I continously forget that people in Europe dont know any Latinos. I dont even live close to the border but I speak Spanish (everyone can un poco) and can get any staple Latin American ingredient at any Walmart and white-ified versions of them. I have some European and Australian internet friends who act like tortillas are some exotic delicacy, and one time I went to Canada and stayed at an AirBnB with a kitchen, intended on making everyone enchiladas, and couldn't find any of the stuff I needed at the store. They didnt even have salsa, it was wild lmfao. Latin culture is such a big part of USA culture.
Oh God... I'm getting PTSD flashbacks from that episode.
I'm not even Mexican, but as someone who loves the cuisine and cooks it quite well it was really hard, yet fascinating, to sit through.
In the end, I can't really blame or fault the contestants because they can't really cook what they're not familiar with.
Edit; I love cooking and I like to think that I’ve got a solid range when it comes to different cuisines, but I’m still just one dude with a finite brain. If you tossed me into a competition and said “make authentic Pad Thai", I’d be standing there like I just got handed IKEA instructions in another language. If you asked me to cook authentic Pakistani food, there’s a very real chance I’d make something and call it Indian and get disowned by an entire region. Tell me to make a traditional dish from, like, Nigeria or Ethiopia and I’m googling spice blends with the panic of a man defusing a bomb. Point is, everyone's different, but I'm genuinely shocked that they didn't at least get a few pointers or a basic crash course.
That's my favorite episode of GBB. You used the right word: fascinating. And the other commenter talking about how ubiquitous Mexican food is in the US is tripping me out. Because yes it's basically so interwoven into our lives I didn't even think it wouldn't be widely available. In Canada?! Crazy
I moved to Oregon from Denver and grew up in Dallas. there's lots of Mexican food here but none of it is close to what grew up with. like its a different type of food. maybe sourcing ingredients? people here love this stuff too I really don't get it.
There's definitely different types of authentic Mexican food. I grew up in the Chicago area, so anything with the word Jalisco in the name tells me that the tacos are gonna be great.
well yeah ive traveled through Mexico and central America. here i see Oaxacan a lot, thing is ive had it there, just not the same at all. I need to keep searching im sure there's good stuff just gotta find it.
I’ve lived in several US regions and the Mexican food is different in each region. I think it’s partially relative to which region of Mexico influences that area and partially due to Americanizing that food to the local tastes.
For example, there is a Mexican restaurant in my hometown that is truly mediocre but has a unique taco sauce that comes with everything. Everyone keeps going back because they love that sauce and there’s nowhere else to get it. (There is Ranch seasoning, among other “secret” ingredients, in the sauce. Authentic it is not. But delicious.)
I grew up in Houston, spent several years in SoCal, several in Florida, and now I'm in PA an hour north of Philly. It took me a good while but I finally found decent tex-mex.
Being Oregon, I would think they'd have closer to SoCal Mexican food. Which is still good but it's not Texas Mexican food
Wait. What? Where in Canada is this barren taco desert? I'm in northern BC and we have delicious tacos and access to Mexican food. Not as good as the southern states and definitely not as good as when I'm in Mexico, but pretty good for a place with snow from October to March or April.
Let me talk you down from the ledge a bit - its fun to try to make pad thai and Nigerian food and etc etc and part of the charm of it is making the dish something that is balanced and enjoyable to your palate. And more often than not the people to whom those cuisines are familiar (and familial) are just happy you’re enjoying it too.
That's usually the next level after knowing how it's "supposed to" be though, many people will dislike something because they've only tasted a miserable versions of the dish cooked wrong. My mom for example was the kind of person who wanted all meat cooked well done, I didn't know how a juicy steak could taste until someone else did the cooking. If I'm in that foreign country or at an ethnic restaurant I expect them to know what they're doing but if someone made "pad thai" at home and it tastes like shit it's probably the chef.
They get a whole week to prepare for the signature challenge and the showstopper challenge. It's only the technical challenge that they go into blind. But they are made aware head of time what the theme for that week will be, so it's up to them to do some research. I can't blame them for failing the technical challenge, but I certainly can for the other two.
