Oh, food is an amazing thing. Yes, of course it’s one of the basic necessities of life. Food contains nutrients – substances essential for us. But it can also be a very effective medicine to cure sadness!
There are people who are really obsessed with food, and I mean in a good way. They love cooking, trying new recipes, experimenting, analyzing nutrition values and so on, but there are also folks who don’t really care. However, all of us have some cuisines, types of food or specific meals that we enjoy the most and could eat every day without stopping. But there are also things that we can’t understand why others enjoy as much as they do as it’s not even tasty to us!
Somebody asked in one of the Reddit communities to share cuisines that they believe are overrated. Here, you can find 30 answers that are not all necessarily “standard” cuisines but people don’t find them impressive.
More info: Reddit
#1
Fancy cupcakes. Every ‘designer’ cupcake I’ve had has been incredibly dry. I just don’t get why they charge $5-$10 per serving, but the quality of the cake is below a Walmart sheet cake.
Image source: ThoseArentCarrots, Silvia Trigo
#2
Not really a cuisine per se, but ‘shock food’
You know those giant milkshakes with whole slices of cake and candy on top, or quadruple cheeseburgers with so much cheese it’s running everywhere. It’s just not practical/tasty and really only exists to get a cool picture
Image source: viillanelles, Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist
#3
The damn banana-flavoured food and cherry-flavoured food.
Banana is delicious but banana-flavoured stuff tastes so fake and weird.
Cherry-flavoured food just tastes like chemicals and cough drops.
Image source: Zealousideal-View142, Mike Mozart
#4
Gold-flaked cuisine
Image source: bushbeanbuddy, Tara Winstead
#5
Salt bae….
Image source: I-am-kevin-irving-35
#6
Deconstructed anything.
glennok added:
I once ordered deconstructed salmon cream cheese bagel from a diner, it was 5 dollars more. Was literally just all the ingredients for the regular bagel spread out on a plate. Never again.
Image source: wilsonbl5150, alleksana
#7
Steak. I call it the steak cult. For the life of me, I cannot understand it.
Don’t get me wrong – I like a good steak. I eat it relatively often. It is sometimes exactly what I’m craving. And there’s absolutely a difference between a good steak and a bad steak.
But the steak cult is way beyond that – people fetishize it as the ‘best’ meal you could ever have. On a menu, they’ll be willing to pay double or triple the price for any other main dish, just because it’s steak. They fall for every silly, cheap marketing trick in the book (Oh this one isn’t just Angus, it’s BLACK Angus beef – that’ll be 30% more expensive; this one here is 5 million hour aged Wagyu beef and the cow was slightly cross-eyed – I’m afraid you’ll have to remortgage your house to afford this prime slice of meat).
It’s dumb. On an objective level, the complexity that goes into cooking a steak is far less than a really good risotto. The flavours are less complex, and you can simply do less; it’s less innovative, and less overall impressive.
It’s also completely decoupled from supply and demand – a saffron risotto should cost significantly more than just about any steak – saffron is actually rare, whereas cows are everywhere, and there’s no shortage of even the ‘prime’ beef cows.
Plus then all of the fetishization around how you ‘insult the chef and the meat’ if you order it any other way than medium-rare….
Agh the whole thing is just infuriating. It’s so wrapped up in last-century ideas of meat being rare and precious, and the more meat you ate the richer you were.
But I just want to shake people and say – do you really think that the $130 steak you just bought is four times better than any pasta dish or coq-au-vin or sushi or paella or pizza you’ve ever had? Seriously?
Image source: Ad_Captandum_Vulgus, Kasumi Loffler
#8
Expensive Italian, a 30 dollar pasta is straight robbery
Image source: Opening_Fly135, Klaus Nielsen
#9
The most expensive dishes. “Yeah, man these diamonds sautéed in truffle oil and emerald dust are good, but do you have a cheeseburger?”
Image source: gmen_forever, Antony Trivet
#10
Any of the artsy-fartsy stuff where they care more about appearance than taste
Image source: MpVpRb, Mariam Antadze
#11
Any foam or mousse from a Michelin star restaurant.
Pigeon foam. Wtf did I just pay $200 to eat?
Image source: sofarleftigotmyguns, Ville Oksanen
#12
“Something for everyone” restaurants. Anywhere where the menu has a ridiculously extensive offering. If I’m flipping multiple pages and not even halfway, I just know everything is about to taste questionable.
