I knew an Italian exchange student that kept whining that nothing tasted good and nothing tasted as it should up here in Scandinavia. Then another exchange student (from Thailand I think) got tired of him and told him ~"the rest of the world isn't your mother" and it was a literal moment of realisation for this dude.

I wholeheartedly support culinarily disrespecting Italians, honestly.

Dudes trying to convince us that they are presenting ancient traditions when their precious dishes are invented in like the 60s

I'm Dutch and I think this map is completely unfair. It overrates our food significantly

Spain and Portugal should be tier 1 or 2

I'm just under the line of "toxic" in Finland and you could drawn the line a bit further south.

Finnish national dish? Traditional version? Here you go, the entire recipe;

Pound of beef, cubed

Pounds of pork, cubed

Water

A spoonful of salt.

Put meat in pan with water.

Take pan off heat after enough time.

Done.

That's literally the Finnish national dish "Karelian stew". Obviously nowadays it definitely includes black pepper as well and bunch of other things, because the traditional version is literally just a bunch of boiled meat without any spices.

edit haha enjoyed that but yes, the formatting was off, although you could obviously used water cubes in a pan as long as you still put it on hot. Actually, it might be an interesting experiment to put a pot on a hot stove / flame with beef & pork & ice. Insofar that maybe a tiny bit of the meat would brown before the ice melts and becomes water idk. At least then there'd be browning resulting in some taste. The classical one has none.

Funny seeing this, especially from an iberian perpective, because local culinary is mostly the same as theirs. With the slight difference we actually have the balls to spice our food.

Spanish and Greek food beats Italian. Heck Polish food is way underrated. Also American pizza is better.

As an American who just had some glorious fake pizza last night, I thought I hated pasta until I had good Italian, and then I realized I just hate Americanized Italian food. Except pizza, we do it better.

Pasta still isn't my favorite, but I'll take it if it's authentic. My SO makes some great aglio e olio and carbonara, often with shrimp.

I feel like France, Greece, and Spain are gonna have some pretty strong objections.

RIP Portugal

Food in Portugal is delicious

Well most of 'traditional' Italien food is actually from the US and had been invented by Italien immigrants.

https://www.harpercollins.de/products/mythos-nationalgericht-die-erfundenen-traditionen-der-italienischen-kuche-9783365006252

How can you put Spain on the same level as Great Britain? Damn Italians don't know how to make anything other than sauce with tomatoes and they think they know how to cook.

Tbh I find Italian culinary traditions underwhelming. Like they just gave up 10 minutes in, no work at all because it's too hot.

To be fair, the further from coastline, the better the Italian cuisine - more herbs, more variety, more complex recipes (e.g Ligurian braised rabbit)

Fake pizza, sure, but doesn't imply it's bad. Plus ironically, you can find Italian style pizza in the US if you look for it.

That said, I'll still apologize for Dominos, Pizza Hut, et. al. for fast-foodizing the concept of pizza.

The Netherlands is probably an "overcooked pasta" enclave than. When I was a kid, I was sure Al Dente was Italian for Deathly Toxin.

Pre 1600s: Y'all a wanta some Rotting fish juice?

As someone who's lived Italy, this does sound like something an Italian would say lmao

u wot m8?

We've got Greggs Sausage Rolls.

All you've got is pasta and tomato sauce for every meal, and think different shaped pasta makes it a different dish!

That's like thinking beans on toast is different if you put it on different shaped bread.

poland in the fattening/caution zone is kind of on point actually

i fucking love polish food and feel that describes it pretty well X3

I'm a little disappointed that the center is a knife and fork instead of a hand pinching fingers together to make a point

I mean, Italian food really is brilliant, they really just over time took all the best things they found and just made great food with it and left out everything else.

It's sort of crazy to think about how delicious a recipe with four ingredients can be until you realize they're four of the most delicious things on the planet.

This is Funny if you think about it because Modern Pizza originates from the USA and Pasta from China

Agreed, Bosnian and Croatian food are the only proper food :3

I confirm. Source: I'm Italian:):):)