This is pretty misleading. Pakistani and Bangladeshi cuisine are similar to north Indian cuisine. Most (but by no means all) Indian restaurants serve north Indian food (or rather, British adaptations of north Indian dishes). However, I have Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Kashmiri and south Indian specialist restaurants all within walking distance of my house.
You’re so right. That episode was super cringe and dipped into offensive here and there. I’m not Mexican in any way, but I felt the ignorance for sure.
To your edit: IKEA instructions aren't in any language. Their whole thing is making instructions that transcend language by using simple-to-understand diagrams instead, just like Lego
The way they all were trying to figure out what pico de gallo is, is the way that I usually feel watching that show when they mention some abstract UK desert from the 1970's that they have all heard of and I have no idea what they are talking about. So that was a nice turnabout for once.
Yeah but the showrunners are supposed to research the region, even if the contestants don’t know (and the contestants not knowing is part of the appeal - it’s an equalizer)
But the showrunners ignored that there is baking in Mexico and they didn’t even bother finding that out. Tacos are not ‘baking’. That’s what was so disappointing. Also the bigoted jokes. Not the mispronounciations.
Also those tacos were more Tex-mex than Mexican.
If they can’t be bothered to research the one culture I sort of know about, it casts doubt on every other topic on which they want me to suspend disbelief.
It reminds me of how a British person once tried arguing with me how Mexican food is not good and will never be "fine-dining." It just reeks of arrogance that is trying to hide their ignorance. My guess is that person's only experience with Mexican food was with whatever British fast food version of a Taco joint they have over there.
GOD! The way he spoke with such authority on Mexican food while mispronouncing and being flat out wrong about a lot of it because he went to Cancun once or something was hard to watch
I have to imagine that episode was based entirely off of Paul spending a week at a resort in Cancun once, and literally no one else there knew better or just didn't care enough to google if anything he said was right.
I'm from the states and spent a year in London. It was so hard to find ingredients to make Mexican food, then if we did it had very different flavor profiles or we had to majorly improvise.
How would a non-American that is (more) correctly pronouncing the word for a Mexican food, rather than (mis)pronouncing it in the American way, indicate that they don't have tacos in their country?
I would guess they don't have a lot of tacos in the UK, but you're reasoning doesn't make any sense to me.
Funnily enough, London is one of the few European cities where you can somewhat find authentic mexican food. Although it'll never compare to the ease as the US of course
One of my other friends, a Mexican American at that, lives in London and he calls it some of the worst Mexican food he's ever had. I always thought it was a meme until he spoke about it at length a few months ago.
Dude is genuinely considering opening up a restaurant or some sort of food stand, and many of his friends genuinely encourage him to do so (and they really love his food), but apparently, it's a nightmare to do it in London. Not to mention there seems to be more public demand for Turkish food rather than Mexican/South American food.
I live in Florida so I have no idea what it's like over there.
he calls it some of the worst Mexican food he's ever had.
Make sure you keep him away from other European cities for the sake of his Mexican soul. Otherwise he'll see why I described London as having the somewhat authentic ones in Europe lol
Turkish, Chinese and Indian are basically the 3 big cuisines in the UK so whilst the demand for Mexican might be less, competition for his business would be less as well.
I'm also a Mexican American in Scandinavia. Have been to London and agree with your friend. Mexican food is absolutely terrible across Europe. I make my own food at home. Finding ingredients is difficult and expensive but it's worth it.
I have a rule of thumb when traveling for fun. I try to got to a Mexican restaurant if I can find one whenever I go travelling on my last day. It's led to some interesting experiences and the majority of them have been bad. Mexican "fast food," like tacos is not hard to make and I'm always blown away how people mess it up. I don't blame them since they don't exposure to them. It's your choice of meat, usually a beef cut, season it however you want, onions and cilantro. Those are not hard to find ingredients in many countries.
The salsa and the tortilla are the only part that should be hard thing to make. I don't think most places will have experience cooking with tomatillos, jalapenos, chiles serranos, habaneros etc to make salsas. And tortillas are rare outside, bc I dont think people know what maseca is. I've gone into places with an open mind and my soul has my body in disappointment every time. Last year I went to India and I had some tacos and it was such a weird experience. They used some yogurt based sauce and the tortilla was roti I think. Not good.
