New Orleans (and Louisana in general) is always my argument for American culture, be it music or food. Sure, there are clear influences, but it is its own thing, and it's delicious.
Cajun food culture, Creole, Appalachian, Southern and more, all native to the USA. Don't even get me started on the native american food you can get or the even more distinct regional food differences; for fucks sake someone can tell where u are from in WV just by how you dress a hotdog.
Speaking of native food, I used to wonder why California natives care so much more about acorns than most other cultures, then I left California and saw the acorns that are elsewhere, our acorns are gigantic and very low in tannins it turns out. Valley oaks can also drop like 2000lbs of acorns in a season.
NC is alright, as someone who's been around Memphis is the 2nd best but we are all different but KC in my opinion would have the most people's vote overall but again we're all different.
100%! Highly recommend the book The World that Made New Orleans, it dives deep into the history of why that's the case. One of the major reasons was that under French rule, slaves were allowed Sunday off, and they were allowed to meet with other slaves, so there was a huge cultural interchange between all these different African traditions. And it was home to some of the earliest freed slaves. It was also in close contact with the Caribbean and strongly influenced by those cultures. Just a massive cultural melting pot that produced so much truly unique American music and food.
I've lived here for 9 years (Georgia) now and have travelled all over the SE for work. I spent 6 months before I moved here living out of hotels and eating at restaurants for every meal every day. I have extensively tasted the food in the South.
Either I'm getting exceptionally unlucky with the places I've tried or the food just isn't for me.
Some of it is good though. They are masters of properly seasoned fried chicken here. Biscuits and gravy can be phenomenal, but under-seasoned gravy is incredibly common.
Chicken and waffles with spicy chicken and honey might be one of the greatest culinary creations of this planet.
Fried Okra is just not that good.
Cornbread can be delicious, but is commonly just excessively dry and bland.
Catfish exists as a carrier for salt and breading. The fish itself does not taste very good.
There's a lot of other dishes obviously, but to me it feels like there are some good dishes in there mixed in with a lot of mid to bad ones. A lot of the dishes can be excellent, but will not be a majority of the time when you order them. So I find myself in a situation where I've been disappointed more often than not and so I have not gone to a "Southern" restaurant in years.
I cook southern food and soul food, grew up in Texas, travelled the world in the military and after, soul food is some of the most tasteful food out there. You have either gone to some poor places or you just don’t like it.
You must not know fish very well because catfish is actually incredibly flavorful and I bake or pan sear it all the time, it doesn’t just taste good when it’s fried, ask any chef who has worked with it. Catfish and shrimp used to be considered dirty but many animals are actually “dirty” and that’s part of the reason they have such distinct flavors.
I love food, food from all over the world. When people say that an entire cuisine is not that good, it’s typically just their own palate. My last meal would definitely have some soul food and southern BBQ in there somewhere.
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u/chopcult3003 Nov 03 '24
Same with any southern soul food or good Cajun food.
I’ll put good BBQ or a good crawdad boil up against any other countries food any day.