The fests I've been to have been overpriced but that's mostly because they're food truck pricing. They aren't so much corporate as they're organized by the city, or a non profit, and so on. Like, imagine an organization that promotes Asian cultures having a Asian food fest.

Long ago, my wife was a waitress at a mom and pop restaurant that once participated in the other end of a community event and they sold it about the same as usual, but had a limited menu for things that could be cooked in portably. Great food, but we're talking 16 bucks for fries covered in Okinawan pork belly prepped in advance.

I go to Wurstfest almost every year. I couldn't make it this year for personal reasons. I just love the fact that there's a whole festival about sausages. That's it. There's also plenty of beer, dancing, and music but mostly they just want you to put their sausage in your mouth.

I tried it, lutefisk does indeed have an American festival.

Probably the deepest cut I've ever seen on The Simpsons.

Toad Bongzales would be a great stage name

You know, for a bunch of made up names some of them sound both funny and kinda believable.

Bonzalez at least looks like an English->Japanese->English transliteration problem.

Bobson Dugnutt has always been my favorite. It sounds like a perfectly legitimate Western name, it just...isn't. The Japanese equivalent would be something like Fujohiko Watashinze.

It's way better than it used to be - 10 years ago I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly but finally places like Five Guys are making their mark on the big European cities and people have a better understanding of what a hamburger should taste like.

It's still like 75/25 bad to good but it used to be 95/5 or worse.

Texan here. I've had some damn good hamburgers in my life, and I've been to numerous states. But the one of the best burgers I've ever had was in Luleå, Sweden at a place called Bastard Burgers. Specifically, you have to ask for them to add 3 pieces of Västerbottensoft crispy bites to the burger. It brought tears to my eyes just knowing I can't get anything like that in Texas.

I've eaten pizza all across the United States and can confirm that there is absolutely nothing special about New York pizza. If the minerals in the water actually change anything, it's imperceptible when covered with cheese. Most of my visits were with NY natives so I was not eating at tourist traps.

I can say that American food kind of sucks in every Asian country I've been to^1 but I have never been to Europe, though, so I didn't know how the phenomena compare.

^1 Most of my international trips have been for work so I may not have gone to the "good" American restaurants

[Edit] how do I superscript on Lemmy? ^1 is supposed to be a footnote

We won it in the war.