In the times when we should be conscious about our co2 footprint, green values and using good local seasonal products for cooking, this kind of event sounds so 80's - too bad they don't have anymore Concorde so they could have brought them to Bp in three hours from catching. If it would be French event it could be somehow still understandable but canadian??? Who even comes up with this kind of ideas?

And good food and North America????? I think this connection exist only here...

@ile: Your comment about food in North America is so emblematic of the arrogant but terrified European who in their heart knows that their culture is underperforming. There's as much great food in North America as in Europe, perhaps more, given how Europeans treat people who try to import culinary novelties.

Erik,

you might be totally right that there is great food in NA, however, that was not really my point. I meant that this kind of event really would belong to 80's - at the time of climate change, kioto agreements etc this such does not sound or feel right to me (and i had to participate this same event a few years ago). The second one is that rightly or wrongly, north american cuisine is not well know for its excellence, at least not outside US (or Canada) so promoting something like that sounds not only environmentally bad but silly. If you don't believe me then, sorry to say, majority of the world (europe & asia) would most likely agree - rightly or wrongly. I meant reputation...

I am always happy to try new things and would welcome good american food, just i don't have personally experience of that too much (even if i spend several months a year in us + living one year in seattle, but it might be also that as i am there for business we always eat in so called "top" places and most of these serve french/italian type of food that is not to me as good as here in europe. All honesty, i did realize that my statement sounded as silly as any generalization, however, i was (also this time, as well as when i was participating) upset about the whole concept. You could as well serve proper good american food (i trust you it exist even if i have been unlucky) without sounding totally insensitive about the state of the world (also any extravagance to me is bad marketing right now)

and underperforming... well... i think we might have different criterias for evaluating performance. Personally i find areas in europe (central europe, scandinavia) to represent the quality of life in world... but end of the day, asia will rule all of us eventually ;-)

The problem I find eating out in the US, is
ironically enough, that the food and service is
too consistent. I need to explain this. In Europe,
very very few restaurants are part of chains and
therefore levels of food, consistency and service
vary greatly. You never really know what to expect
when you walk into a restaurant, sometimes even
when you've been there before. On the other hand,
in the US, the majority of restaurants -- good and
bad (except the very very good) -- are part of
chains and because its therefore "big business"
(and perhaps with more demanding customers than
Europe) the standards are maintained at a
consistent level... leading, for me at least, to a
kind of mass-produced feeling, even when I really
enjoyed the meal, the food was great and the
service was wonderful.
Nonetheless I kind of side with Erik on this one,
there is great food in the US although moreso in
NY, SF etc - you certainly don't find it in
Anytown, America.

@minnie: You make an interesting and valid point about how the inconsistency of the dining experience in Europe can often be charm. But let's keep things in perspective. It certainly isn't always charming to have no idea what you are going to get when you walk into a restaurant, especially service-wise, and my guess is that most people *don't* want a surprise, regardless of where they are from. It's just that in Europe, there isn't as much of a tradition of giving customers what they want. (In post-sov places like Hungary this is even more acute, because in living memory the balance of power between proprietor and customer was so out of whack that diners needed to pay bribes just to get seated). Meanwhile, I seriously doubt that the "majority" of restaurants in the US are part of big chains. Finally, this whole idea that there is no good food in middle America is just silly; it's not just that you can get great heartland stuff (try chicken fried steak and biscuit gravy and tell me it's not heavenly) but there are probably more decent sushi joints in strip malls in "flyover country" than there are Japanese restaurants in continental Europe. The point is that it's all good - there are interesting food and food experiences to be had everywhere, and when people start believing one place has a monopoly on quality it's their loss.

@Erik, I'll accept your bona fides on this, since
you're American and I'm not. And of course it
grossly wrong to "tar all restaurants with the
same brush" in somewhere as large and diverse as
the US.

