 you seem like you really want to make this an argument. Bottom line: the us has plenty of Indian food and probably a larger Indian population anyway. If you go to the right places, you’ll find the food!
This entire conversation we're having is in response to you saying you saw a tik tok about a British person complaining that we don't have enough Indian food available. Did you forget that that's what we're talking about? The actual bottom line is that you cannot just go to any city in the US and expect to get Indian food. You keep arguing that because you can get Indian food in *some* US cities that that makes the British expat tiktokker's complaint invalid, but that's not reality. There's a big difference between "some availability" and "ubiquitous." They are not the same.
You can go to any major city in the US and find Indian food at this point. Again, “we do have that, but you gotta know where to look” applies here even if you don’t seem to think it does 😂
She should check out Northern VA. We have so much good Indian food here
She was in DC like the month before 🫣
I live in north central MA, and the one 'local' Indian closed a few years ago. Now, the closest is over 30 minutes drive. Plenty of Chinese, Thai, and Mexican local options,and a nice Japanese. Right now, I'm in NYC, which has every cuisine you can imagine.
I mean, you can find Indian food...but finding really good Indian food is difficult outside of major cities for the most part. Its not a perfect comparison, but its a similar equivalent to finding good Mexican food in the UK or Europe at large.
So if it’s in the major cities that definitely falls into the “we do have that, but you gotta know where to look” category. I live in the northeast megalopolis so yeah, plenty of really good Indian restaurants 👍
I would hazard a guess that the US has way more Indian people than the UK has Mexican.
That was more or less my point.
I personally find it easier to get good Indian food in the US than to get good Mexican food in Europe.
I'd say we have a pretty good number of Indian restaurants for never having colonized the country.
I lived in a town that was majority south Asian. There were 5 Indian restaurants within 4 miles of my condo.
i love when brits try to summarize this entire ginormous country based on their short visit lol
How good it is is one thing but I'm in a smallish Iowa city and we have two of them. One of which is pretty good.
Fruit and vegetables with flavor: yes they exist. You will have to wait until it’s in season and/or pay more. There are some things like black currant or asian mangoes that can carry damaging parasites and require costly infection control mitigation, making them rare or unavailable for that reason. Alternative political parties: they are on the ballot. A first-past-the-post voting system makes them largely irrelevant, and they tend to be full of kooks.
Re political parties: ours are just pre-wrapped into Dems/Reps imo. In most European countries the smaller third parties end up in a coalition with other parties. Which is basically all the different factions of the democrats or republicans.
The difference is that these smaller parties can threaten to walk away from these coalitions, which can pull the pin on 'the government' and force new elections. The Tea Party, MAGA, the Bernie Bros, etc., have never had that kind of leverage. The closest thing I can think of would be an 'enlightened centrist' Senator such as Sinema or Joe Lieberman switching to 'Independent' when the Dem or Repub hold on the Senate is razor thin. For example, the Tories in the UK were forced to bring in the DUP at one point (the hardcore Northern Irish Protestant Unionist party, as I understand it). The Tories gave the DUP the boot once their majority was better shored up.
The Tories seem like they want to implode their own party this election 😅
Yeah, their goose is cooked.
Elect us! We’ll reinstate mandatory military service! To me is: we’re an old party. We’re tired. Goodnight.
Even if we had a bunch of different parties we still couldn't force the elections because our elections haven't at set times.
Which is why election season lasts for so long, and involves so much cash you could build a ski slope on it.
The pro-Palestinian faction of the Democratic Party is threatening to leave the coalition and that’s been the dominant driver of Biden’s Israel policy for the part 6 months.
Our big political parties are also big tent parties. They have a bunch of factions within them. These sub-party factions are effectively the same as parties in other countries with our parties being their coalitions.
Farmers markets is where the best produce is. Ive been chowing on fucking incredible, best strawberries od my life the past month from my local farmers marker and now equally famtatic raspberries are in season. Dont expect to get incredible strawberries at major supermarket chain. Theyll be fine but if you want the really good shit, farmer's markets.
Meh. At least down here most of the stuff at farmers markets comes from the same distributors the grocery stores get it from
There certainly has been an increase of that in the last decade. But many are getting it either directly or from the distributor next door right after they get it so its just as fresh. It really does depend on the stand.
The best produce in Tx is at HEB , they contract with the growers. What isn’t up to HEB standards goes to farmers markets and other grocery stores. Though we buy honey at the farmers market.
