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35 People Share What Stereotypical Foods From Their Nation They Don’t Actually Eat
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.
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#1
People act like all Irish people eat is potatoes but we have a super diverse food culture. We also eat cabbage.
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#2
Fortune cookie. We dont even have this in China.
Its actually American food created in California.
#4
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.
#5
Nobody in Iceland eats the fermented shark. We just foist it on unsuspecting foreigners for a laugh.
#6
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.
#7
I think in Germany lots of people really do eat stuff like pretzels, potato salads and sausages somewhat regularly (not every week but they are a regular occurrence). However, I know many Germans who really dislike beer and never drink it. Speaking of beer, most Germans have never been to Oktoberfest and don't want to go.
#8
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.
#9
Frog legs? I mean. Frog are better eating up mosquitos than being chased for food. But we do eat snails and they are very good.
#10
Jellied eels, 99.9% of British people have never had them. They are only found to my knowledge in one area of London.
#11
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.
#13
I would love to say surströmming. But people eat that rancid stuff every summer. I don't know why.
#14
What I've seen in American Chinese restaurants. Well most of them. No one in China ever heard of general tso chicken.
#16
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.
#17
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.
#18
“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.
#19
I’m Hungarian, and I don’t know anybody who eats goulash regularly. I wouldn’t say that nobody eats it ever, but I really don’t think it’s as common as tourists believe.
#20
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.
#21
Probably cucumber sandwiches, it’s something a small number of people have occasionally but pretty uncommon.
#22
We don’t eat Schnitzel and Kaiserschmarrn near as much as anyone thinks we do. It’s delicious, but generally a once a week thing, max.
#24
Not a food a drink. Sangría, people drink tinto de verano which has less alcohol but tastes better imo.
#25
I wouldn't say that nobody in Thailand eats Phad Thai, it's certainly a relatively popular dish.
But certainly not something eaten daily or even weekly for most people here.
Despite being the big dish tourists tend to enjoy, that is on every menu and touristy night market.
The actual local favourite is Kra Pao (Garlic/Chili/Basil Stir Fry) with rice and of course, a fried egg.
#26
Turkish delight.
Yes, it is sold here, and when it is well-made it is tasty, but it is just one out of a few thousand traditional candies and sweets available, and not remotely the most popular one. Honestly, they are kinda bland compared to the other options. Even candy coated roasted chickpeas probably get more mileage, and those are so old fashioned they have become nostalgia bait.
#27
Surströmming - the fermented herring that comes in a can and smell like a dead body rotting in a sewage. First of all, it’s only a specialty in Norrland, the northernmost part of Sweden where 10 % of the country’s population lives. Second - even there, they eat it once a year.
#28
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.
#29
Deepfried mars bars in Scotland, tbh they deep fry anything here lol....
Deep fried pizza, gads.
#30
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.
#31
The Schabziger. A green cheese (yes, green) that is said to last very long and who has a flavor as strong as Parmesan. Typical east swiss, from the Alps, but I don't know anyone eating it at all.
#32
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.
#33
“shrimp on the barbie” it’s legit just not a thing. not sure where the stereotype came from.
#34
That deep-fired butter thing kinda looks like smoutebollen (or Oliebollen if you're Dutch). Probably less butter in the stuff we have at our fairs though.
I don't think we have a stereotypical food that nobody actually eats, though. Waffles are genuinely popular to the point we have different versions, we love us some chocolate, beer, moules frites or more standard chips/fries.
#35
Anything you see in the US section of a European grocery store. Except peanut butter. Peanut butter rules.
#37
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.
#38
Scorpion I guess, every tourist seems to try it but Thai people will not touch it with a 10 meter pole.
Worms are fine, I also eat them from time to time.
#39
Casù Marzu. I’m from Sardinia and it’s very uncommon to eat some but tourists love to pay a lot to have a bite of this cheese ( which is illegal to sell at now).
#40
I asked for Swedish pancakes around Stockholm a few times and everyone looked at me like I was a weirdo. Apparently Swedish pancakes are only for little children and rarely served in a restaurant anywhere.
#41
Toast sandwich, I tried it because it’s often brought up on the internet as an example of how dumb British food is (and I did actually think it was nicer than I expected) but no one else I’ve spoken to in the UK has even heard of it, let alone tried it.
#43
Burritos
I have been looking all over what a burrito is and it matches other Mexican dishes, so I am not sure what is called a burrito.
#44
Even though lamb is one of our biggest exports it is often quite expensive here and kind of seen as a luxury . international market pressure and our isolation means they're not going to sell it to us cheap( when they can earn more for it by exporting ) and there isn't really cheap imported alternatives. often what is left are the lower quality cuts anyway.
#45
Reindeer meat. I mean, yeah, you can find it in some form in most stores and a lot of restaurants have some sort of reindeer dish or two on their menu. But that stuff is expensive, no one is eating that stuff daily or weekly.
#46
Im not Thai but it was quite surprising how Thai dont actually eat pad thai that often or ever at all.
#48
Not a food but a drink for Turkiye: apple tea! Every tourist who has been there raves about it, meanwhile Turks be like “?????”.
