63 Shocking Food Myths Tourists Believe That Locals Can’t Stand
Think Parisians just nibble on croissants and sip wine all day? Or imagine Bostonians skipping meals for doughnuts and coffee? Well, spoiler alert: real life dinners aren’t nearly as cliché as you’d think. It turns out, the foods we’re famous—or infamous—for might not be crowd favorites back home. Ever wonder what dishes get pegged as “national staples” but barely make it to anyone’s plate? Someone posed this very question on Reddit: “What’s a food in your country that’s stereotyped but hardly anyone actually eats?” And boy, did the responses pour in—bringing a delicious mix of truth, humor, and surprising culinary confessions from around the globe. So buckle up, grab a snack (probably not the stereotypes listed here), and get ready to have your foodie assumptions blasted out of the water!
While it’s easy to imagine Parisians living on a steady diet of wine and croissants, or Bostonians downing their doughnuts with some coffee in lieu of a meal, the reality is that people tend to eat all sorts of things.
Someone asked “What’s a food in your country that is stereotyped for your country but really, nobody eats?” and people from around the world shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, bring a snack, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments down below.
People act like all Irish people eat is potatoes but we have a super diverse food culture. We also eat cabbage.
Corned beef and cabbage. ~~Literally **nobody** eats that here~~ **Edit:** Seems it’s a thing in parts of Munster, based off what people are commenting here. I’m from Mayo, so maybe it’s a regional thing or a reimport.
The original meal is bacon and cabbage, which people do eat. When Irish people emigrated to the US they were often in the same neighborhoods as Jewish people, so bacon was replaced with corned beef.
I personally don’t know anyone who eats spray-on cheese
I’ve had it before, but it’s not something I’d buy. And it doesn’t seem all that popular with people I know. I imagine the only people who eat it don’t care about their health or food quality and have the palates of raccoons.
Edit: Ok so apparently the main (human) consumers of spray cheese are people from Pennsylvania. I’ve never lived there so I didn’t know that was a popular thing.
“Canadian bacon”
If you ask for bacon in Canada, you get regular ol, “streaky bacon” from the pork belly.
What Americans refer to as “Canadian bacon” is called back bacon and is a more standard bacon in the UK (and Ireland) and what you get when you order a “Full English breakfast.”
Canadians do have back bacon, but isn’t nearly as common. And when we do have it, we typically cure and prepare it differently, then roll it in cornmeal and we call it “Peameal bacon”.
And peameal bacon sandwiches are delicious.
Yes, we produce a lot of maple syrup and yes, we love it but really there’s only so much you can do with it. It’s not an every day thing. It’s very tasty but also very sweet.
Canada’s stereotype buffet: apparently we eat poutine three meals a day, chug maple syrup straight from the tree, and ride our pet moose to Tim Hortons. Reality check: most Canadians barely eat poutine, maple syrup is a once-in-a-while thing, and moose will stomp you if you get too close. Sorry to ruin the fantasy.
I would love to say surströmming. But people eat that rancid stuff every summer. I don’t know why.
I literally have no idea what fettuccine Alfredo are and i don’t care to waste 10 seconds to check online, but i bet that many people believe it’s something we eat regularly.
With the caveat of prepackaged waffles, most Belgians don’t really eat all that many waffles. All the fresh waffle stands are mostly kept afloat by tourists.
Mango lassi? Don’t get me wrong, we do drink a lotta lassi (in punjab, del) but I haven’t really heard of anyone drinking mango lassi regularly.
What I’ve seen in American Chinese restaurants. Well most of them. No one in China ever heard of general tso chicken.
Probably going to generate some hate here. Hot Dogs aren’t as popular in America as people think. In my experience it’s almost a 50/50 on whether people like them.
I realize it’s regional but when tourists come and try Cincinnati style chili and leave thinking THAT is chili, I get really upset. Cincinnati chili is an abomination and a war crime. Cincinnati isn’t even in Ohio. Don’t believe me? Fly to Cincinnati and let me know where you land. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Curry
Most of India doesn’t eat curry all day the food is so diverse every 2
100 km the food changes even languages to.
Many people especially in the USA think that falafel and hummus is a Greek thing but we don’t eat them in Greece. Like my mum has no idea what these thinks are.
I have never heard of deep fried butter when talking about US food. I associate every crazy deep-fried food to Scotland.
In Spain it would be a drink: Sangria. The wine based summer drink that is really much more common is Tinto de Verano.
Surströmming. I wouldn’t say nobody eats. But only about ish 20% of Swedes eat it “at least once a year”. Out of those, half eat it specifically only once a year (a seasonal tradition, eaten the third thursday in august every year). A lot of those will be from the region of Norrland up north in Sweden where it is the regional traditional food.
So 80% of Swedes you meet don’t eat it and there is a high likelyhood they haven’t even tried it. I have, not a fan. But when prepared and done properly, it is nowhere near as bad as the internet challenges to eat it straight out of the can make it out to be.
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