6 ms·

The article mentions cafés and restaurants looking the same, but a more significant change in my opinion is that regional recipes are disappearing and all food

The article mentions cafés and restaurants looking the same, but a more significant change in my opinion is that regional recipes are disappearing and all food is beginning to taste the same. I've seen this gradually happening in the towns in Spain where I've visited my family since a child: for instance in Bilbao the traditional pintxos/tapas are gradually becoming erased and substituted with a more 'international' style of elaborate mayonnaise combos that are photogenic for spread on social media. And in a weekly newsletter I get about Spanish culture this was the latest topic: specifically how traditional Mallorcan restaurants are disappearing and being replaced by more generic 'Spanish' tourist-pleasers. As I've seen this happen in pretty much every city I've visited over the last decade (including Stockholm where I live now), I imagine it's a generalized phenomenon that will be hard or impossible to reverse.

kykeonaut 2y ago
it is not all bad :) look at latin america where colonization has erased a lot of the regional dishes. yet new combinations have arisen from a mix of pre-columbian and european dishes. tacos in mexico combining corn tortilla with cow and pork based fillings, or ceviche in peru are just a few examples of "comida criolla". right now, it might be a swing in the direction of sameism, but i assure you that eventually new dishes will arise.
- stringsandchars 2y ago
  > right now, it might be a swing in the direction of sameism, but i assure you that eventually new dishes will arise. I do hope you're right, and I agree that there are some fusions that are quite exciting and add diversity to some cuisines that are otherwise quite bland and monotonous (Swedish food has definitely got a massive lift from introduced diversity, for instance). But what I've mostly seen so far, is convergence towards the vaguely 'international' and inoffensive. In this process, items like blood pudding (a sausage made mostly from blood and fat) or pork wrapped in cabbage with almonds and raisins get phased-out, in favor of homogenous crowd-pleasers that taste the same across Europe.
  - kilpikaarna 2y ago
    > add diversity to some cuisines that are otherwise quite bland and monotonous (Swedish food has definitely got a massive lift from introduced diversity, for instance). Other than a lazy dig at "bland Nordic cuisine"[1], I'm not sure what makes this different from the situation bemoaned in the GP post? [1] ie a culinary tradition of letting the taste of the ingredients stand for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates)
    - stringsandchars 2y ago
      > Other than a lazy dig at "bland Nordic cuisine"[1]... > [1] ie a culinary tradition of letting the taste of the ingredients stand for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates) I'm afraid if you think that Swedish food is about "the taste of the ingredients stand[ing] for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices" then you really don't have a good familiarity with this cuisine. Historically the need to preserve food through the long winter, or even make scarce food appetizing during the summer, means that Nordic food has always been much more processed (salting, pickling, smoking, smothering with dill or mustard, and so on) than the much more fresh and unadulterated recipes of the Mediterranean, where fresh fish, fruit and vegetables have always been more plentiful, and a greater part of traditional recipes (together with the sausage and other 'winter' food I mentioned). I'm also sad to hear that you think my comment amounted to a "lazy dig".
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      If the subject is restaurant food, French style cooking is standard in all Nordic restaurants above the lowest level. Before it was introduced, I guess you had more like eateries with stew and porridge, or an oven baked chicken, smoked fish and such. The French techniques have really had a huge importance for Nordic cuisines. Combined with traditional Nordic ingredients, you get something truly excellent. It's a pity that the only food that gets international success is mostly pizza, burger, döner kebab and taco. If restaurants world wide started learning and integrating the French cuisine, they could make some great combinations with local traditions and also let local ingredients shine in a way that you can never do with a god damned burger or kebab.
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    If you keep doing this we're going to have to ban you. As I said before, I don't want to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246939), but we need you to follow the rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
feketegy 2y ago
> regional recipes are disappearing and all food is beginning to taste the same. Because everybody is watching the same 15 YouTube cooking channels and replicating their recipes.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  All it takes is a single internet-literate person to post the traditional recipe online, and it has a shot at immortality.
- yapyap 2y ago
  haha no, I doubt those restaurants are changing their recipes because “people are watching cooking channels” they want to be able to serve more people so they serve less opinionated food, if you serve something some people think is absolutely vile and disgusting but others think is really good you’ll get less business than if you serve food everyone thinks is just “okay”. Even though we give the French a lot of shit, they stay true to their recipes for the people who like it. It’s very opinionated, if u arrive at a French restaurant in France and you don’t like their food, if it’s rather rural they won’t have an all inclusive “oh here you go” meal, you’ll eat the pig intestine or go hungry. Less appealing to the masses, staying true to their recipes
  - jowdones 2y ago
    [dead]
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    I wonder if there's an element of cost cutting involved here, too. Restaurant owners have to juggle the availability and pricing of their ingredients. I know of at least a few cases when a menu change was done to get better ingredient reuse or to manage these costs.
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
My first thought was that if I was a tourist in Mallorca, I'd much prefer an "authentic" traditional Mallorcan restaurant over a generic Spanish restaurant. My second thought is: Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. Mallorca is one of the most tourist-heavy parts of Spain. If I'm already tired of generic Spanish cuisine, I'm probably already going off the beaten path to less-visited parts of Spain, where the niche cuisines are incidentally still preserved. You say it's happening in every city you visited, but how many cities are you visiting which are off the beaten path?
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. Japan is notorious for protecting and marketing regional/local cuisine nationwide and they're quite successful at it. Hell, they've succeeded at making global food vendors sell Japan-only food (all them wild Kit-Kats, Christmas KFC, etc.). The question isn't posed on the consumers, it's posed on the suppliers. Do the suppliers want to preserve their way of eating or not?
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > My second thought is: Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. That's like saying that the billions of people on the planet are mostly worthless because you're not going to meet every single one of them. Local culture doesn't exist to satisfy some "market" or as a sort of collectathon for well-off travelers seeking novelty through fake "authentic culture", it's about the way of life of sppecific people living in specific areas.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Could it be that locals don't want to eat in a restaurant the things they cook at home, while tourists are looking for food which is more familiar to them?
glitchc 2y ago
Part of it stems from the fact that wholesalers, in addition to raw ingredients, also sell partially prepared pre-packaged meals to restaurants. A number of restaurants resort to this model, in particular major chains (Applebee's, IHop, Waffle House, etc.) as it means less kitchen staff to hire. This is at least very common in North America, where Sysco is the goliath and has cornered the market on this front. Perhaps the same thing is happening in Spain?
Xcelerate 2y ago
> all food is beginning to taste the same This is the one that makes me sad. I lived in a variety of places while growing up (countries, states, etc). Different countries had very distinctive types of food in the 1990s. Living in the U.S., I still visit Europe quite frequently, and it seems like all food is converging toward sameness, and not in a good way. About a decade ago when my income began increasing I started going to Michelin star restaurants for the "novelty", but now that I've been to enough of them they all seem more similar to each other than different. It's much more challenging to find an authentic old restaurant in e.g., Lyon, that has quality food that hasn't changed over the decades (hint: these restaurants typically have ratings between 3.9 and 4.1 on Google — Americans tend to drag the score down because some aspect of the food or culture is unappealing to them, reinforcing the article's point).

kykeonaut 2y ago

it is not all bad :) look at latin america where colonization has erased a lot of the regional dishes. yet new combinations have arisen from a mix of pre-columbian and european dishes. tacos in mexico combining corn tortilla with cow and pork based fillings, or ceviche in peru are just a few examples of "comida criolla". right now, it might be a swing in the direction of sameism, but i assure you that eventually new dishes will arise.

stringsandchars 2y ago
> right now, it might be a swing in the direction of sameism, but i assure you that eventually new dishes will arise. I do hope you're right, and I agree that there are some fusions that are quite exciting and add diversity to some cuisines that are otherwise quite bland and monotonous (Swedish food has definitely got a massive lift from introduced diversity, for instance). But what I've mostly seen so far, is convergence towards the vaguely 'international' and inoffensive. In this process, items like blood pudding (a sausage made mostly from blood and fat) or pork wrapped in cabbage with almonds and raisins get phased-out, in favor of homogenous crowd-pleasers that taste the same across Europe.
- kilpikaarna 2y ago
  > add diversity to some cuisines that are otherwise quite bland and monotonous (Swedish food has definitely got a massive lift from introduced diversity, for instance). Other than a lazy dig at "bland Nordic cuisine"[1], I'm not sure what makes this different from the situation bemoaned in the GP post? [1] ie a culinary tradition of letting the taste of the ingredients stand for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates)
  - stringsandchars 2y ago
    > Other than a lazy dig at "bland Nordic cuisine"[1]... > [1] ie a culinary tradition of letting the taste of the ingredients stand for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates) I'm afraid if you think that Swedish food is about "the taste of the ingredients stand[ing] for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices" then you really don't have a good familiarity with this cuisine. Historically the need to preserve food through the long winter, or even make scarce food appetizing during the summer, means that Nordic food has always been much more processed (salting, pickling, smoking, smothering with dill or mustard, and so on) than the much more fresh and unadulterated recipes of the Mediterranean, where fresh fish, fruit and vegetables have always been more plentiful, and a greater part of traditional recipes (together with the sausage and other 'winter' food I mentioned). I'm also sad to hear that you think my comment amounted to a "lazy dig".
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    If the subject is restaurant food, French style cooking is standard in all Nordic restaurants above the lowest level. Before it was introduced, I guess you had more like eateries with stew and porridge, or an oven baked chicken, smoked fish and such. The French techniques have really had a huge importance for Nordic cuisines. Combined with traditional Nordic ingredients, you get something truly excellent. It's a pity that the only food that gets international success is mostly pizza, burger, döner kebab and taco. If restaurants world wide started learning and integrating the French cuisine, they could make some great combinations with local traditions and also let local ingredients shine in a way that you can never do with a god damned burger or kebab.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  If you keep doing this we're going to have to ban you. As I said before, I don't want to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246939), but we need you to follow the rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

feketegy 2y ago

> regional recipes are disappearing and all food is beginning to taste the same. Because everybody is watching the same 15 YouTube cooking channels and replicating their recipes.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
All it takes is a single internet-literate person to post the traditional recipe online, and it has a shot at immortality.
yapyap 2y ago
haha no, I doubt those restaurants are changing their recipes because “people are watching cooking channels” they want to be able to serve more people so they serve less opinionated food, if you serve something some people think is absolutely vile and disgusting but others think is really good you’ll get less business than if you serve food everyone thinks is just “okay”. Even though we give the French a lot of shit, they stay true to their recipes for the people who like it. It’s very opinionated, if u arrive at a French restaurant in France and you don’t like their food, if it’s rather rural they won’t have an all inclusive “oh here you go” meal, you’ll eat the pig intestine or go hungry. Less appealing to the masses, staying true to their recipes
- jowdones 2y ago
  [dead]
- kevindamm 2y ago
  I wonder if there's an element of cost cutting involved here, too. Restaurant owners have to juggle the availability and pricing of their ingredients. I know of at least a few cases when a menu change was done to get better ingredient reuse or to manage these costs.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago

My first thought was that if I was a tourist in Mallorca, I'd much prefer an "authentic" traditional Mallorcan restaurant over a generic Spanish restaurant. My second thought is: Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. Mallorca is one of the most tourist-heavy parts of Spain. If I'm already tired of generic Spanish cuisine, I'm probably already going off the beaten path to less-visited parts of Spain, where the niche cuisines are incidentally still preserved. You say it's happening in every city you visited, but how many cities are you visiting which are off the beaten path?

Dalewyn 2y ago
>Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. Japan is notorious for protecting and marketing regional/local cuisine nationwide and they're quite successful at it. Hell, they've succeeded at making global food vendors sell Japan-only food (all them wild Kit-Kats, Christmas KFC, etc.). The question isn't posed on the consumers, it's posed on the suppliers. Do the suppliers want to preserve their way of eating or not?
Tainnor 2y ago
> My second thought is: Maybe the market is telling us that we don't need so many cuisines. Think about it: There are probably 100+ distinct cuisines in the world. How many people have tried every single one? How many people have gotten tired of a substantial fraction of that 100+, and are seeking further novelty? Probably not very many. That's like saying that the billions of people on the planet are mostly worthless because you're not going to meet every single one of them. Local culture doesn't exist to satisfy some "market" or as a sort of collectathon for well-off travelers seeking novelty through fake "authentic culture", it's about the way of life of sppecific people living in specific areas.

carlosjobim 2y ago

Could it be that locals don't want to eat in a restaurant the things they cook at home, while tourists are looking for food which is more familiar to them?

glitchc 2y ago

Part of it stems from the fact that wholesalers, in addition to raw ingredients, also sell partially prepared pre-packaged meals to restaurants. A number of restaurants resort to this model, in particular major chains (Applebee's, IHop, Waffle House, etc.) as it means less kitchen staff to hire. This is at least very common in North America, where Sysco is the goliath and has cornered the market on this front. Perhaps the same thing is happening in Spain?

Xcelerate 2y ago

> all food is beginning to taste the same This is the one that makes me sad. I lived in a variety of places while growing up (countries, states, etc). Different countries had very distinctive types of food in the 1990s. Living in the U.S., I still visit Europe quite frequently, and it seems like all food is converging toward sameness, and not in a good way. About a decade ago when my income began increasing I started going to Michelin star restaurants for the "novelty", but now that I've been to enough of them they all seem more similar to each other than different. It's much more challenging to find an authentic old restaurant in e.g., Lyon, that has quality food that hasn't changed over the decades (hint: these restaurants typically have ratings between 3.9 and 4.1 on Google — Americans tend to drag the score down because some aspect of the food or culture is unappealing to them, reinforcing the article's point).