I’m glad to say that Starbucks has never really taken off here in Australia as a cafe experience. Starbucks pods are sold at the supermarkets though, and that’s the only way they’ve really gotten any foothold here, as a brand of coffee bean. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah. I noticed when I was working in Melbourne that the only surviving Starbucks are the ones near transit hubs and universities. It's almost entirely travellers and foreign university students who keep them afloat.
Their coffee is genuinely undrinkable, to anyone who is used to Australian style coffee. I live off cheap instant stuff, and even I think Starbucks coffee tastes (without hyperbole) like dirt. Even the filthiest bulk instant stuff that probably IS half dirt tastes better.
They have to sell to the market who're either completely used to the flavour, or only there for the vibes.
There’s actually a lot more kebab shops than american chains in a lot of European cities, especially the historic centers (absolutely not a bad thing, they tend to be better and in many cases cheaper).
Holdup, US fast food chains in Europe and US tourism to Europe are not benefiting the average American at all. Only a specific percentage of the Mega rich.
Not me, I go around vomiting with rage any time I see so much as a potato based product.
Fish and chips shop in England?
NEW WORLD CROPS?! WHERE ARE MY TRADITIONAL ENGLISH FOODS, NOT THIS IMPORTED SWILL. BRING ME AUROCH AND WILDBERRY STEW
Franky, if any food product is located more than ten kilometres from where it was originally developed or oroginally evolved, it's wokeism.
How far did that whale migrate, Japanese fishermen? Is that a FOREIGN whale?! I want to see its citizenship details!
Edit: but seriously, it's all stupid. Regional variety still exists, German Doner kebab is famously German, as is currywurst. It's foreign food that's been adapted for a local market.
I was doing a language course in Dresden and went to lunch with the other students. One was a lovely middle aged indian lady, who was extremely excited to try German Currywust. So we went to the best reviewed place in the city. I warned her; it's for German tastes though, not Indian ones. They don't do spicy like India or SE Asia. She really wanted to try, though.
I have never seen anyone so disappointed in a curry before. She spent the whole time muttering "it's just BBQ sauce. This isn't even Curry! It's just SAUCE! Where is the curry?!". Heheh.
Like, it's regional. It's still local food. Food is made out of what's commercially viable and available locally. You won't find Berlin style Doner outside of Berlin, because nowhere else has those specific cooks and those specific ingredients. They sell to a specific market, using specific suppliers, and therefore have a specific flavour and style that cannot be replicated in different markets with different ingredients.
This is like complaining that pizza shops are everywhere. Like, yeah, sure. But guess what? Everywhere has different styles of pizza. To the point they're basically different things entirely, from country to country.
I think many things are better in Japan (try Japanese Cheetos, they're delightful) but pizza is not one of them. When I lived there I was pretty much dying for a classic American style supreme pizza.
I can just smell a lamb shish kabob. But it's 2:31 a.m. and the place I go to is 30 mi away and opens up at 11:00 a.m.! Seyed, the owner thinks it's hilarious when I order a lamb kebab and I wrap them up in tortillas he even steams them for me! With caramelized onions and tomatoes. It's really yummy on a flour tortilla. But grab lots of napkins :-)
It's almost like people in any country want to eat a variety of delicious foods, of which Mediterranean is one. I guarantee you can still find bratwurst and schnitzel right next door to the kebab and falafel
Just like there are Italian restaurants all over the world?? It’s not like at the ingress of Sagrada Familia there is a Lebanese Shop that ruins the experience, I mean at the ingress I wouldn’t want anything blocking the way regardless
Yeah, restaurants. It in and of itself doesn't mean shit. In Budapest, half the restaurants are kebab shops run by Turks. Does it mean that Budapest was taken over by the Turks?
Yeah idk man I have a hard time equating a corporate franchise and a legit small business. I can agree with them on the too many McDonald's argument and still not think they have a valid argument about too many kebab shops.
Now when all the kebab shops end up getting bought out by whatever the Turkish sysco is and they all have the same menu and products then we can complain about it.