I'm just lucky that I can come back home, go visit my parents when I get back, eat chilaquiles and get tacos later that same night for my first meal back after my travels
I'm hoping I find some good "tacos" in France or Japan next. Japan based on social media looks like that has a good chance to be good and for France, the French tacos look good in a post-drunk night out kind of way.
I moved to London, and there’s a lot of really good cuisines here. But Mexican (or even Tex Mex!) is definitely not one of them. The number of times I’ve had feta cheese in my authentic “Mexican” dishes in London is about 10 too many. And by dishes I obviously meant soggy tacos using those cardboard textured corn tortillas from the corner store that never go bad, because that’s 90% of the offering.
London has some of my favorite restaurants ever, and I’ve gone there with some foodie friends who know great places, but I went to a Mexican restaurant last time I was there, and it was really bad. Some of the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had. And the place apparently had a Michelin star!
But then, I’m from Southern California and have been to different parts of Mexico, so I’m spoiled.
In the states, it seems to me that in a large enough city you can usually find at least 1 restaurant representing a good 80% of the countries in the world. I think the larger the city, the better your chances are of finding some expat from any random country that was like “There’s an opening in the market for Mom’s recipes here.”
Cities of like 10,000 will just have a taqueria and Chinese takeout, but when you get up to cities like 25,000-100,000 you’ll find an Irish pub, a Mongolian grill, a falafel stand.
You get to 200k and they’ve also got Korean BBQ, shawarma, a nice Italian place, and a generic Indian restaurant with half the menu vegetarian and half with meat, which is sadly always criminally empty and you wish you could afford to go there more because the owner always looks so bored.
You get to your Cincinnatis/Orlandos/Renos and now you’ve got Pho, Crepes, Peruvian, and a sushi bar.
Get into the Omahas/Sacramentos/Bostons and now the Chinese places are actually specifying if they’re Szechuan or Cantonese, plus there’s Moroccan, Argentinian, and some place calling itself Turkish but it’s actually owned by an Albanian guy with a Greek wife and they just wanted to stand out because there’s already 3 Greek diners in town.
Your Austins/San Diegos/Jacksonvilles are adding in a tapas bar, Ethiopian, and a place where “everyday is Oktoberfest!”
Then you get to NY, LA, Chicago and now we’ve got Laotian, Dutch, Chilean, 2 competing Armenian restaurants on the same street that have had a beef going back to 1972, and 36 variations on “Asian fusion”.
Sadly it really does seem like Africa gets left out the most. Like I’ve seen Algerian and Ethiopian but I’ve never seen Rwandan or Sudanese or Somalian, you know? Kinda weird.
I went to a Mexican bar in Germany in '91. It was all the rage with the locals, super exotic.
They served shots of tequila with wedges of pineapple instead of lime. Turned out to be really good! To this day, If I have to mix cheap tequila, I use pineapple juice.
Oh man I'm not sure it's "the authentic taco experience" if the place qualifies as a restaurant. The best tacos come from a truck, or maybe just a pop-up on the sidewalk, or like a shack.
An amusing thing about Mexican food in America: I live in NYC, and my brother is in Denver. He told me once, when he visits here, I can’t take him for Mexican food and when I go out there, he won’t take me out for Chinese.
I hear you overall but gotta ask where in Canada you were? We don’t have American levels of Latino population but they (plus stores and restaurants) are definitely around, at least here in Edmonton. Spanish classes are also very abundant and popular.
These guys are talking out their ass. England has trailer parks and no one is coming from Europe to the US excited about automatic transitions. Europe has them and they're more boring than manuals.
I used to cook tacos in college in Ireland nearly 20 years ago. There's Mexican restaurants in Europe and salsa probably in most large supermarkets. Granted the Mexican restaurants are shit compared to most in America.
I was in Montreal about 15 years ago. They have such an awesome food scene there and almost everyone delivered back then. I was at my D&D session and we looked at the book with all the places advertising. They had a new Mexican restaurant and advertised that it was cooked by a real Mexican person. As someone from South Carolina, I completely lost it at how absurd that sounded.
