I take this opportunity to present: The Trade Theory of Ethnic Food Quality. The Trade Theory basically says that ethnic (or national, or whatever) food quality is mostly determined by historic access to trade routes, with more trade producing better food. The mechanism, of course, is that more trade provides both a wider variety of ingredients and more memetic spread of recipes, and selection pressure does the work from there.
The best food, therefore, is along the old silk road, and the parts of the Indian Ocean which benefit from predictable seasonal winds. In particular, based on my own experience, Uighur food is the clear winner of World’s Best Ethnic Food, with Indian/Pakistani, Persian, and East African all generally strong contenders. Caribbean, central American, Eastern South American, and West African food all developed under more recent but very concentrated trade, and so also do very well. Mediterranean areas do reasonably well, though not on the same level as the silk road or Indian ocean areas.
On the flip side, historically-isolated places like Britain, Norway/Finnland/Sweden, or Japan have relatively shit food. (Yes, people will say Japan’s great, but they’re basically the neo-France: it’s mostly simulacrum bullshit, France just stopped being cool and Japan has largely managed to fill that cultural niche among the younger generations.) Bland with a side of blandsauce.
Within the US itself, the trade theory also applies: best local-cultural-foods are in e.g. New York, New Orleans, Georgia; worst by far are in the midwest. (Also, midwesterners have notably terrible taste themselves, as they typically cannot handle any spice at all.) As with the pattern globally, the worst are characterized mostly by being utterly bland.
This theory has the nice benefit of being testable: since the proposed mechanism is mostly memetic spread + selection pressure, the theory predicts that the foods rated highly by the Trade Theory will tend (on average) to win out over time.
Indeed! And the UK does indeed have great food today—they just call it “Indian food”, not “British food”. Same with the US—most of the US’ food advantage is in the variety of available ethnic foods from other places.
One natural prediction in such situations is that the future will move towards mashups of the best ethnic foods from different places, and I definitely see plenty of that in the Bay Area. (For instance, Senor Sisig has been one of the most popular food trucks since I moved here 10 years ago, and they’ve been steadily expanding.)
I take this opportunity to present: The Trade Theory of Ethnic Food Quality. The Trade Theory basically says that ethnic (or national, or whatever) food quality is mostly determined by historic access to trade routes, with more trade producing better food. The mechanism, of course, is that more trade provides both a wider variety of ingredients and more memetic spread of recipes, and selection pressure does the work from there.
The best food, therefore, is along the old silk road, and the parts of the Indian Ocean which benefit from predictable seasonal winds. In particular, based on my own experience, Uighur food is the clear winner of World’s Best Ethnic Food, with Indian/Pakistani, Persian, and East African all generally strong contenders. Caribbean, central American, Eastern South American, and West African food all developed under more recent but very concentrated trade, and so also do very well. Mediterranean areas do reasonably well, though not on the same level as the silk road or Indian ocean areas.
On the flip side, historically-isolated places like Britain, Norway/Finnland/Sweden, or Japan have relatively shit food. (Yes, people will say Japan’s great, but they’re basically the neo-France: it’s mostly simulacrum bullshit, France just stopped being cool and Japan has largely managed to fill that cultural niche among the younger generations.) Bland with a side of blandsauce.
Within the US itself, the trade theory also applies: best local-cultural-foods are in e.g. New York, New Orleans, Georgia; worst by far are in the midwest. (Also, midwesterners have notably terrible taste themselves, as they typically cannot handle any spice at all.) As with the pattern globally, the worst are characterized mostly by being utterly bland.
This theory has the nice benefit of being testable: since the proposed mechanism is mostly memetic spread + selection pressure, the theory predicts that the foods rated highly by the Trade Theory will tend (on average) to win out over time.
Shouldn’t this imply that a country with a huge colonial empire (and the UK comes to mind) would have the best food?
Indeed! And the UK does indeed have great food today—they just call it “Indian food”, not “British food”. Same with the US—most of the US’ food advantage is in the variety of available ethnic foods from other places.
One natural prediction in such situations is that the future will move towards mashups of the best ethnic foods from different places, and I definitely see plenty of that in the Bay Area. (For instance, Senor Sisig has been one of the most popular food trucks since I moved here 10 years ago, and they’ve been steadily expanding.)