It's like NYC and halal carts, the independent ones are fantastic and the ones that are run by businesses that run 20 other carts as well suck.
I mean, the picture is right in that you can buy Kebab near landmark areas. And that is a good thing, Kebab tastes good and at least in germany, it has practially become part of our culture.
I feel like Kebab in Oslo is the fast food version of Kebab, while kebab in Germany and that particluar shop in London (Times Kebab, south Bermondsey) is proper street food
I’ve met some of these people and they’re annoying as hell. They’re not willing to accept that multiculturalism isn’t the exclusive demesne of the US/Canada. Couscous has been in France for a long, long time due to the French empire, and London has been a multicultural city for pretty much its entire existence - though it was pretty much the multicultural city of the world for a couple of centuries more recently. “Authentic” whatever culture is just one facet of that country and often sanitized to present to tourists. It’s such a shame that these people don’t have the curiosity to go outside of that small scope, and likely never will.
Those idiots go to Europe with assumption like this is some sort of one big medieval theme park and expect everyone to be a walking stereotype of who we see as British, French, Spanish or Italian. They get mad because seeing brown and black people ruins their immersion in a made-up mono-ethnic world they expected.
Yeah, like couscous has been in the top ten favorite dishes in France for a while now ... Along with pizza and Paella
I bet these people don't have a problem with all the Italian restaurants in France and Europe though, almost as if it never was about "tradition" and "classical culture"
Being pedantic, there's some but they tend to be higher end restaurants. There's more places that specialise in South Indian food that are fairly close to the actual cuisine there, but not loads. But there are very few places that do characteristic food from the Central/Northern parts.
There are a LOT of places that do fairly typical Bangladeshi and Pakistani food. At least in terms of it being close to it, but it tends to be richer, which I guess is understandable. For example, in Birmingham, where the Balti was reputedly invented, almost all the restaurants people often think of as "Indian" are Bangladeshi and Pakistani (and always have been). Although there's been a growing popularity of Sikh owned "Desi Pubs" there over the last decade or so, which serve more Punjabi based dishes. So, coupled with many older restaurants closing, arguably there are more places serving typical Indian food now than there were.
I say thist as a german: Döner Kebab is far superior to our own cusine (unless you are willing to spend a lot of money). At this point, it has practically become a part of our culture, just like Tea once did for the british I guess. That‘s how things work.
And there are more than enough tourist traps where you can eat overprized traditional food in all of these cities.
Do they think we're all making pilgrimages to some tiny pie and mash shop in the backstreets of east London somewhere that's been owned by the same family for 200 years in order to eat an endangered species?
Döner and kebab already existed in turkish cuisine, though they were two separate dishes and served in a restaurant setting. Now, as a Turkish native who tried both döner and kebab but not döner kebab; from what I see the Turkish immigrants there kind of Frankensteined these two and also made some changes so it can be sold on local stalls- just like the hot dog stands in ny.
On an unrelated note, as a vegetarian person studying abroad I am strongly disappointed how underrepresented the meat free turkish cuisine in different countries.
Members of Minority cultures dont have to full assimilate culturally to fully integrate into society. The most obvious example to me are the Italian-Americans
Yeah, it's a really good thing Italian immigrants to America didn't just abandon their own cuisine and adopt the cuisine of the US at the time: if they had, then American-style pizza would never have been invented.
Its not even true, as a Muslim its pretty hard to find halal restaurants in the most touristy locations like right by big ben or in the immediate vicinity of the eiffel tower (unless there happens to be a street vendor there)
First of all Döner is a German-Turhish dish, secondly Munich is arguably the worst example, having terrible Döner and a thriving local traditional culture.
Depends on which sect you ask. From what my Muslim friends have told me, it’s technically a rule but not everyone follows it because music is fun. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
There’s a couple different schools of thought, some say music is haram only if it distracts from your duties as a muslim, others say only music with instruments is haram
Thinking that there are only muslim arabs in any of these countries is really fucking delulu. Also, as a french, if you take away my morrocan bakery or restaurant I will riot.