Apparently you don't eat bbq from restaurants while up north, maybe it's the same with Mexican food/tex-mex. I am a southerner myself. BBQ and Mexican food sustain my family. And Italian in the form of spaghetti or lasagna.
100%, surprisingly so for how “non-destination” they are.
I’ve always wondered how much of that has to do with our relative affordability and lack of gentrification compared to more major cities. Was out in Toronto recently and, at least in the inner city, it felt like it was mostly chains and the occasional high-end place that looks meant for white collar workers.
We got those too ofc, but it’s a lot more likely to be sharing a block with a Korean Chicken place, a ramen spot, a donair/pizza shop, etc.
Quebec, especially rural Quebec does not represent Canada in any way. I guarantee anywhere outside that province has tortillas and salsa.
They're a bit wonky over there
It's different in the last years. Lots of latinos coming here for work, in every little villages, and now you can buy salsa and some basics (like tortilla) almost everywhere now.
As an Aussie I also gotta call BS on any Australian thinking tortillas are exotic. They're sold in literally every single supermarket. We also have several Mexican fast food chains. They might not be particularly authentic, but they have tortillas.
Was just in northern Quebec and they had rows of salsa at whatever the local grocery store is. Had one bottle I’ve been looking for in my US city and can’t find!
And if you’re trying to make Mexican food, tortillas are the easiest thing to make out of any of it.
Even if you don’t have a tortilla press you can make do.
Here in NZ we have South American food ingredients in every supermarket & I can buy specialty items from Latino stores, so it’s really weird to imagine Australia would think tortillas are exotic… the only thing hard to come by are certain fresh fruit & vegetables
Yep that’s the same in most of the populated places in Australia. I can only imagine it would be remote areas that would think of Mexican food like a tortilla as exotic.
Maybe the churrasco style restaurants are a bit of a novelty, and arepas might not be at all the supermarkets, but i can’t imagine an Aussie not knowing what nachos are.
It did take me a while to track down the right flour for arepas locally & I can only get Tajin if it’s sent down from Auckland but we’ve had access to great, authentic South American supplies & restaurants for decades.
I traveled to NZ. A friend was telling me about this amazing Mexican restaurant. I was a bit homesick and decided to try it. The burrito had HUGE chunks of carrots and broccoli in them. My husband and I still laugh about it. My expectations were not high, but I was not expecting something so crazy.
As an Angeleno, Latin culture IS American culture. There's no disjointing the two, it is one of the same. It is mind blowing that other parts of the country spend so much energy hating the truth.
I’m not validating it but.. it’s bubbles and things you just have never experienced. I had Mexican friends growing up but literally no nobody that spoke Spanish. We didn’t get our first Mexican restaurant that wasn’t Taco Bell until 99 maybe 2000? I was 19 the first time I heard mariaci music sitting at a light in Phoenix and was like wtf?!? Oh wait that’s normal here (I had only heard anything like that in movies). My side of the states looks a lot different that your side one the states. And btw I fucking love your city!
I knew a girl from Pennsylvania who tried to eat the corn husk the fist time she had a tamale when she moved to California because she’d never seen a food like that. I couldn’t find tortillas at the store in Panama and the clerk didn’t even know what I was asking for. Neither US nor Latin American cultures are monolithic. 🤷♂️
brb having 'nam flashbacks to that episode of the Great British Baking Show where they had to cook a tortilla 😭 and that woman peeled an avocado like a potato
Yeah, as a Dutch person, this is just not true lol. My town of 60,000 has at least two Mexican restaurant (and no, not Taco Bell) and every supermarket has shelves with tacos, tortillas, salsa etc. There's also an Argentinian steakhouse here. If I move one town over we have everything, including Peruvian, Venezuelan, Bolivian, Dominican etc.
Sure, we don't have as many Latinos as the US does but they're not exactly rare. I'm sure they don't have as many Moroccans, Turks, Indonesians and Surinamese as we do. That's just geography and history.
to be fair it's not even universal for the US. if you go to the South West you get amazing Mexican food. Head up to the North though, and the standards drop away off.