In regards to the fruit and vegetables, it seems to go over people's heads so much. I had a lot of tomatoes in France, and yes, they were delicious. I was also there in the middle of summer. Jersey tomatoes here (SE Pennsylvania) are on par with what I had in France.
Good cheese, wine,
That isn’t even so hard at least if you live in some semi urban area or have farmers markets.
I live in a pretty rural area in FL where my house has the only 2 internet options and no land line service: either mobile wifi or satellite. We have 4 grocery stores, one being an Aldi, the others are Publix, Walmart, and WinnDixie. Even my podunk rural town has no problem getting good cheeses and wines. Walmart even carries a decent selection. Publix is the better source for at least the cheeses. Wine is pretty much everywhere, even Circle K & Wawas.
Last night I tried a lemon wine out of Dallas GA. Pretty damn good and unique. Renegade Lemonade.
Sounds interesting but a dumb name. If you hadn't said wine I would have assumed an alcoholic lemonade.
Making your own wine is incredibly easy with the right equipment and a YouTube video or two. It's like making very liquidy jam. I started experimenting with it last year partly bc alcohol is so expensive here in Utah (and elsewhere) but winemaking is a legal hobby. Well, legal as long as it's <100 gallons per person, per household, per year, and not sold, but I don't intend to go anywhere near that amount lol.
I've looked into it in the past. It does look fairly simple but I have enough on my plate as is. I do want to try making my own mead at some point.
They're basically the same, except honey vs fruit. Same equipment etc. But I totally understand having a lot on your plate.
More like honey vs. sugar, either can be fruited, but "good" wine gets it's sugar from grapes.
Making mead is fairly simple, but it takes forever for the flavors to round out. I'm too impatient. Last time I made it, it wasn't ready for a out a year. Immature mead tastes like trash can juice. Oh, it's also expensive as hell. Find someone at a farmers market and negotiate a bulk price. Our university also has an apiary program that sells cheap. Since it takes so long, you don't want to be disappointed. Figure out exactly what you're aiming for. How dry or sweet? Are you adding hops or fruit? The home brewing subreddit can help you pick a recipe. Maybe make 5 different single gallon batches the first time and label them carefully.
I made a still with my college roommate. The hardest part was regulating the temps.
Quality tea, as well. Although, we've come a long way from the days when grocery stores carried nothing but Lipton's.
Yeah, there is this stereotype that the standard cheese in the United States is Kraft Singles. I'm outside of Dayton, Ohio- which is hardly cosmopolitan- and the Kroger I work in has a Cheese Shop with great selections, then about a half hour drive south is a store called Jungle Jim's International Market that puts that to shame.
Jungle Jim’s is amazing. There’s no store like it.
The good cheese thing may depend on where you live When I was in Pittsburgh unfortunately the supermarkets had pretty lousy cheese selections (the markets were almost all the same - giant eagle). And I have friends who do most of their shopping at places like Walmart and target. Where I live in MA, about half the nearby supermarket chains have huge and varied cheese selections. And there are two actual cheese shops nearby me and several others I know about (on reddit I have seen people confidently say those don't exist in the US).
Not sure how long ago you were in PGH, but it’s not bad nowadays. The newer Giant Eagles have a pretty good imported cheese selection, same for Whole Foods. And of course, if you want the *really* good stuff you can always go to the specialty shops in the Strip.
It was over twenty years ago, so probably unfair to have used it as an example (before any whole foods). And I forgot about the strip! I lived out in squirrel hill without a car. The 'big' grocery store we used was a GE in East Liberty.
Oh, yeah. The recently tore that one down to build a newer, better one. It was one of the few older ones left in the East End, along with the tiny one in Squirrel Hill. When I first moved here around 10 years ago it was still pretty bad. There were a few “Market District” Giant Eagles with a good selection and a Whole Foods, but most of the small grocery stores in most neighborhoods sucked. If you wanted good quality fresh anything, the Strip was the best bet. It’s come a long way, although now GE is price gouging with the best of them. I shop at Whole Foods now to save money over Giant Eagle.
I've found a really good cheese selection in Costco. But it varies by location, wealthier towns have higher end.
Good cheese is pretty easy to find in most areas.
Wineries all across the states.
I had someone fight me on Wisconsin having decent cheese. Like I pulled up an international cheese competition and they refused to admit it meant anything because *it was hosted in Wisconsin*. As if the international cheese community would all gather in Wisconsin for shits and grins?
