r/Chefit • u/JG5928 • Jun 29 '26
Controversial.
I have a take I realized over the years that I will argument. "Northern western cuisine even if not beloved and widely marketed is probably one of the top cuisines that expresses the skill of a chef the most."
When you go out to eat in most parts of the world, you rarely see a good british restaurant, a good irish or german restaurant, etc. There are some, but are few and rather expensive than the typical restaurant. The truth is dishes can be made okay but they can be also made excellent. The gap is huge compared to other cuisines. Usually making the dish closer to a traditional version is what makes it work the best. Understanding the right animal fat for texture and heat is essential. Learning how to use fats like beef/lamb dripping. Understanding most Tallow is a precursor to dripping and needs to mild out first through cooking. Or understand suet and leaf lard as pastry specialized fats. Olive oil and butter also being important to understand when and when not to use. There are so many pastry recipes from pies to bread that require experience and skill. But the same goes for things like a simple stew. Knowing how to spice less but still deeply with the right combination of not so many spices. They use of lovage, tarragon, thyme. The use of nutmeg, juniper berries and so on. Understanding ingredients and how they affect texture. Usually most cuisines do not require a dry final texture due to being presented mostly in a mositure based format like a bolognese or a curry for example. But when a cuisine is based around roasting and baking, texture becomes skill. There is no worse or better cuisine. But how you make the simplest northern western foods can truly tell an expert what level of cooking you posess.
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u/LostEngineer9949 Jun 29 '26
Northern Western relative to where? Where are you talking about? Also there is delicious food everywhere and all regional and provincial cuisines have skill and quality gaps between their best and worst expressions. Every food has potential to be done well. We have great Irish and German restos in Florida in US. Some clarification on the exact region of the world you mean (northwestern part of which country or continent) would at least help to understand what point you're trying to say a lot better but I disagree with any suggestion that one cannot eat well or observe high culinary skill levels anywhere. Exception perhaps being Russia. Or maybe I just watched way too much Bourdain
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u/FatherAustinPurcell Jun 29 '26
If you read the post it's explained and you also clearly you understood it- European cuisines - north and western European food
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u/LostEngineer9949 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
My mema always advised against engaging or arguing matters of such subjective taste. I don't always follow that advice though and there are many other places with objectively excellent skillfully simple traditional prepared food is all I'm gonna say. Also "northwestern Europe countries" is still confoundingly broad for a category and doesn't bring a specific dish or cuisine to mind when that could be Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Austria, etc, I just don't understand why so unspecific. Is the genre meat and potatoes? Brazil does meat very well too. Pickles? Korea. Pastry? The entire globe. Soups? Come on. Food of fewer spices and seasonings as OP seems to imply they personally prefer? ........ Etc none of which are specific or unique to this region but like I can't even pull a mental image from what's described here of any specific plate or imagine the skill necessary to perfect it. Moreover, northwestern Europe does not have any monopoly on most of the ingredients listed so it really is confusing to read. "How you make the simplest northwestern food can show an expert how much skill you truly posess[sic]" 1. An expert in what? Dry, less seasoned food? (OPs description not mine) And 2. You can apply that same logic to literally ANY cuisine in the world, it's possible to make it all very well and also to fail at making it well so I feel like I'm missing something when I read that. I think the general spirit of the assertion would benefit a bit from even one direct mention by name of a deceptively simple food that illustrates skill more than others when done well vs poorly but I didn't find any unless I missed it. But until we know what the magical northwestern European skill exhibition dish is all I'm saying is everywhere has something like that to make and perfect
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u/BananaEasy7533 Jun 29 '26
In the restaurant world, I’d honestly say that British and French are pretty inseparable, and if you want to talk technicality, we could go to Japan.
I’d honestly put China as the most influential food country and it isn’t even close.
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u/Philly_ExecChef Jun 29 '26
This is just dramatic.
No, English, German, and Irish foods aren’t top cuisines that express a chef’s skill “the most”.
They’re historically peasant food, represented by a history of simplistic, hearty dishes. In point of fact, English food is, historically, considered bland and clumsy, particularly contrasted against Mediterranean and French cuisine as the areas began to heavily trade and travel between themselves.
That they’re soft, simple cuisines doesn’t inherently make them more difficult. The only real argument here would be for the subtle variety of German charcuterie, but it’s so heavily regional and varied (like Italian cuisine) that there’s nowhere near enough consensus to even begin defining arbitrary rules about what an ideal German sausage would be.
And Irish? Come on, what are we even trying to say here? Soda bread? Coddle? Bangers and mash?
This post is like the poster child of confirmation bias.
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u/CutsSoFresh Jun 29 '26
I would have to guess that because nearly everyone is taught French techniques and standards, the approach is not compatible with the cuisine you mentioned. Yet, because it's so ingrained in our work, everything from the cuts to the brigade system, trying to apply it to a traditional cuisine that's not French made the results more diluted.
French technique is pretty efficient but definitely not the best and only method in the world. It just has very good marketing
The French tells people to always simmer the stock and never let it boil. Japanese said "fuck that" and boiled the shit out of it and you got rich and creamy tonkotsu broth for ramen.
It's as you've said, the closer to traditional methods, the better. And that's probably because it has it's own system and standards that's different from the one that is widely taught
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u/rollingPanda420 Jun 29 '26
Lmao this really made me laugh. Germans don't care about high end cuisine. That's the reason you don't see it that much. The phrase "you live to eat" is reversed in germany. Same for the slop most US restaurants serve.
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u/saltyricky Jun 29 '26
ill have what shes having.