Just in my immediate area I could go to (when they’re being held that is):
A peach festival, a garlic festival, a chocolate festival, the state fair which is like a giant stereotype all of its own, an apricot festival, a Sturgis satellite thing, classic car festival and tribute to American Graffiti fucking up traffic downtown, and so many more I haven’t personally been to or even heard of, I’m sure.
We celebrate everything because then we have an excuse to party.
Are all the fests now just corporate greed and overpriced subpar options of the normal thing?
They are here at least. Poutine fest…ugh…like $16 for a medium and anywhere else is like $6-$9 outside of the fest.
Ribfest…holy crap, 1 beef rib. They wanted $20 for ONE RIB. not a rack, literally a single rib. Sauce is paintbrushes on after so it never gets caramelized. Overall garbage.
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.
The better prices I mentioned for the poutine are from chiptrucks. I don’t ever get poutine at a restaurant. It’s always grated cheese and not real squeeky curd.
The chocolate one, maybe? I don’t remember who owns the factory in Oakdale and I haven’t been in a few years anyway. And the state fair is fairly commercialized. The rest of the food festivals are all pretty much just local events with not a corporate sponsor in sight.
I mean, that seems about normal for beef ribs. One rib is a whole meal, the BBQ place near me calls them “Dino Ribs”. The sauce thing is crazy though.
That’s what’s great about Germans, they don’t even look for a reason to have a festival.
Let’s do a festival!
- About what ? Music ? Dance ?
- Irrelevant, we just bring tables and grills, there will be drinks and sausages!
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.
The city I grew up in is home to the “world’s largest” Bratfest. The sell close to 300k brats every year (and it’s hosted in a city with a population of about 280k!)
Wisconsin gets fucking serious about their German sausages. There’s a joint down from y’all’s state capital that used to serve a pretty good cheddarwurst but it’s been a few years since I’ve been.
One of my favorite games is Earthbound, made by a Japanese company who made a game with a setting similar to America.
I want more JPRGs from an outsiders lens looking in.
They really captured it with police brutality and trashcan hamburgers.
Real talk, though, Earthbound is unique in that they hired a famous comedian to write it. Same for the other Mother games.
Startropics for the NES. It was made for American audiences and only sold and marketed outside Japan.
Not quite a JRPG but worth checking out if you haven’t heard of it.
Star Tropics is fantastic! I bought it used and it still has the letter in the box.
Picking a food that doesn’t have a festival in the US would be harder than the other way around.
Rule 134: If a food exists, there’s an American festival of it. No exceptions.
I tried it, lutefisk does indeed have an American festival.
You’re not kidding. This is what I use to plan my summers
And a Day of Celebration recognized by Congress.
Uh… capers?
Aww, Australia has one, why cant we?
https://www.threeblueducks.com/caper-festival-opening-night/
Prove that capers are food.
They’re sold in grocery stores on the food aisle?
lol @ “the food aisle.”
Potential character names:
I went to find this before realizing this was the reference!
Probably the deepest cut I’ve ever seen on The Simpsons.
Toad Bongzales would be a great stage name
Steve McDichael
Shown Furcotte
Bobson Dugnutt !
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.
There are no finer names than Bobson Dugnutt and Dwigt Rortugal.
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.
Mike Truck is my personal favourite.
Isn’t he a governor in Texas? Works closely with the very Biggest of Big Oil.
But what about all american county boy Todd Bonzales? Hes just a teenager in american high school who secretly had the power of Trucks and County Music and Cowboy Hat.
I like how the portrait of Karl Dandleton is a pretty girl
I need to go to the USA and actually try an American hamburger. Not a McDonald’s, a proper big fuck off freedom burger
Honestly there’s nothing like it. I’ve never had a European hamburger with the same taste and texture as a classic American burger–which I say totally independent of/not about quality. Euro burgers use a totally different grind that changes the density and flavor of the patty, and then of course the toppings and bun tend to be a bit different. Sort of like NYC pizza being relatively simple, but apparently impossible to 100% recreate in any other city, there’s nothing immediately notable about an American burger that you couldn’t do somewhere else, but it does still come out differently. I hope you get your chance to try one!
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.
bastard used to be great when it was just one restaurant. went there a lot in uni. then they got popular, and while i haven’t been to the original place in like five years all their new locations are just… expensive and average.
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
As a pizza enthusiast who’s lived in NY, Chicago, and multiple foreign countries, I have to disagree. I don’t think it’s the water like people say, though NYC’s filtration system is completely unique, but you’ve got thousands of people all trying to perfect a similar style within a few square miles of each other, all within a city that has a very different culture and economy than any other in the US.