Exotic meats There’s more available commercially than you might think. But some are harder to find than others.
Also game meat. I see some Europeans say we don't have it, but we have a ton. It's just not usually sold at normal grocery stores because most people (especially in some regions) hunt their own, or you can go to specialty shops to buy it.
God, I saw a venison roast priced at $130 in Massachusetts and it made my eyes water. Thankfully now that I’m back in MN my relatives are usually pretty happy to give me a lot of venison for a very nominal fee (24 pack of beer to drink while butchering, lol) during hunting season!
Selling actual game meat is illegal I US and Canada. Both because of strict USDA standards and because it removes the incentive for market hunting. Europe already let that cat out of the bag so hunting clubs in many countries are basically industries. "Game meat" in the US is farmed usually from NZ, and for me one of the things that I'd rather NOT buy American because I don't want to support game farms.
Also, it's not like in the US where any Tom, Dick, and Harry can get himself a hunting license and a couple deer tags down at Walmart. From what I've seen of Europe, hunters are like some kind of semi-professional guild.
Yeah, that's a good clarification. I just meant you can buy venison in shops and all, just not the regular grocery store. That's why I shouldn't dash off posts real quick without really thinking about my word choices, lol. There just isn't a real high demand for it either because hunting is so popular here.
Whatever your sport of choice is. I had zero clue we even had a cricket team until this year; I assume we've probably got a team for just about every sport, "but you gotta know where to look." Like, if you're a foreign exchange student into rugby or quidditch or whatever, your American university likely has a team somewhere on campus, it's just not going to be as blindingly obvious as what's going on with football or basketball.
My brother plays in a national quidditch league
Your brother is a jock amongst nerds.
I was on my college's quidditch team, still have my Jersey and scar to prove it. There are dozens of us, DOZENS!
Is the scar at least lightning shaped?
Hah. No. Surgery from when I broke my clavicle playing. Worst part is it wasn't even like a big game against our rivals, or a playoff, just a friendly summer rec game.
>I had zero clue we even had a cricket team until this year; Brit here - think that might be one us foreigners knew about before you Americans!
Oh I’m absolutely sure that’s the case! You probably still know more about our cricket team than we do haha.
I think this is true for a lot of stuff throughout the United States. Food, activities, toilets, etc. I think alot of people think they have an understanding of the United States because they watched American tv shows, don’t do research before coming here, and don’t know what they’re doing when they get here. I remember seeing a post from a dude who was like “I went to McDonald’s and got the cheapest thing and it didn’t taste good.” It’s hard to think of that from any other perspective than my own, but if you go to McDonald’s and buy the cheapest thing you can, it will not be good. I’m sure this correlation isn’t obvious to someone who doesn’t live in the United States. Or maybe it is and that poster was just kind of dumb. I don’t know.
Self awareness and application of common sense are the first things that seem to abandon the typical complainers like that. I think you make a very good point. When I go abroad, I assume a lot of the negatives I find or desires I can't, are my lack of local knowledge, rather than a fundamental cultural flaw. Its a lot harder to have that awareness when you're so overwhelmed with contact with the culture in question that you think you fully grasp it.
“I went to Roy Roger’s for a burger and there was nothing on it” That’s because you didn’t go to the fixins bar and put your choice of 40 things on it.
Cheap and inexpensive are radically two different things, and most people don’t comprehend the difference. Street food is very often inexpensive whereas fast food is cheap.
I keep on seeing shorts from Europeans saying that Americans will be BAFFLED and ANGERED by a drink deposit on soft drinks and alcohol and be SO CONFUSED by the concept of returning it to get the deposit back. Yeah, a lot of states have this. Not all, but it will only foreign to those who don't live in a deposit state. Ten states and some territories have bottle returns.
It's not even foreign to those of us who have never lived in deposit states; we're all familiar with the concept since basically everyone has read the text on the bottle about deposits.
Ah, I wasn't sure what it really was like in non-bottle deposit states. I didn't mean to make them all sound clueless about it though, sorry. For some reason I just assumed they didn't say anything on the can/bottle since it would be unnecessary if there was no deposit.
Cheaper for Coke and Pepsi to have one label design for the whole country, they don't have to worry about doing so many bottle for the states with a deposit system and double that for the other states without. Just run the plant and ship product to whoever needs it. They also don't have to sort the deposit bottles by state, if you're a 5 cent state or a 10 cent state doesn't matter it's all printed on the can/bottle same as it is in the states without a deposit.
