In light of the absence of news as well as my recurring insomnia, which has made me unable to brain, I’m posting a list of what I consider the three best cuisines in the world. What I mean by this is that if I were constrained to eat only one nation’s cuisine for the rest of my life, these are the three I’d choose among.
Now I have experience with all of these on their home turf (and I’m also a decent Szechuan cook), so I know I’d be happy with them. One notable omission is Italian, although it’s only because I’m not familiar with the cuisine and have been to Italy only a handful of times. I suspect if I knew it better, that would be on the list. Here we go, and in no particular order:
French (all regions)
Indian (all regions, particularly the north where wheat and meat dominate over rice and vegetables, but I would never neglect the great food of southern India as well).
Chinese (again, all regions, though Hunanese and Szechuan are my favorites)
I’ll add that I am not looking for haute cuisine, particularly in France. The dishes that regular people eat are the dishes I want.
Sadly, I see Jewish food as constituting a mediocre cuisine. Yes, some Jewish food is great—latkes, pastrami, and (if you consider it Jewish) cheesecake—but you can’t eat just that for the rest of your life.
Of course you should weigh in below. And remember, this is a purely subjective list, but it is based on considerable experience.
A specimen of French food: a cassoulet:
Indian: A biryani, Hyderabad style
And mapo dofu, one of the glories of Szechuan cuisine (I ate it at the place in Chengdu where it was said to have been created):
Szechuan, Southern Mexico, Muslim Indian
Szechuan, Italian, Korean.
AGREE 😁
In practical terms though – for homemade, IMHO the meal has to be high yield – so, leftovers should be good.
IMHO of these three, Indian meets that. After lots and lots of meager results, I can make a light curry and masala I enjoy – add cauliflower, eggplant, etc. – for the long term goal : eat like a king for the rest of my life!
[Now a French accent ]
But of course, le cassoulet, c’est magnifique!
🍽️
Good choices.
My top three, in order of preference and consisting of all regions:
Mexican
Indian
Italian
When I was a kid, I used to joke to my mom: “Why can’t we just have Mexican food every night for dinner? The Mexicans do.”
Agree with your top 3, but I would switch Indian and Mexican!
No surprise that I like Egyptian food, although they don’t have a great selection for vegetarians. I could live on Egyptian bread and baba ganough. Kunafa is yummy, but very sweet. Feteer from the stall in Khan El Khalili Bazaar are gorgeous when freshly made and they can be sweet or savoury, I like it best with bananas or honey.
I’m not a huge falafel fan as they are often dry, but the fresh ones I had from a street stall in Marsah Matruh, after bussing 200 miles across the Libyan desert, were ambrosia to me.
To drink – freshly pressed sugar cane juice when in season. It looks like diarrhoea, but tastes heavenly. 😂
It’s probably easier to say which cuisines I don’t like, and that would be be French. I wish they did better veggie meals.
HA, thought you’d vote Egyptian Joolz. I dissent – I wasn’t wildly impressed with the food there, Lebanon however.
Haven’t read all the comments yet but I hope- for the sake of my sushi dinner in the fridge, the vast array of Japanese food gets a mention.
And I’ll eat as much Indian or Thai as you can shovel at me!
best,
D.A.
NYC
D.A.
NYC
Thai, Szechuan, Mexican. Indian is a close fourth. Asian food has balance that other favorites lack.
I don’t know Indian. I’d go with Italian.
I don’t travel so have no in-country experience with any of these cuisines. But could I put in a kind word for Japanese? Although I understand our host is not fond of fish, the glories of Japanese sushi are hard to surpass.
+1 Mike. But not just the fish – there’s a lot to consider, including things like “Japanese take on Italian/French” etc as well as convenience store food, ramen and lots of local fast food styles available only there.
arigatoo!
D.A.
NYC
Even haughty French gastronomes consider Japanese cuisine the world’s finest. Or so I once read.
Vietnamese
Middle eastern
Chinese
If I was in a cold country I might choose otherwise
Japanese
Chinese
French
…
German
…
Italian
…
Somali
Not necessarily in this order:
-Indian
-Mexican
-MyWife-ian
In my experience, French is superior to all others because, unlike the others, it relies primarily on the best and freshest ingredients prepared simply rather than the ingredients being merely vehicles for spices.
And genuine Italian is not that different, with considerable overlap between the two, which is more accurately labeled Mediterranean, and would to some degree include Spanish and Greek. If I had to choose one dish, it would be genuine Spanish Paella, the epitome of Mediterranean cuisine.
I think the best examples of all cuisines “rely primarily on the best and freshest ingredients prepared simply” (slight paraphrase of your words, there).
Some, like Indian, do rely heavily on spices; others, like Japanese (or indeed French and Italian) do not.
My favorite is Japanese, perhaps because I spent time there as a young man; but I’d find it hard to say that any one cuisine is better than another – and there are things I’d rather not eat in any cuisine!
French, Indian, and Italian for me. Each cuisine is enormous, varied, and with regional variations that matter. All sorts of spices, sauces. Repertoires handle nearly all vegetables and meats. No cuisine comes close to French for desserts and sauces.
Chinese is definitely in 4th place. I love it, but for me, it’s iterative. Sauces are too similar for me, without the variation of the three above. No butter or cream or stock reductions? Virtually no spices except peppercorns, anise, 5-spice powder and heat? C’mon!