I think that that culture and competition alone lead folks to develop traditions and techniques that don’t happen elsewhere, and I think it’s also likely a commerce thing. NYC has the foot traffic to support dozens of shops making dozens of 24-inch pizzas, cooking them 65%, and then finishing them to order in a 700⁰ oven that stays preheated all day. Size of the pizza affects how the crust cooks, how they use the oven affects the even heating and final texture, along with a number of other tiny variables that only really make sense to do that way when running a counter service booth for 15 million people.
Much thin crust pizza is similar enough, but I think folks who taste no difference between NY style pizza in and outside the city are probably not putting their full palate into it, and are probably just hungry for/happy with anything with bread, tomato, and cheese. And hey, fair game.
Sounds like we agree that the water is doing nothing! It’s all about the restaurant making it.
I’ve had great pizza in New York and awful pizza in New York but the same goes for the other cities I’ve visited/lived in. My favorite standard topping pizza is actually from a restaurant in a suburb
All those variables that go into making a successful counter service booth for 15 million people might actually make the pizza quality worse than somewhere else where people have more time to get things right. Like, parbaking a pizza doesn’t improve it over just baking it fresh?
It sounds like they would, but techniques of scale (and, oddly enough, cooking things twice) are one of the reasons restaurant food always tastes different, and often better, though certainly often worse, than home cooked food. Parbaking or parboiling before finishing in an oven or pan is a really common way to be able to control texture and browning while also getting an even cook. Restaurants will do it with rolls, potatoes, steaks, large cuts of fish, and a lot of fibrous vegetables. With bread/crust, it changes how flexible and crispy it is, because water evaporates differently if it’s cooked twice for 5 minutes versus once for 10 minutes. With fries, it allows the inside to get soft rather than dry while the outside gets extra crispy. It offers lots of benefits, it just doesn’t make sense to do outside of a professional kitchen making dozens of servings at once.
Of course, plenty of restaurants go the opposite direction with how they take advantage of scale, and they make everything as cheap as possible and wind up as an Olive Garden knockoff, but good restaurants, fancy or not, make good food by using it to their advantage.
It’s the ingredients, the beef just tastes different. Even Canadian beef and American beef taste different.
As someone who’s spent half his life in the US and the other half in Europe, the best burgers I’ve had have all been in Europe. It became a fad here starting about 10 years ago and now we have some really top notch places.
The biggest difference between a burger I’ve gotten in Europe and here in the USA is seasoning.
The beef talks here stateside.
Over in Europe they were OFTEN closer to a sausage patty.
https://meneersmakers.nl/ takes the cake as the best looking disappointment
Meh. As an American, Big burgers are overrated. A bar might serve you a good burger. But the best burgers imo are the ones you grill at home.
Also, maybe this is the FREEDOM speaking, but does your country have the ingredients to make a burger?
Maybe the burger buns might be the hardest to find.
It’s not a proper American burger without Kraft singles.
Normally I’m a little more picky about my food recommendations, but I fully agree.
It’s a texture thing, it’s not so much about the flavor the cheese adds as it is that sort of drippy, plasticy smoothness.
I understand people that prefer cheddar or whatever, and that’s fine, but it really is completely different.
American cheese does that. Kraft Singles are not cheese, but American cheese is actual cheese, and it does the melt all over thing that you’re looking for. This is about the one thing it’s good for.
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It can’t be sold as cheese, even in America. No, that’s not how it works.
That just makes it a cheeseburger, without the singles what you’ve got is a hamburger
As an American, American cheese is foul.
It was a tongue in cheek comment haha. Yeah I’ve had lots of tasty burgers at home, but if I visited the states I would definitely be checking out the best restaurants in whatever place I happened to be visiting. Maybe eventually! :)
As an American, do it. Seriously I don’t eat meat anymore but when you said this I started craving a giant fucking black bean burger with all my preferred fixings and enough fries to concern a cardiologist. Ooh and maybe a glass of my preferred bourbon to go with it.
I may be some metric using socialist pescatarian but there are parts of this country that I feel deep in my soul and my cardiac tissue.
in Hamburg, PA
Perfection.
Bros just stole that from Hamburg, Germany
We won it in the war.
After operation Gomorrah the burgers might have been a bit overdone.
Also, the menu screen needs to say…
-
SAVE (the children)
-
LOAD (the gun)
i dont get it
Seems you need more America then…
where shall i aquire more of this “America” you speak of?
Do you have any oil? If you do it’ll find you.
Does olive oil count?
Sorry we’re fresh out over here as well. Hopefully back in stock in a few years.
-
I legitimately want this
Japan failing to understand Western Culture is like… one of my favorite Bad Writing Tropes!
I love it when they try to give Christianity a magic system.