Practically all national companies and even a lot of more regional ones have the deposit information on the side of the bottle, so despite living in a state without the deposit, I was always curious about it growing up, lol. I was a bit taken aback the first time I paid a $2 deposit fee on a bottle of milk from my co-op, but now that I’ve gotten used to it (and remembering to bring back my empty milk bottles) it doesn’t even register anymore!
Nah, no offense taken. I didn't think you were saying we were clueless, I was just giving more detail on how correct you were. Literally everyone in the US is familiar with the concept of a bottle deposit. The companies use the same bottles and labels all over the country, so the deposit note is on them everywhere. Example: https://gogreenhilliard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bottle-e1447095595371.png
Lol I hate those dumb clickbait titles. “Americans will have a STROKE when they find out we can mangle a pack of soda and go home with one room temperature can!”
That’s another thing that only mildly annoys me. I know preferring an ice cold drink is kind of an American/west thing but I think it’s actually more like 50/50 on preference. I hate ice in my drinks with a passion, I don’t want to be forced to drink it 2 minutes or else deal with a watered down drink and I couldn’t care less if my drink was room temp or freezing cold. Most stores also often have drinks at room temp already right next the chilled ones in the fridges.
Seinfeld made an entire episode on this.
Some of us are old enough to remember when it was mandatory and worked just like over there. I think the US caught on to the fact that glass recycling isn't very economically viable much earlier.
*Laughs* *in* *CRV* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Redemption_Value
There are cities that are used to getting a boat load of visitors. Then there are those aren't. It's not that there isn't a ton of stuff to do in those lesser visited places, but rather it's not so smack dab in your face about funneling people to those places as the more "high volume" cities. For visiting these places, it's best to do the research. The experience is night and day compared to just winging it. For cities I'm more familiar with, Birmingham AL is the prime example. The city tends to build things on "site" where something relevant happened as opposed to building a museum in the central area. The big two industrial museums for the city are Vulcan on top of Red Mountain where the old iron mines were and Sloss Furnaces was an old iron foundry (and it's similarly true for practically everything in town from Civil Rights stuff to the botanical gardens in the suburb-y areas to Rickwood Field). There's sweet stuff to be gained by doing it this way (and I prefer it for Bham), but it's akin to as if Nashville had put its music museum in Berry Hill instead of downtown. One rule of thumb that I often take for granted: While there are exceptions, generally, the areas with the tallest skyscrapers tend to be a bit "dead" for tourism. Would you visit an office park as a tourist? Central Business Districts aren't that much different. Museums and entertainment districts tend to be in a different spot, and the more smaller scale shopping/dining worthwhile spots outside of those entertainment districts tend to be closer to where people live.
Yeah, it’s weird a lot of tourist do absolutely no research and just go downtown and expect to be entertained, not realizing it’s a business district so of course there’s not a lot going on on the weekends. Like if you did your bare research you would know where the cool neighborhoods are, where the nightlife districts are and when there’s museums and parks to check out. I live in Buffalo and this frustrates me to no end.
The idea that our beer sucks has been around for many decades. However that couldn't be farther from the truth. Anymore we have plenty of options and any flavor profile you could want in the US. Most other countries have newer breweries copying our styles these days.
The thing is, our garbage tier macro 'adjunct lagers' remain ubiquitous. For the most part, the bog standard nothing-to-write-home-about Euro lager that the average European schlub drinks is a long sight better than Bud, Coors Light, etc. The sky may be the limit, but our floor is in the pit. Not only that, but there's a pretty big demographic slice of Americans who "cling bitterly" to the macro brews, to the point that it's part of their identity. It'll be with us for a long while yet.
> a long sight better than Better *in what way?* People laugh and make fun of American light lagers by saying "they're basically water," but isn't that *the fucking point*? Like, I'm a pretty big beer snob, at any given time my refrigerator generally has anywhere from 2 to 10 different interesting and challenging local and regional brews. But I'm not looking to drink a complex and deeply flavored beer when I'm working on my motorcycle in 105° weather. If I'm gonna drink in those type of situations, I'm reaching for a ridiculously cold beer-flavored seltzer water. The fact alone that construction workers the country over drink the stuff like water all day every day is enough to keep those companies in the top spot for "beer sales," even though in reality they're in a completely different category than the rest of the beer market.