My experience of US restaurants, somewhat limited
but I have lived in various places:
* crap large-scale downmarket food chains:
McDs, Dennys, IHOP, etc
* asian: often run by immigrant families -
quality often good but sometimes terrible.
* better mall-based restaurants: smaller
regional chains, good quality and consistency,
enjoyable dining experiences but a packaged
feeling.
* city-centre: although perhaps more in
certain cities than others - this is where you can
get great dining experiences from individually-run
restaurants.
* subcategory of above - "swanky" - and
therefore usually out of my budget :-)

Are there other classifications I missed?

@minnie: Well, I guess I'd concede that this is a pretty fair assessment, especially if your experience is mostly limited to the "high growth" 'burbs. But, for example, on a trip to the northwest last summer - Portland (brother in law) and Seattle (his parents) - I was gobsmacked by how much yummy stuff there was around, resto-wise. Meanwhile, the markets in places where there are upscale or educated people can be just awesome; in the college town out east where my parents live they not only have a Whole Foods (massive organic/gourmet supermarket) and a Trader Joes (discount gourmet supermarket) but a regular farmer's market with all kinds of wild things. I think in the end it is very much a red state/blue state thing: where you have lots of meterosexuals, you have better access to amazing food of all sorts than probably anywhere on Earth; where you have good 'old boys and gals, you are likely to get more of what you are talking about - especially those soul-crushing chain restaurants - though I have to assume you can usually get awesome "down home" cooking of the sort I'd kill to be eating right now. The one thing you'll tend to get everywhere, though, is a server who is happy to see you and treat you well and a proprietor who doesn't take anything for granted.

with a few exceptions, eating in US is question of acquired taste for ingredients (especially vegetables) without flavour and artificial smile and empty small talk...

Let me also add from my (limited) experience:

Around 25 years ago I had the pleasure of acompaying several IT-managers of a German bank on several trips to the USA, visiting other banks and IBM installations and software houses all over the country from the east to the west and down to Florida. At that time IBM had just started its PC operation in Boca Raton, completely separated from its mainframe business in upstate NY (Poughkeepsie) and we went there too.

Of course they showed us not only the new computers and software but also took us to the fabnciest restaurants - and I was disappointed so often ...

Maybe it's partially because I don't (can't!) eat seafood of any kind, but most things I found rather bland.

When I later went to the US on holiday, I tried to live cheap and in my opinion the supermarkets just have crappy food, whether it's chees or sausage or bread or beer, it all tastes the same, like plastic.

Organic food of a higher quality is reall expensive as are the good restaurants.

On the plus side: I wnet with my wife to the US now twice and told her beforehand that we might just got to Wendy's and Burger King and live on sandwiches - and she enjoyed it ...

The burgers aren't too bad, the salads are quite good and you can buy a lot of fresh food of high quality.

PS: The best meals on those business trips imho we had at the cafeterias of the World Bank, Chase Manhattan etc. and IBM of course

@ile: Well, if the alternative is rotting vegetables with a non-artificial grimace like you often find in Hungarian markets, I think it's not hard for people to acquire such a taste. :)

cont.:

The only problem was that these places were not allowed to serve alcohol in any form, so the US collegues always wanted to get out and have a few bloody marys ...

There are some things I remember:

Very good food at some Mexican restaurant in Washington - acompanied by some Margueritas (I really enjoyed the avocados and have introduced them to my wife), very bad food at a posh "French" restaurant located in a former monastery with the waiters in monks' clothes and a girl playing the harp ...

Nice to look at and good service but really horrible food.

Of course you can't compare prices with Hungary, buit I'd rather live ten days on sanwiches and on our return to Heviz have some nice belszin and liba máj ...

PS:

Don't get me wrong - my wife and I really enjoyed our trips and as soon as possible we'll go to the West (Vegas, Grand Canyon, Death Valley) - but not for culinary reasons ...

Eric, you might be right about rotten vegetables here in markets, but i rather have vegetables that actually can rot instead of ones that have either been treated with chemicals or genetically modified to have perfect shape and look but lacking of taste... Having said that it is true that hungary is not the best place to have all kind of vetables all year round, but e.g. in my hometown in italy the vegetables i can buy from the local market are totally different quality than what i have ever managed to get in US. But they do rot easily... I also find by and large the taste of vegetables, fruits and berries excellent here, although the logistics chain is not always functioning perfectly, that is true.

