In my experience the food quality in Europe is worlds beyond the United States. Even a bad full English is better than what you’d get at some sit-down restaurants in America. Eggs in America have sickly, pale yellow yolks and breakfasts are usually cooked in motor oil. I always had fresh, decent quality food in Europe — but this was pre-pandemic.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I was talking more about authenticity than about food quality. So "isn't edible" was probably the wrong choice of words, you are right.

It's just that e.g. you can't get English breakfast sausages in mainland Europe, so they just substitute them with Nuremburg sausages, which look similar, but taste completely different. Breakfast sausages are really bland, which makes them fit in nicely to a breakfast, while Nuremburg sausages have a really intense flavour. They work well for a barbecue, but on a breakfast they really don't fit in and the combination is pretty bad.

Similar story for fish and chips in Europe. If you buy that stuff over here, you get thin fries instead of chips (which are softer, steak-cut fries), you get some random breaded fish from the freezer (not e.g. a beer batter) and the malt vinegar is usually left out or substituted with spirit vinegar or cider vinegar. The result kinda looks a bit like the original, but it tastes completely different.