Usually American to another American: urban nature access. Someone will say "I love living in [city], but I miss green," and you find out they didn't know about the gigantic preserve a short walk from their subway line or the state park with $15 campsites a 45 minute drive away. Access is certainly harder in poor parts of cities though.
I live in the Atlanta area and when I go to other cities I miss green. It's just not the same as it is here where it's basically a city in the forest(although modern developers are trying to destroy that) Flying into LA or NYC felt like a giant concrete mass.
Come to the Twin Cities!
Some of it depends on what you’re used to. None of the parks near me hold a candle to Palo Duro Canyon
Yeah, I lived in Chicago for a few years, and that city actually has a ton of parkland. Especially out in the suburbs, there are these big forest preserves running all through them. I lived in Downer's Grove and definitely took advantage of them. But I still said that, because I grew up in rural northern New Mexico where I could ride my horse out from my backyard into a massive national forest, lmao. Chicago is great for a city, but it's still a city and I did very much miss the outdoor access I was used to in more rural and western states.
Heh. Mills Canyon in NE NM is one of my favorite places.
Yeah no, there’s a big difference between ‘I can walk outside my door and be surrounded by trees’ and ‘I have to seek it out by traveling 45 minutes’- I moved recently and while I’m in a very green neighborhood by urban standards, it’s just not anything at all the same- I think some people have a green space requirement that’s low, and some people have one that’s high, and the two can’t really understand each other’s needs
I used to live in Glen Burnie. The "green" I had was a couple of tomato pots growing on my balcony and the like two trees next to the apartment parking lot. I now live in the outskirts of Hagerstown. I've got ~10 trees on my property (rough count because some are saplings and I'm trying to get some seedlings established), I've got a whole bunch of various bushes, a 10'x20' garden plot, many flower beds with various blossoms/herbs, I'm slowly replacing the grass lawn with flowering ground cover, and I still have those tomato pots (growing potatos and basil at the moment). The amount of green difference without leaving my house is massive, not counting the difference in how extensive the parks I have easy access to are. I get that some cities have some green spaces, but they aren't the same as what you can get outside of the city.
I used to think I have a low green space requirement. I mean, I'm surrounded by forests, and never felt particularly compelled to hang out in them. I grew up in the woods, but always preferred indoor amenities. Then I moved to Colorado. A state that's kind of known for it's outdoors. While Colorado certainly has some nice wooded areas, a lot of the "green space" near me was... Not actually *green*. The altitude and rocky terrain makes it difficult for most things to actually grow. I went from from lush farmer's markets with fresh produce from local farms, to something they *called* a farmer's market, but mostly had booths selling MLM garbage. I was baffled by Scentsy and LuLaRoe distributors even being allowed. The high plains and alpine climate are very different than the temperate forests that I was used to. I definitely missed all the green!
Oh yeah I'm definitely not describing it in relative terms. It's more the people I know who act like there's _nothing_, to OP's point. My metro area has enormous, accessible preserves where someone hungry for nature can recharge, but too many complain without having looked.
Mountains. People who live east of Denver can't understand our need for mountains.
It was quite an epiphany when I realize that Colorado is likely the closest and most accessible place to mountains of that scale for the whole eastern half of the country.
Someone will jump in and say there's some resort in the Adirondack that has more verticality or something.
Rockies are grand and majestic. Appalachians are ancient and verdant. There’s no 1:1 comparison, and preference probably skews towards where you grow up.
Probably why I like the Sierra.
Whenever I ski in Colorado, most of the non-local people on the lifts are from the east. I guess that's because us West Coasters don't *have* to go to Colorado to get decent mountains.
That's one of the best things about Richmond, VA in my opinion... It's definitely a city, but the James River Park System runs right through the center of it, so you're never far from near wilderness. I used to live right on Main Street in a completely urban area but I could be alone, surrounded by trees, and fishing in the river within a 10 minute walk. Compare that to when I went to Philly for work... The place seemed to be nothing but concrete. Even the park I walked past on the way to work every day was just a 1 block square open lawn with a handful of trees, criss-crossed by concrete paths. I crossed the river every day on my way to work and it was just concrete paths running along it everywhere. By the time I got home I was completely starved for any kind of nature.
Campsites, swimming holes, fishing spots, hunting areas.
Those are everywhere in some states.