In terms of service (which is typically friendly enough, don't take me wrong), a few years ago i was in the one of the "top" restaurant in Dallas where they had sommelier to help with the wines. When he brought the wine, he tasted it with spoon he had and then told us that "sir, the wine is perfect". At this point we kindly told him that we prefer tasting the wine ourselves and not sharing it with him, and he replied with the immortal explanation: "but sir, i always taste the wine for the customers, how would they otherwise know it is good". I thought we were caught in candid camera ;-)

@ile: Why didn't you say you were a fellow Italian? :) No, seriously, Italians are among the few people I'll let take the line you are following, because the produce shopping experience back in the "old country" truly is something else... not only are there amazing products of all kinds, but vendors are generally *so excited* about having you enjoy what they are selling. And this seems to be the case from Treviso to Taranto and everywhere between. But everyone else should just shut up, except for maybe the French. And maybe the French should shut up too, because they're the people ultimately responsible for things like snooty sommeliers in Dallas restaurants. On the other hand, go to the crazy bio-hypermarket in my parent's hometown and I think you'll sing a different tune...

Well Erik I'm British/Irish so I can't gloat about
food where I come from :-) I think the problem
with most people's experiences of US dining is
that they don't discover the kind of places you
wrote about, which I suspect are a more
concentrated in those cities which have a younger
more liberal population. Rather, most visitor's
experience is overexaggerated service matched with
bland food in strip mall restaurants. Which sadly
is probably where 90% of American diners also eat.
Which for some reason reminds me of the time I
was in a company cafeteria where from the menu you
could choose "one carbohydrate". Mmm, appetising.
My other comment is the impossibility of
getting decent cheese in most regular US
supermarkets. It's almost as bad as Hungary.

@Minnie:

The US problem with industrial production of cheese I understand,but why is it difficult (and very expensive too!) to get good cheese in Hungary ?

I wrote on this before - we bring cheese and even butter from Germany, as mauch as place in my little car fridge allows and some German specialties like "Leberkäse", which has nothing to do with cheese by the way but is an oven baked kind of meatloaf.

Yestredy we tried in vain to get "kecske sajt" at the Interspar, so we settled on some "feta" - even there you have to look carefully, because people try to sell you feta made from cow's milk which is nonsense.

Why does butter and cheese have to be so expensive in Hungary, I know I've asked that before, but the answers weren't really satisfying.

Wolfi, you have a FRIDGE in your car?! What is it,
like, a stretch hummer full of big-ass bitches
stocked with a fridge full of Kristal?? (That is,
when you aren't transporting cheese and leberkäs.)

One of my fave hates is the grated trappista every
hungarian mother puts on top of pasta. Talk about
an inadequate substitute for parmesan. Well I guess
that's what a few decades of communism brings.

@Minnie:

No, my car is just a little Opel, and the fridge has a capacity of 12 litres - enough for us.

Comes in very handy when traveling in summer from Hungary to Germany or back or when after shopping you have a few drinks at the kocsma and don't want your butter to melt at 30 degrees celsius ...

It's a technical marvel, runs on 12 V, uses a compressor and can really cool down to minus 15 celsius. Costs atound 500 € though ...

I fully agree with the cheese, it is difficult to get decently priced good cheese in hungary. I am pretty sure it is because that is still relatively new thing in Hungary.

We have luckily a gourmet shop close by where you can buy both italian and french cheese but they come with the price. Maybe luckily though as this way my waistline is better under control - i love good cheese.

My all time favourite cheeses are actually mountain cheeses from Portugal, like Azeitão, i have no idea how to buy them outside of Portugal (and this specific maybe not as it is not pasteurized).

Leberkase, well, that is something more exotic.... Last time we were eating it was in a small mountain hutte close Ramsau...