Looking for foods to try and share a bit of my own culture. My family is cantonese viet and I grew up eating in a lot of traditional banquet hall restaurants. Usually these are dim sum menu for lunch and traditional shared foods for dinner. Most people have tried the common ones like siu mai (pork wrapper dumpling) and haw gow (shrimp rice dumpling) but my favorites are the uncommon ones like ngau zaap (beef offal) and baak wan fung zaau (pickled chicken feet).

Ngau zaap is basically braised brown sauce using off cuts, usually stomach and whatnot, with chinese radish. Its very savory, kinda like if you made an asian gravy.

Baak wan fung zaau is just chicken feet pickled in white vinegar. If you had pickled radish it's essentially the same pickling and the chicken feet is gelatinous and a bit crunchy. You can also get them sometimes boneless since eating around the bones is kinda a pain. I really like pickled foods so this is one of my faves

Poutine. Fries topped with gravy and chewy cheese curds.

Frybread I guess.

Cheeseburger

My people are well known for fast food

vegemite

Germany, grilled sausage and sauerkraut I guess. But if you ask a native about the national food or a food that they miss when living abroad, it's usually bread, specifically sourdough made from mixed rye and wheat flour. Goes great with butter and slices of cheese or cold cuts ("Käsebrot", "Wurstbrot").

Cheesesteaks (South Jersey, near Philly).

From my particular part of Ireland, Ulster fry probably. Sausages, bacon, eggs, soda bread, potato bread, fried mushrooms. Sometimes with tomato, black pudding, and baked beans if you're into it.

Tatortot hotdish

Kalle-pache

Fish and chips. And despite all the jokes about British food, you really do owe it to yourself to learn just how good this meal can be when cooked well.

Samin Nosrat argues, in her book of the same name, that all cooking comes down to salt, fat, acid, and heat. Fish and chips is the perfect synthesis of this theory. It is cooking stripped down to this core idea. Done right, it is an absolute delight; beautifully flaky fish cooked to delicate perfection within a crunchy shell of light, crispy batter. Malt vinegar brings acidity to cut through the fat and salt. Everything works in harmony. There are contrasts in texture to enhance the melding of flavors.

Fish and chips, done well, is culinary perfection. But it is very hard to do well. There is nothing to hide behind. It is cooking stripped to the essentials, which means that those essentials have to be perfect. Most people outside of the British Isles have probably never had a good fish and chips in their lives, and even in the UK there are plenty of bad examples.

Anyway, those pickled chicken feet sound incredible. I had paper wrapped duck feet once and those were absolutely delicious.

Well, now I want to see if I can find or make that bread.

Coney dogs, bumpy cake and Superman ice cream.

Cheese

Beans of any sort with rice or cornbread. Not jiffy mix, not sweetened, made with cornmeal, buttermilk, and a little cake flour for lift.

Although I have had good fish and chips in the UK, I think New Zealand generally does better - although we do have some shit examples that are over cooked or cooked too cool etc

Although we do tend to do lemon instead of vinegar.

I've had pickled chicken legs and chili in rural Sarawak, quite OK but maybe a little out there for many westerners

I like fish and chips but in the US it's so expensive, it's about 17 USD for a 3 piece

I'd like to visit the UK once since I heard the old school edm scene is still pretty alive there

Bacon-wrapped Anyuerisms with a oversized side of Diabetes-inducing stuffed-IBScakes.

Hmm never heard of rye and sourdough at the same time. I've seen them separately overseas in the US but never as one bread

It does sound good though, i like sourdough

Looks like a good breakfast, though usually I skip breakfast haha

What is your opinion on cheesesteaks from the big sandwich chains like jersey mikes?

Place I grew up: McDonald's is probably most widely known and somewhat specific.

Place I've lived for over a decade: either sushi or ramen depending upon when and where you're talking.

California burrito is always good, it's like everything you'd like wrapped in one. I miss when I could get one from the random food trucks in LA for like 8 bucks

There's actually an English Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischbrot

Rye-only sourdough is also a thing, gets pretty dense and bitter though. I prefer Mischbrot with more wheat than rye.

Its likely to be Chicken Biryani and Mango Lassi. Though the specific area I am from has a different variant of the dish.
I actually don't like Mango lassi and would rather just drink Mango juice.