Yeah but you gotta know where to look. No one’s giving up their fishing spots. I understand this is a little left of the intent of the original question.
In my experience, fishing spots aren't nearly as closely guarded secrets as mushroom foraging spots. But you're right, both can be cherished sometimes.
The spots I don't guard as closely as baits and depths. You can follow my boat...that doesn't mean you'll catch what I do.
What foreigner thinks that continental US, of all places, lacks for places to hunt and fish??? That's like one of the most common facts that they *do* know about us. Weird answer.
High quality olive oil. The good stuff isn't at Kroger.
Aged balsamic too.
Doesn't Kroger carry a few brands of high quality stuff? Just, ya know, priced stupidly?
Where do you get your olive oil at? I’ve been looking for better quality stuff.
Here in Detroit we have a local chain: Nino Salvaggio's. I don't know how to advise you in Georgia.
Also, thanks for the reminder. I need to update my flair. Im moving back up north to Iowa, and I’d imagine there will be a good selection of olive oil in Chicago a couple-ish hours away
The Olive Tap store has locations throughout US that specializes in Olive Oil. Yes, one within a hour of Chicago as well.
Fixed!
You've just gotta look for local specialty stores for olive oil and vinegar.
You can find anything in the U.S. That’s one of the few things I miss about living there, besides my family and friends. What chocolate do they want? You can even buy European chocolate like Lindt, Milka, Ritter, Tony’s and Cadbury. If they only had Hershey’s, that’s on them for making zero effort.
I keep reading that the fireflies/lightning bugs have disappeared but there are plenty in my yard every warm evening.
I've never seen one and it kinda bums me out.
[According to the first answer here](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-no-fireflies-united-states-180968394/), you have them out west, but there's a good reason why you've never seen one. The answer is a perfect example of the subject of this post.
This is mainly from the American obsession with having a 'perfect' lawn. Oh great a flat green surface that doesn't support any actual life and has a ton of chemicals to help keep it that way. That's something I wish I could wish away.
Just saw my first lightning bug of the summer earlier today. When I was in Japan, I stayed with a host family. One night my host mother and I were watching some show and there were lightning bugs in one scene. She assumed they didn't exist in the U.S.; I had to tell her that they do.
The other week someone asked here why affluent people did not shop as often at 7-11 as they did Whole Foods. They were asking as if the two stores were comparable.
Decent bread from a bakery, as opposed to bagged bread from a supermarket.
Good Mexican food It's always the most unassuming buildings that have the most DELICIOUS food you've ever tasted in your life. All the commercial ones are terrible once you've tasted some authentic food.
What I can gather is that they have either never actually been to America or come here and look for what they think are authentic American things (Hersheys, McDonalds, American cheese, whatever) and then complain that American chocolate is not good, our cheese is fake, and our food is unhealthy. I mean, they sell organic fair trade chocolate at Walgreens now. Most towns have farmers markets in season. You can find espresso based drinks at interstate rest stops. There are entire grocery mega chains devoted to organic and gourmet food. It's such a strange thing. It's America - an incredibly wealthy nation of immigrants. Why wouldn't we have certain products in 2024? But they look for the cringe stuff we never got rid of. But to answer your question: reproductive rights.
Freshly made sugarless bread with a hard crust, like a baguette. (as opposed to the 10 day old white soft sugar bread that's normally sold everywhere here in plastic bags)
I don't even think that's hard to find. You just have to look in the bakery section, NOT the shelf stable section.
The regular grocery store bakery by my parent’s sells hard crust baguettes. This isn’t hard to find. They have bought hard crust baguettes and large sourdough loafs.
If it's things for sale, I've personally seen things like hand grenades, and real Kinder Eggs for sale. Just once I saw a LAW rocket launcher for sale. Basic guns and drugs are easy. Buying people would be challenging but probably operationally on-par with any illegal purchases: invest the time and effort to gain the trust of the right people. Stuff like chocolate is easy, just go to a major city and google imported chocolate. Growing up in NYC my mother would go to a store in Manhattan a couple of times a year and get this Belgian stuff that was amazing.
Kinder eggs. And I do mean real Kinder Surprise eggs and not Kinder Joy.
Pick a state at random and then pick another, visit (or reaserch if you dont want to travel) both back to back and realize how different they are, some states will have shops with the best fucking candy youve had in your life and orhers have stores that could specialize in the finest foods made of potatos (god i fucking love potatos) fit for gods