I like Mexican, but it is way more iterative than Asian. 10 or 15 interchangeable ingredients. Spices? Pretty much just heat, paprika, chilis, and sometimes chocolate. Forgetaboutit!
The one cuisine that is very different, it seems to me, is Japanese. But my palate can not understand the attraction to bitter, salty, and fishy umami. My bias showing.
All of the above.
But I will single out my favorite soup, which is Indian Tom kha gai. From certain restaurants, it is so amazing that the problem with this soup is that it drives everyone into non-conversational silence as we fall deep into a feeding frenzy.
If Jewish cuisine is lacking, there’s Mormon cuisine. As explained by a story someone posted here ages ago, a group of multinational students in a lab somewhere were talking about going home (IIRC for end-of-year holidays). One couldn’t wait to get home for good Indian cooking, another for good Southern cooking, Italian cooking, etc. Then there was the last guy. What was he going home to. “Mormon cooking,” he replied, dejectedly. “What’s that?,” they wanted to know. “Anything made with Miracle Whip.
But when in Venice, seek out the little things that are not much more than dinner rolls, EXCEPT for having green olives in them. They pair excellently with the dry white wine of the region, Soave (back in Jersey, wt used to refer to it as “South Avenue”.
And when in Slovenia, seek out the mushroom soup.
When in San Francisco at a Chinese restaurant, see if they have Tea-smoked duck
When in Sweden, inquire where you might find smoked lamb leg (får fiol), smoked reindeer (rökt ren), anything made with mushrooms (svamp)…
I have 8 cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi, an Israeli Brit who makes the most scrumptious of concoctions. i also agree with you on Szechuan and Indian food, as well as some French and northern Italian dishes. I almost forgot Mexican!!
The thing with French cuisine is that it’s not just the way it’s cooked, but WHAT is being cooked. They just use better, fresher ingredients – in my experience. Since I was a poor student at the time, I mostly got my meals from street vendors or farmers markets and it was all so delicious.
Indian food is delicious.
The description of Jewish food sounds Ashkenazi-centric. I love me some kugel, but Israeli food is much more flavorful, in my opinion. But I’ve yet to meet a Middle Eastern cuisine I haven’t enjoyed. There’s a lot of similarity, but also regional differences. I ate at a Druze restaurant earlier this year and it was delicious.
Vietnamese political refugees settled in East Germany under Communism, and Liepzig is a super place for a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, some relatively inexpensive near the University and some really adventurous higher level places.
I will throw my preferences in as Thai/Vietnamese (Szechuan… I had to turn off autocorrect to spell it… is up there for me as well. One of my long term relationships was an excellent chef in the cuisine, and also introduced me to the best Chinese cuisine in Boston area), Peruvian, Portuguese, Cajun (another relationship put me firmly into this camp. Boudin’s Andouille is truly excellent in a jambalaya or on its own, even though my cardiologist has words…) and street vendor middle-eastern.
I will heartily disagree about cheesecake: I certainly COULD eat it for the rest of my (heavily abbreviated) life. I don’t think I SHOULD, though.
Sichuan is near the top of my list, and I highly recommend the cookbooks by Fuscia Dunlop.
Despite many attempts, I have never been able to produce a decent Indian meal in my own kitchen.
Please forgive me if I posted this twice.
Indian, French, Thai (but little experience of African)
The only cuisine I ever crave is Mexican.
I am not fond of Indian. Even so, I taught myself to make a few Indian dishes since my son is a huge fan.
The only Szechuan dish I’m familiar with is Kung Pao Chicken, but I adore it. In fact, for my last meal, I’d be torn between Kung Pao Chicken and a NY deli-style pastrami sandwich on rye with goyisch fixings.
Speaking (somewhat) of French food, I read a biography of Julia Child not long ago. Besides being much more interesting than I thought it would be, the book made me appreciate what a serious student she was of French cuisine.
I don’t have standing to comment on varieties of cuisine. Here the climate is mild, so there’s always at least a little something from our garden, and that’s important. Sorry to learn of the recurring insomnia.
I vote for Thai food. I read a survey once that this was the most popular cuisine of professional chefs because of the fresh, bold, and contrasting flavors. I visited Vietnam last month and the food was fantastic. I might be able to eat Steak Frites with Béarnaise daily for the rest of my life.
I would find it nigh on impossible to narrow the best cuisines down to three, let alone one.
I’ve never been a fan of French cuisine. If I were to go with a European food tradition it would be Italian, Spanish or Greek.
“Chinese cuisine” covers a range of ways of cooking. My husband is from Hong Kong so I’m most used to Cantonese cuisine, which is great, but on our/my trips to China I’ve sampled from different regions and they’re all very different (and delicious).
But what about Japanese cuisine (and also there I’ve found regional differences)? Thai? Vietnamese? Singaporean/Malaysian (actually a fusion of Chinese and Malay)?
Brazilian food is also one of my favourites, and my limited exposure to Chilean/Peruvian food suggests a whole other world.
Too many choices …
Spanish, esp. Basque region (BTW, best cheesecake in the world)
Southern Italian
Israeli (esp. Tel Aviv)
Runners-up: Indian, French, Korean, maybe Ethiopian