I have tried Nasi lemak once and enjoyed it. And thanks to the fish and chips comment, am curious about that as well.

Lmao I’m just imagining boneless chicken feet… like… they are 90% bones…

Currywurst!

We don't call it EDM here, that is a dirty "word" ;) but yeh, there are still some great nights depending on where you are. I went to an old skool hardcore night recently that was fucking sick and most big towns and cities you can find decent drum and bass nights. Plenty of Jungalist nights in that same vein too.

If you are in Brighton, Bristol or London you can find decent proper dubstep nights (not that American brostep crap) and I'm sure there are others out there.

I'm certain all kinds of flavours of house and techno etc are out there too just less my wheelhouse.

The best part about all of these nights though, at least in my area of interest, they are all taking place in small, dark and dingy clubs with absolutely sick sound systems. The way it should be! You haven't lived until you are chewing your face off at 5 am standing next to the bass bins feeling the music course through you whilst having a life altering epiphany xD

Despite its reputation I still like some fast food, chains like Sonic, Weinerschnitzel, In and Out.

I will say a lot of fast food is no longer cheap which kinda defeats the purpose though

TBH I prefer plain ketchup with my grilled sausage...

Jerseyite here… I find big chain sandwiches usually have subpar bread compared to smaller shops. I have enjoyed many a Subway cheesesteak but it’s fairly different from Philly style.

San Diego has a delicious blend of Baja ingredients and flavors and an American sense of too much. Case in point, the california burrito. Carne asada, french fries, guacamole are the essential ingredients. From there pico, cheese, sour cream are other common inclusions. They are delicious. I nominate carne asada fries as well. Its basically the ingredients i listed above without the tortilla, think like chili cheese fries but with carne and guac. So good.

If I’m honest I prefer mustard, but Currywurst is quite iconic imo

It's a little hard to find an example since not many places do boneless, but they do exist

This one is still pickled but more of a northern style afaik

I've been trying new cheeses but I found a big issue in my plan where they never sell samplers so I have to buy a whole pack of one type of cheese and pray I like it lol

Haha yea edm is a funny word. People who listen always like to say edm is not a genre, it's just a label, but whenever I tell someone who doesn't listen about things like frenchcore or dnb they get confused, so I just default to edm.

I've been following this scene in the UK for a while and it seems fun

https://youtu.be/WmiWonBy35s

Wow, I’m impressed they can do that! Thanks for sharing.

I have actually tried chicken feet at dim sum before… I think they had a sweet and savory sauce and they were not bad, though it takes some effort to eat them

Never tried, it seems like either people love it or they hate it and I am afraid I might fall in the latter LOL

Tacos.

Not the "hard shell" variety that is sold in the USA. There is a whole universe of tacos all over Mexico: beef, pork, goat meat, sheep meat, boiled egg, rice, hot peppers, shrimp, crab, octopus, many insects and larvae (chapulines, ant eggs, mosquito eggs, caterpillars), nopales (prickly pear), many kinds of herbs, sausages, etc. The list is almost infinite.

Why not spiderman ice cream lol

Yea that's the other style which is a braised red sauce kinda way. TBH I don't like it as much as the pickled version, its a little too soft texture wise for my liking

Tacos are great, never tried the more exotic ones though, except nopale. My college had it once for some reason but tbh it just kinda tastes like the seasoning they put LOL

I tried it once. Turns out, a very thin layer is all you need.

If you do get around to trying it, most people who hate it use way too much. Start with a very very very thin spread. Thinner than that. No, like so it's barely there. Then if you like that, you can add a tiny bit more. But it's sort of like spreading bouillon paste - you need such a tiny amount.

Bacon wrapped scallop is really good, but also very oily

The indian supermarket near my work always hooks me up, i get a whole lunch box with 3 curries for just 10 bucks when other places charge 20 for a lunch box

I miss Japan food, so many things to try and almost all of them were good

"Exotic" is a strong word for nopales. (Nopal is the singular, not nopale) You can get it at every grocery store in the Seattle area. And yeah it doesn't have a strong flavor on its own. Kinda like green beans?

I can vouch for ant eggs (escamoles) and roast grasshopper (chapulines), they're tasty but a lot harder to find around here.

Damn, it's been so long since I've been to a proper dubstep night. It was never that popular here in Germany, but it's been ultra-niche for a while. Though it's probably for the better for my hearing :D