And definitely surströmming for Sweden, which only became a thing outside of Sweden because of social media and internet challenges. I remember getting such a kick out of them bringing it out in an episode of a Japanese variety show (Arashi no Shukudai-kun) in the 00’s, before social media. It was such a novelty then. .
#49
Mainly all the insane fried foods you hear about. Most of those are fair foods. They're absurd novelties that come once a year during special festivities and are actually rather expensive because they're novel. You don't eat it because it's good, you eat it because you won't find it anywhere else and it's the curiosity of it.
#51
I don't really know are there any stereotypical Finnish foods that no one seems to eat but couple of days ago some tourist wrote that Finnish people always do campfire sweet buns on stick. I had never heard about that before. I googled that and apparently some people make campfire bread and sweet buns in many countries, by twisting the dough around a stick. I have visited camp sites several times in Finland and every time people just put sausages and marshmallows to the end of the stick.
#53
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.
#54
Most French people have never eaten snails and find the idea off putting. I’m not one of them. I have eaten snails and I’m gonna say it: it’s pretty good.
#55
Kholodets and rassolnik. It's not that no one eats them (the older generation might), but if they're offered to a foreigner, it's likely a test of their strength.
#56
Honestly, I don't think any of the mainstream foods in the Levantine cuisine are rarely eaten, all of them are regularly consumed
Though there are foods that are commonly eaten in the levant but are not known outside the levant.
#57
I'm not sure how stereotyped it is, but not everyone likes guinea pigs here. It's more of a mountain people food, ans even then, it's something that's eaten in special occasions.
I do like them, tho, even if I'm not from the mountains myself.
#60
Beans on toast, people here do eat beans but beans on toast is 100% not a thing like Americans always claim it is, it’s something the older generations ate during ww2 and for a while afterwards when a lot of people were poor, but it’s died out as a common meal and isn’t really a thing anymore. Some people will eat it as a rare nostalgia thing like, and students still do at times, but it’s not some common daily British meal like the Americans think, it’s something people eat very rarely, tastes nice but isn’t a common meal.
Like we do like the taste of beans on toast, it is nice, it’s just not something we all eat a lot like the Americans seem to think, it’s a rare meal people might have just because they feel like it.
#62
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.
#63
Chili, nobody here eats that, maybe in the northern states but is definitely more of a TexMex (American influenced by Mexican) thing.
What do you think ?
persephone134 5 months ago
I like trying out local foods. However, there are certain specialties I'd still boycott, such as whale meat (Iceland, Japan) or dog meat (if it's even true that people still eat it in places such as Korea?)
LakotaWolf (she/her) 5 months ago (edited)
When my ex was still my boyfriend, he spent a semester in China while he was in law school (his school had a branch of NAPALSA at it, for Asian/Pacific Islander law students.) He's Chinese himself, but was born in the US (though his parents are immigrants.) The group was staying in the Guangdong province. He said one time he and his group were walking through an area that had a lot of street food stalls, and a vendor offered him some meat on a stick, which he took and ate. The vendor then informed him it was dog meat. Ex said it was tough, gamy, and not tasty at all, though he's not sure it was ACTUALLY dog or if the vendor was just trying to shock him. It's illegal to eat dog meat anywhere in China nowadays except for in the city of Shenzhen (which is in Guangdong) as it's apparently a tradition to do so there. And yes, dog meat IS still consumed in Korea as well, though its popularity is declining as more people come to view dogs as pets. There's even a breed, the Nureongi, specifically bred as a "meat dog". Though, in 2027, it will become fully illegal to breed and s!aughter dogs for meat in South Korea. I'd personally never eat dog meat myself unless it was the literal apocalypse and I had no other food source - and even then, I'd probably die before I ate one of MY dogs. I'd be willing to be THEIR food source before I'd be willing to let them be MY food source XD
Load More Replies... persephone134 5 months ago
I like trying out local foods. However, there are certain specialties I'd still boycott, such as whale meat (Iceland, Japan) or dog meat (if it's even true that people still eat it in places such as Korea?)
LakotaWolf (she/her) 5 months ago (edited)
When my ex was still my boyfriend, he spent a semester in China while he was in law school (his school had a branch of NAPALSA at it, for Asian/Pacific Islander law students.) He's Chinese himself, but was born in the US (though his parents are immigrants.) The group was staying in the Guangdong province. He said one time he and his group were walking through an area that had a lot of street food stalls, and a vendor offered him some meat on a stick, which he took and ate. The vendor then informed him it was dog meat. Ex said it was tough, gamy, and not tasty at all, though he's not sure it was ACTUALLY dog or if the vendor was just trying to shock him. It's illegal to eat dog meat anywhere in China nowadays except for in the city of Shenzhen (which is in Guangdong) as it's apparently a tradition to do so there. And yes, dog meat IS still consumed in Korea as well, though its popularity is declining as more people come to view dogs as pets. There's even a breed, the Nureongi, specifically bred as a "meat dog". Though, in 2027, it will become fully illegal to breed and s!aughter dogs for meat in South Korea. I'd personally never eat dog meat myself unless it was the literal apocalypse and I had no other food source - and even then, I'd probably die before I ate one of MY dogs. I'd be willing to be THEIR food source before I'd be willing to let them be MY food source XD
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