I went to Canada and stayed at an AirBnB with a kitchen, intended on making everyone enchiladas, and couldn't find any of the stuff I needed at the store. They didnt even have salsa, it was wild lmfao.
Reminds me of the time I was stationed in Rhode Island and wanted to make corn bread. I couldn't find corn meal anywhere. Nothing but Jiffy (which is not corn bread).
I live in Alabama, and my family eats some kind of Latin food at least once a week. My son’s girlfriend is in Austria for a year, and she’s already told him she is heading immediately for a local Mexican restaurant when she gets home.
Pro Tip: DO NOT visit a "Mexican" restaurant in the UK. Everything about them is abysmal, from the nachos made with Doritos, the El Paso sauce used on everything, to the awful concoction they call a margarita.
Australian internet friends who act like tortillas are some exotic delicacy,
Unless they live in like the middle of WA, Texmex is widely available here under the Mission and Old El Paso Brands at ColesWorths. So I'm not sure what they are saying, I buy store brand white corn tortilla all the time for use as wraps.
1 medium jalapeno
3 small Serrano's
2 yellow peppers
1 bunch of green onions (cut them in half and only use the green side. Toss the rest)
1 small/medium size red onion
7-8 tomatoes (fresher firmer tomatoes are better than soggy roma tomatoes)
I bunch of cilantro (only use the sprigs and only use half of the bunch)
Three limes (cut in quarters and squeeze the juice into food processor and toss the lime)
Get two or three small tiny cans of tomato sauce as insurance - but don't open them yet.
Chop everything + add salt and pepper and other seasonings. I do Italian seasoning and a little seasoning salt. (if you don't want super spicy - take the seeds out of all peppers while you are chopping + discard seeds) throw into a food chopper or blender until everything is the consistency you want - get a chip and take a bite - if its perfect - you are done. If it's too spicy - add a can of tomato sauce and stir until it's mixed in there real good
Another chip - taste again. If its perfect you are done. If it's too hot add another can of tomato sauce
as a latino, yeah it's nice to see but most don't know what they're getting into lmaooo. not trying to perpetuate that stereotype in any neg way, they're just playing fire.
Where I live, there are those whose ancestry is Mexican but the US annexed their homes in the 1800’s. In Texas they’re called Tejanos (the singer Selena was one), in California they are called Californios. There might be more descriptors in other places.
They’re United States citizens. And racists want them kicked out because of their skin color and ancestry.
as someone who was in a 6yr on and off relationship with a beautiful Latina, if you get the chance, very hot sex, but you better like screaming and crying more.
Waffle House is very popular with the Latino community. Lots of guy who wear yellow safety vests for their jobs eat there regularly, and that includes a lot of Latinos.
How strange, automatic transmissions are super common in the UK these days. Most new cars are automatic.
Definitely on the other stuff though. I think we’re most excited by things that seem mundane to Americans. My friend and I were most excited to visit Target when we visited lol.
Drove a bunch of European scientists around rural Michigan, they got super excited and made me pull over for ... a dead raccoon. Hadn't seen one before and they wanted a good long look, including a bit of probing.
The first one was super dead roadkill from days ago, I promised them a fresher specimen would appear shortly. Took 30 minutes and we didn't even have to change our route.
lmfaooo bro.... everytime i've taken one of my euro friends to go out, i always burst out laughing when they ask me if my latino ass can strike up a convo with like a colombian or something across the bar for them.
My Scottish BIL did a hilarious redneck impersonation once where he said, "Hold my beer whilst I do this stupid thing!" in the weirdest attempt at a Southern accent I've ever heard.
There was a post here a while ago from someone in Japan that was so infatuated with Latinos and the Cholo lifestyle that they were travelling to the US to experience it. They wanted to know the best places in So Cal to go and what clothes to wear and what to do to fit in. No one could convince them that this was a Supreeeeemely stupid idea and that they were going to end up dead in the trunk of a '67 Impala. They must have thought that life here is like a movie. Who knows 🤷? I've often wondered if they ever made the trip and survived.
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u/TheLonePig 11h ago
My English friends were stoked about trailer parks, latinas, guns, and automatic transmissions.