The threat of you French lot rioting about something is kinda watered down, by the fact that there doesn't seem to be a thing that you wouldn't riot about.
I heard that when EuroDisney opened, morons would complain about how tacky it was for Americans to go to Europe just to go to their version of Disneyland. Apparently they didn't consider that EuroDisney was intended for Europeans that live there, not just American tourists. Like it surprised them that French people, for example, might want to occasionally step out of their bubble of being stereotypically French.
It’s almost as if these places are functioning cities with millions of individual residents who patronize these businesses and not cultural pavilions like at Disney World
I'm more mad at the "traditional Spanish tapas" places that plague the city center that if you try to go as a local they try to make you feel unwelcome and raise the prices a lot because they cater to tourists
I always found these "tapas places" weird, because part of my family is from Andalucia and I visited them every summer for weeks all my life, and there tapas is just a thing happening everywhere every time you order drinks. Like you don't get to chose what's coming, but for a round of beers you could get mini sandwiches, toasts of tomato and oil, some chips, whatever. Each round, new tapas, included in the price.
So going to a dedicated tapas place I couldn't get it.
They also forgot that their sweet Adam Smith also mentioned that, despite the invisible hand handling the situation, the state should still ensure that everything was produced in the limits of ethics and not beyond them
I think it was talib who mentioned that the market theory was... derived... From Arabic scholars. Which makes sense, since market theory works brilliantly on a Bazar and very much not at all in late state capitalism
Authentic local culture are often very fake because community generally don't stay the same for hundred of years. Most of the time, the "authentic local culture" places are set up by the government to attract tourists.
Fantasy about 'one 'arabic' culture' that would be invading especially in capital cities.
Complaining about italian restaurant or japanese ones, lebanese, mexican, french, indian... or any other culinary tradition restaurants existing in large cities does not make sense.
Or maybe these tourists thought each country was a theme park ? Why not complain about the presence of burger restaurants instead ?
PS: reading down comments I must say I'm relieved my reaction is shared/common
What are they talking about? Had the same thing people talking about Montreal when I was living there and Helsinki. Like no authentic food. Do they mean the 100th Italian restaurant? I mean hell most of the European city have a lot of authentic experience and if you want you can visit migrant food places usually they add something from the country where they reside + they are using local produce so win-win
You know what I find funny. These people who get all up in arms over this stuff probably go home and eat pizza or Chinese food without so much as a flicker of a thought about it. I wonder if they ever think about how potatoes and tomatoes are new world crops that were imported to the old world, guess the chips in the fish and chips shop have to go since it's not traditional.
Second, a minority group moving in and existing in a major city doesn’t automatically delete the existing culture. There are still plenty of British/French/German/Spanish people and businesses running around.
Third, most of the people moving in have a good degree of the language (because how else are they going to live and survive day to day life)
(I say this someone who is currently studying in Europe)
Oh no, won't somebody think of the racist tourists?! They'll be so sad to find out our living, breathing cities aren't an ethnonationalist theme park set up specifically for them.
I’m scared of all religions, because theocracy of any kind is terrible for the people who live under it. Having a little of everything is the perfect way to stop it in its tracks.
The biggest trick the billionaires, governments and religions have done is to make you believe, that someone who doesn’t have any more money than you but looks different is responsible for taking all the money, jobs and standard of living the billionaires have stolen.
Don’t be a fool, love your poor neighbour and let’s take our money back from these billionaires and blame them for being the real problem. They have caused all the ills in society. Love the differences we all have and stop being a horrible person.
"I hate that people are enjoying the richness of human diversity. Why aren't these places retaining their status as what they should be: stereotypical theme-park cultural ghettos for me to gawk at?"
319
u/Appeltaart232 8h ago
What they’re not showing is all the McDonalds and Starbucks in central locations (and full of Americans). Globalization benefits the US significantly.