God I love Castlevania, but I gotta chuckle when I see things like Church Appointed Witches or the Catholic Church having Pan as an informant…
Christianity takes in Japan is wild. It was an underground religion for a few centuries, which always makes things fun.
To be fair it was an underground religion in the west for a while too
Honestly, NGE’s version of the Rapture/Eternity/Fanta wasn’t even that bad.
Japan as a whole utterly fails to comprehend what nuns are and it’s kind of hilarious when it pops up.
This thing has been reminding me it exists every few years for the past 2 decades.
My first time seeing it.
These people aren’t even obese.
I’ve been to multiple hamburger festivals in Japan
Japan is heavily Americanized.
Show me the Hamburger Party in Hamburg.
That’s awesome, and only a six hour drive! I’m even familiar with that area from previous road trips. I’ll have to put it on the list for next year
I’m only five hrs from the Cheeseburger festival in Caseville, MI and I’m a fan of the area. Summer can’t come soon enough!
Close to 16 hours for me. That’s a bit far for a cheeseburger
That sounds pretty awesome, wish I had done that at some point in my life.
Okay I admit it was the same one, but in a different year. It was still awesome.
Also you should still go!You can tell I’m American because I have my last meals lined up as Tacos for dinner, Cranberry and Orange muffins for breakfast the next day, and a double steak burger with cheese for my final lunch and call it a life haha. Maybe I’ll put an egg on one of the burgers with a runny yolk. Haven’t decided yet. If your going to die, no reason to go out healthy. (Manicotti was for the previous days haha)
Of those food items only the burger is unqualified bad. The tacos…well bread isn’t bad in and of itself, and a taco is just flour or corn bread. A fruit muffin doesn’t have to be bad – if it was a 1000 calorie whole foods muffin, sure, but otherwise just carbs and fruit. Eggs are high in protein and vitamins. But then you had the double griddle-fried 70/30 fatty burger charred to a cancer-inducing crisp.
80/20 smash burgers. If I cook on a grill I don’t care as much about it being higher fat as the fat drips down, but smashing them on a stove top I go less., then I strain the fat off the flat pan I use and put it aside in a glass jar, to reuse when making something I want more flavor in. Same with if I ever make bacon, place it on a sheet pan, bake and strain off into a jar. I use the bacon one for vegetables like asparagus, because otherwise I honestly don’t care for asparagus on its own flavor. Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and such don’t need flavor added, but sometimes the mood hits you.
Not the healthiest, but there are worse things than vegatables you like in life haha
Asparagus is an excellent vehicle for butter and salt.
How much does charred food actually increase risk of cancer? And what type of cancer?
For some reason smokey slightly burnt food tastes really good to me and I’m not going to stop eating it.
That’s fine, we all do stupid things. I use a vape pen. You murder intelligent creatures and overcook them. Tomato tomato
As for the cancer impacts… fucking google it dude. If you’re taking cancer advice from Lemmy you are doing health wrong. But I believe it’s specifically men/colon
The point of social media is to interact with other people, asking questions is a good way to do that. I asked you because you sounded like you knew what you were talking about. I did Google it and there is no good evidence that it causes cancer. But they think it might increase risk. It’s very hard to study that.
Not once did I mention eating meat. I was a vegetarian for 20 years, I eat meat very occasionally nowadays.
Not a JRPG, but you guys need to check out Metal Wolf Chaos. It’s a game where the president uses a giant robot to save America from a rebel army led by the vice president. It was originally released as an Xbox exclusive and only in Japan, but there was a remaster for PS4, Xbox One, and PC that was released worldwide. Also, it was developed by FromSoftware.
Also y’all need to check out Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. No relation to the conversation, it’s just hella fun.
I like Conan Exiles
I’m so curious about this. It sounds awesome.
Why WOULDN’T it be real? I remember many years ago I saw a trivia fact that said around 50% of all restaurants in the United States had hamburger on the menu? Maybe that changed (it was a late 90s/ early 2000s trivia fact) but hamburger is still super common and popular.
Not to mention it’s in a town called Hamburg. What city council that wants to get reelected wouldn’t want a self-promoting festival called "Hamburg"er? Notice, they didn’t call it the cheeseburger festival.
The cheeseburger was invented in the rival neighbouring city of Cheeseburg.
I wish this was true.
Man I just camped at Sleeper State Park in October, it’s right next to Caseville, MI on the lake. That whole campground turns into a Halloween festival for the month, it’s awesome. I bet those people do the cheeseburger festival right too. The only downside I see is I have to wait until Summer for it!
I will note though, that the cheeseburger festival isn’t in Hamburg.
To be fair, this was a pretty safe bet.
You can kind of make up anything about America and find it to be true.
Even Americans are amazed at our own ingenuity.
Inside this view of America there are two wolves:
