Food in whose name the worst atrocities have been committed

The idea is that some types of foods may have glorious exemplars but also horrible ones, ones so bad that they force you to question your commitment to that type of food entirely. And because their promise is so high, people have experimented with them in many ways; and the results have disemboweled many an unsuspecting victim. (See also a related topic here.)

For instance: I nominate pizza. The basic concept: maybe humanity's greatest triumph. But its abuses are legion. Versions served in schools, most frozen versions, the kind sold at sporting events: typically awful. Other examples, like "Hawaiian" and "Mexican" pizza (à la Taco Bell) may have their defenders, but are no doubt controversial. But the worst crime against humanity committed in pizza's name, in my experience, was in Nancy, France last year. Words won't do to convey its full awfulness but scallops, emmental cheese, and walnuts give you an idea.

In any case I would like to read other people's nominations, or at least see some disgusting pictures of significant types of foods (that are presumably not meant to be disgusting).

boring academic answer would be salt

pizza is the first thing i thought of.

Words won't do to convey its full awfulness but scallops, emmental cheese, and walnuts give you an idea.

would scoff

everybody who read that fancy salt book is some sort of salt expert.

americans getting outraged on pizza's behalf = what fucking heroes. you guys barely understand thin-crust anyway

:D

mexican food of all stripes?

that doesn't make sense; the mainstreaming of mexican, I guess

Please Confirm...

Ban this user from this thread (temporarily)

xxpost

come to think of it, maybe the answer is ethnic cuisine of all stripes. i'm sure chinese food is lovely if i ever found a place that made it.

jj valuable mod in '10 imo

americans getting outraged on pizza's behalf = what fucking heroes. you guys barely understand thin-crust anyway

crazee talk

in the new york times they said that when mexican people watch americans eat salsa it's like an american watching someone guzzle salad dressing. i did not know that. i mean, i knew that there were different kinds of salsa for different dishes, but i thought even mexicans had their own chip dipping salsa.

britisher talking pizza does not compute...

i'm sure chinese food is lovely if i ever found a place that made it.

I believe they're quite good at it in China

Words won't do to convey its full awfulness but scallops, emmental cheese, and walnuts give you an idea.

I can totally see the emmentaler and walnuts, but scallops with that?! First of all they'd get overcooked and secondly you'd barely taste them.

I think it's harder to fuck up a taco than a pizza but then again, I've pledged to avoid ordering Mexican in places where I am sure disaster awaits. Plus: I don't usually see like tacos with asparagus, chevre and bbq sauce, e.g.

The general principle there and with pizza is that a food can be a lot worse than the sum of its parts.

xp I wish I could have barely tasted the noix de Saint Jacques.

some horrible horrible substances get sold under the name "cheese"

cheese in a can, i mean this is a product in the states, right?

I think it's harder to fuck up a taco than a pizza but then again

WAHT

so glad I got threadbanned - this is gonna turn nasty

cheese in a can, i mean this is a product in the states, right?

please--aren't you British? Don't start with the "food product in a can" stuff.

"I believe they're quite good at it in China"

i'll bet. i mean, i've grown up with american chinese take-out, so i like it and everything, but it would be nice if there were more homespun/authentic chinese places around. problem is, you can make really good money making the cheap stuff. it's risky to open an "authentic" anything.

bbq

lol no i'm not british

okay well wherever you live in the world, i'm sure there are lovely food products in cans for you to eat

re. tacos vs pizza: what's the worst a tortilla can get? Actually, yeah, pretty bad: we stupidly bought the Old El Paso tortillas here in Paris a couple of weeks ago and they were basically crepes. And they were labelled "tortillas de maïs" and yet their first ingredient was wheat flour.

But I still think pizza crust is more generally fucked up than tortillas.

scott, go somewhere with enough Chinese to sustain 'authentic' food.

every ilx food thread eventually boils down to pizza, tacos, and Brooklyn

what to do if you are a vegetarian vampire weekend

american chinese food is p good imo

we got beans in a can? oh, and soup.

BBQ is a good one, especially the shit hoisted as bbq at Midwestern pot lucks (i.e. sloppy joes or just meat baked in bbq sauce)

this doesn't address the concept of cheese in a can, however

cheese in a can is pretty bad, i will grant you that. but worst atrocity ever committed? maybe in the top 10.

cheese in a can: don't they use Cheez Whiz on cheese steaks in Philly, like as the "preferred" cheese? looking for enlightenment here if this is incorrect

that doesn't make it right!

btw you lose 5 IQ pts every time you type the words "Cheez Whiz"

it is certainly not right!

there's nothing wrong with using cans to preserve foodstuffs. propelling said foodstuff from the can through a nozzle is a different matter - one both disgusting and savage.

bipartisan agreement que, we're a shining example to all of the political spectrum.

not cooking a steak until the steak is cooked is an atrocity imo.

i am aware this may not be a universally held belief

wondering if some enterprising kid has ever figured out how to get high off spray cheese

shaking my fist at you xpost

'cheesing' what an interesting concept

btw, courtesy of a visit to a gf that was craving mexican food due to studying abroad in a tiny town, i have had the worst tacos in the world, and they live in Dublin.

tbh there is enough terrible cheese here that doesn't come in a can.

also, bread.

lol:

Is there any way that spray cheese can get you high?

nah all it really takes is one dude/dudette in your town that can caook and who's from or spent a fair amount of time in a particular place.

though maybe you're saying there's still no real way to know for sure if something is authentic unless you yourself have been to the place?

Someone made the comparison of people caring about originality in music. I get that there's a whole history of people who care about originality looking down on people who don't, and thus the whole anti-rockism thing came about. But to look down on everyone that DOES care bout originality, people for whom originality makes the (music-listening)experience richer to them, is just as douchey. (obv caveat being that those people who do care aren't looking down on you for not caring)

though maybe you're saying there's still no real way to know for sure if something is authentic unless you yourself have been to the place?

I don't necessarily feel that it is the case, but I do think it's sort of the ultimate trump card in an authenticity debate. With your music example, all a person has to do is go find the original music in question - without ever leaving your computer. For food, you either have to be able to afford to jump on a plane or take someone's word for it that some local place is just like they serve it in Saigon or wherever.

ppl very concerned about any aspect of their food obviously trying harder than most others, but I don't think the majority of good food is made by ppl concerned with authenticity. it only really works as a shorthand for "ppl who care about food" and lots of ppl do that without being especially interested in authenticity.

"Authenticity almost always means that the food maker loves what they're making, has respect for the food and their customers, and for the culture from which it came."

YES! I did not feel this authenticity coming from rice krispy treats made with GRAPE NUTS! It fails to meet each of those criteria.

those must be some pretty filling rice krispy treats

it filled me with sadness mostly.

an authentic, if unoriginal reaction

I will be just a bit globe-trottery douchey to point out that many regional cusines are very region-specific. There's a local French baker, for example, who bought a flour mill just so he could stop importing flour and mill wheat to his specifications, specs that didn't exist in the U.S. prior to that. What about the specificity of Norman apples or whatnot? As I've mentioned before translating seafood names from English to french is helpful but flawed inasmuch as the eponymous creatures can be quite different in different places.

http://www.menshealth.com/MensHealth/Media/Frindlys.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3058/2643623745_3c6c626ed7.jpg

Asian Nachos
Crispy Fried Wontons Covered with Chicken in a Sweet-Hot Peanut Sauce. Topped with Wasabi Cream and Melted Cheese

would try

Local place has:
Crab Rangoon pizza
crab rangoon base, surimi, green onion, asiago and mozzarella, topped with crispy egg roll strips and sweet chili sauce

It is delicious

http://www.wumarkus.com/images/hamdog.JPG

I dunno, I haven't eaten at this place (yet), but the menu gives...pause

e.g.

La Pizza Mexicaine
Reblochon: Crème fraîche, Lardons, Reblochon, Fromage, Oignon

When I read the thread title I took "atrocities" to be meant literally rather than figuratively. My first thought was: roasted breast of passenger pigeon.

thinking of it that way, the French munching down dodos on Mauritius would also count

sugar

sugar! dlh otm x 1000

that pizza doesn't seem very mexican to me, but i don't see what's so shocking about it. am i missing an ingredient? its cream, cheese and onions, right?

Assumed that it was the total un-Mexicanness that made it weird. I kind of believe that non-French/non-colonial food in France is uniformly awful.

lardons = bacon, reblochons = ??

http://www.reblochon.fr/

(it's a kind of cheese)

Risotto surely

Caprese, nicoise, bruschetta too

Yeah it's just french takes on Mexican are nuts, like that's just a normal if sorta weirdish french pizza, what's it have to do with Mexican food

fair enough. would gladly eat this pizza tho!

Yeah it sounds good!

Worst pizza atrocity I ever experienced was when my hosts brought me to what I assume was a rather pricey "Western" restaurant in China. My best guess was that the chef had had pizza described to him once but he had never tasted or even seen one irl. It's not that it was inauthentic that bothered me (iirc the dough was sweet and the cheese was underneath the tomato sauce), more that it tasted really really bad.

Ordering pizza in Asia is a real game of Russian roulette ime. Had some perfectly decent ones there, but my god the bad ones are bad.

I'm eating the most disgusting 'sweet chilli chicken noodles' imaginable atm so I nominates that

thinking of it that way, the French munching down dodos on Mauritius would also count

Isn't this a misconception, and it was actually the animals introduced to the island (swine & cats iirc) that did for the dodo? Apparently they weren't very tasty.

the restaurant I linked to in the latest revive has duck fajitas which tbh sound amazing

xp you're right about extinction from what I've heard. but apparently our taxidermy models of the dodo (like in the Natural History Museum in London, and in the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution in Paris) aren't known to be accurate b/c all that made it back on the boats were skeletons, b/c the hungry French scientists ate their meat. so we don't know how the birds carried themselves, since we never got muscled birds.

not really sure where to put this

http://www.gerlach-schaefer.de/Puppen/09-Wurstpuppe-Lena.jpg

it's german, so it fits on an atrocity thread very well

worst atrocities committed in the name of "dolls made out of tinned sausage"

http://idahoanfoodservice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Hashbrown-Nachos-960x480.jpg

Hash brown nachos

Would eat.

I can't believe I spent a good part of my childhood thinking that canned pitted + sliced olives were the most gourmet delicacy ever.

That said, apart from the inferior olives, that looks tasty.

I would too and really it's the name that rankles.

that looks dope, but ewww black olives.

More canned black olives for me.

the local "irish pub" serves "irish nachos" over potato chips

Reminds me of a very similar, if probably superior, dish from the mission restaurant in san diego

PAPAS LOCO 8.50
Rosemary potatoes, grilled jalapeños, black beans, cheese, avocado slice and sour cream
With two scrambled eggs Add 1.75

Would still eat.

That sounds great

I want that right now

should be papas locas though smh

Place in noe valley does an 'Irish breakfast' which is close to a full English but has some kind of salsa. I don't think that's meant to be the Irish bit though.

i had "breakfast enchiladas" (chicken enchiladas w/ eggs and black beans on the side) yesterday and although i didn't eat most of the tortillas or beans, it was quite good.