Image source: low_power_mode, Terje Sollie
#13
isn’t a cuisine, but ranch. everybody rants and raves about it, i even had a friend who put ranch on grapes. some ppl put it on EVERYTHING, which is fine because it’s not bad i guess? but idk i just never got the hype, i’m not the biggest fan of it lol
Image source: GalaxySnipz13, Willis Lam
#14
Lobster. It’s fine, it’s just not really worth it’s cost imo. I also like eating it in things rather than by itself. The lobster rolls I had in Maine were much better than lobster straight up.
Edit: yes, as many have said, crab is delicious and the superior choice by a mile
Image source: babythrottlepop, Mike Mozart
#15
cake.
ignoring coffee and booze, it’d have to be cake. people care more about how it looks and photographs than how it taste. it has it’s own reality show.
Image source: snakefeet_0, Ken’s Oven
#16
Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant was s**t. It genuinely made me question everything I’ve seen him criticize and wonder “does this guy just have horrible taste?”
Image source: leeroy525, Matheus Bertelli
#17
kid cuisine. The brownie usually comes out hard as a rock and the mac and cheese is watery
Image source: soobold, Lisa Fotios
#18
American Italian. It’s heavy and repetitive.
Image source: unbannabledan, Budgeron Bach
#19
Insanely unhealthy Southern food.
As a life long resident of the South, a ton of popular Southern food is mediocre meat that is breaded and deep fried. The primary flavor is fried breading. Given astronomical rate lifestyle-related disease in the South, elevating food that is both super unhealthy and also uninspiringly flavored is just mindbogglingly.
There is some truly delicious and inspired Southern food, and some of that is healthy or at least ok in small quantities. However, most of what I hear people talking about as “great” Southern food is boring and super bad for you if eaten on a regular basis.
Image source: Excellent_Condition, @joefoodie
#20
The Dutch are so crazy about their meat croquettes and frikandellel, but it’s just frozen meat that has been mashed together.
Image source: Fl1p1, Eduardo Soares
#21
Our family has been restaurant investors for 40 years. High end French cuisine using offal or organ meats.
These dishes are pushed because the costs of these types of meats are very low and produce a huge profit margin. Also, the lack of experience with guests cooking these types of dishes for themselves mean very few patrons complain about authenticity. Usually a chef will throw his/her twist in the menu.
Most customers can tell the difference between a great pizza and a mediocre one. They’ll remember a great steak – but a restaurant may be paying huge premiums to fly that Waygu in from Japan or for your Flintstone tomahawk. Whereas, a local butcher shop will gladly unload offal and such with glee due to low demand. You’d be surprised as to how little we paid for cow brains for example.
Image source: rayrayrayray, Rachel Claire
#22
“Free from” everything. B***h, I only have celiac. Before I got my diagnosis, I ate steak medicinally (I was severely anemic). Give me all the dairies and meatstuffs.
Absolutely overrated cuisine-type thing that I still love anyway? Mixology. Give me the intricate cocktail that requires table side presentation, and I’m a happy girl. I don’t drink much (see above re: celiac, I was a beer drinker), so I’m down with one stupidly expensive cocktail at a nice dinner.
Image source: kategoad, Andrea Nguyen
#23
Fusion food. Overpriced and overrated and only occasionally done well
Image source: ministarfallen, Syed Muhammad Afifi
#24
Chilean sea bass. Just awful.
Image source: atlantis1021
#25
French. It’s considered super fancy, but every time I’ve ever seen it, it looks disgusting and sounds like it only tastes good because of everything drowning in butter.
Image source: Akiram, ROMAN ODINTSOV
#26
British food
Image source: Deadpool2715, Thomas Timlen
#27
Korean BBQ- If I wanted to cook my meal…I would just stay home & save my money
Image source: Substantial_Cold2385, Markus Winkler
#28
Sushi. It’s very pretty and I like the conveyor belt they sometimes use(more foods should have this), but those are by far the best parts.
Image source: no_need_really, Diego Pontes
#29
Mexican… it’s all beans, cheese, rice and tortillas presented in different ways
Image source: zerob_directv, Sarah Stierch
#30
Greek cuisine. It’s just a bland version of Turkish food, but anything to do with Middle Eastern people is scary to some white people, so Greek food is highly overrated while Turkish and other Middle Eastern food is very underrated.
Image source: Osetiya, Ania Mendrek
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