2024-2025 NFL Season II Pink Pony Club [ARCHIVED] Football • Page 1414

also having been to both i would say i a) agree with randall that amsterdam is overrated but b) disagree that its like baltimore. it isnt like any other city. its one of the most singular major metro areas in the non-asian world. for better and worse

and saying “netherlands” when you really just mean amsterdam is goofy. the country isn’t just one city. im going to bury you under the hague for forgetting the hague.

 

I went to 3 Netherlands cities tbf
Did not like Rotterdam at all.

 

Where is the argument thread and can modjosh move the last two pages there?

 

also @JoshIsMediocre ireland is great but i would absolutely 100% recommend belfast over any of the irish cities. it’s also extremely doable to hit belfast and then hop over the border. the food in belfast vs. ireland isn’t comparable

 

In other news I just watched inception for like the fifth time and this was the first time I think I finally “got it” what a sick movie

 

We don't just have different criteria but you're also just not correct about Amsterdam being a nothing food city.

Also MASSIVELY overrating Italian food but I also just have a strong disdain for that due to the internet lol

 

Only people from Rome say otherwise

 

at the risk of betraying my ancestors, i would say germany is the coolest international travel i’ve done

as countries:
germany > italy > england/lumping belfast in here > canada > netherlands > jamaica > ireland > bahamas > mexico (haven’t done mexico city so i admit this is unfair)

we have plans to try to do france next year and then in three years megan gets her vacatical which is basically a full month of PTO and i’ll probably take two weeks and we’re thinking of either doing switzerland or denmark/sweden

 

rome does have some cool stuff but it’s like saying new york is the best city in the US

 

When it's cleary LA

 

that’s right

 

i only kind of believe that but it isn’t worth splitting hairs over

 

I wanna go to Mexico City sometime

Who knows when at this rate

 

I’ve been to Mexico in general but it’s always been stupid resort visits, that’s just America

 

Paddington is such a goated movie wow how did I miss this for so long

 

I really wanna go too

 

How i would put it is, if someone was like, "im going to ONE city, show me America." I would pick LA. Is it the best? Who's to say. But it is everything great and awful about this country irresponsibly shoved into a 100sqm area

 

LA is goated honestly

 

UK food is famously mid, and also, warm beer is hot garbage.

But you are correct that there are probably plenty of UK restaurants that are good. Its just the general baseline of flavor that's bad. Italian/French good just start from such better taste profiles, and Belgian food (which is similar to a lot of British/Irish food) has the benefit of not being simmered in bad beer.

Its kind of amazing they're an amalgam of like 3 really great food sources, and took the worst of each.

 

Yeah i said UK when I should've said London specifically

 

Fair. Its funny, UK food is probably most synonymous with my current stomping grounds in the midwest, where small city to city, you're getting all the same bland shit. But there's definitely a few cities in there that can smash. Top Chef being filmed in Wisconsin kinda showcased that. Ive had some amazing food in Des Moines, but god help you if you get 15mins outside city limits.

 

Much of the internet thinks an Alfredo sauce filled with heavy cream and tons of cheese is traditional Italian,

traditional Italian is actually more like “my neighbor is an expert at growing this very specific kind of tomatoes that only like hot weather but not too hot and do not grow well in artificially irrigated water and are sweeter when they can leach natural moisture from coastal soils” and “this community has more sheep and goats than cows so we make a sheepsmilk cheese that is essential to this recipe”. Like every part of food is treated the same way rich people treat wine grapes - and so it’s not even about the cuisine in terms of steps and recipes, so much as it is the literal process of getting the most out of every ingredient, and the communal vibe of neighbors cooking for each other and contributing what they do best

the indulgent butter and cheese recipes are authentic too, but it’s a biased angle that Americans view Italian food. The majority of actual Italian food which is mostly very simple and healthy but with ultimate care put into every single piece of the meal.

All this to say Italian food is not overrated, Americans (and many other countries) simply emulate it at a surface, recipe level and underrate the rest of the process, and don’t factor in how important it is to have the RIGHT way of cultivating tomatoes or raising dough or drying wet pasta or whatever. Mexican food vs Tex Mex is much the same way, Americans are accustomed to just pouring more seasoning and adding more dairy and fats/sugars and using more war-economy-inspired, lax FDA regulations processed fillers to something to make it taste good

 

But, so as not to contradict my earlier statement that “America does international food well”… yes we have Pizza Hut and Chevy’s and other extreme bastardizations of ethnic origin food, but two things can be true at once - because of this country’s diversity, you’ll also find that in a city’s “Little Italy” or a similar neighborhood where authentic immigrants have always lived (a much more common example: the Hispanic side of town having great Latin food) they do things the heritage way and get it right

 

I will say, what serves as "American food" in international peoples minds is generally bad (its like, an Applebees menu). Maybe BBQ aside, its kind of like british food where it takes cool cultural elements and blands them down.

But, if you want to spend a week somewhere trying a dozen cuisines at their absolute best, I'd bet 9 of the top 10 places are in the US. And the 10th is a Saudi hotel where the chefs are too terrified to f'up a dish that its #1. Or like a place in Singapore.

Im remembering our go-to takeout place in Laurel was an Italian/Indian fusion place, which makes absolutely no sense other than that surely the husband/wife team were from those places. But god damn if that isnt an awesome pairing to never get bored with weekly takeout. A half dozen great italian dishes. Amazing pizza (and when standard pizza gets boring, have you tried a Tikka Masala pizza?). And then my wife had 3-4 go-tos on the Indian side.