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Does anyone here actually consider Western food amongst their favorite cuisines?
Personally, I find American cuisine is downright trash-tier. My city is lauded by many as a "top-tier food city" but the examples people give of great food are pizza, hot dogs, burgers, Italian beef, and cheesesteak. Most of the ones I've tried I would call oil-drenched slop. None were actually delicious enough to justify the health detriments, especially when similarly unhealthy but better tasting options exist like Mexican tacos, Indian curry, Iranian kababs, Japanese ramen, Chinese hot pot, etc.
In my experience, this has applied to Western countries in general. Except for the Mediterranean-adjacent Italian, Spanish, and Greek, I don't think I've ever particularly enjoyed any other Western food. Do Canada, Australia, and New Zealand even have an identifiable cuisine? I don't know of any British, Nordic, or Slavic restaurants in my area. France is stereotyped as the culinary capital, but most of what I've had was overpriced and looked better than it actually tasted.
It may be that most of the hype around Western food is concentrated in fine-dining, in which I'm largely uninterested. When it comes to a more typical meal, I have a hard time putting any country (aside from Italy/Spain/Greece) above bottom tier when comparing to other regional cuisines from East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America.
So am I eating the wrong things, is my taste atypical for someone raised in the West, or is it relatively common for most Western cuisines to be clustered in the bottom-tier?
Non-mediterranean western food sucks. That's well known. The French are single handedly keeping the reputation up, but French lunch/dinner doesn't make it to Tier 1. Amazing desserts and baked items though.
Spanish is honestly quite underrated. Maybe I've just been lucky, but all my best meals have been in Spain. Contemporary Spanish blends Northern African & Latin American with existing Spanish food, to give you the best cuisine. The spanish can do preserved foods, meats, rice dishes, spicy food, everything.
(Note: Must be food food. Breakfast (bakery foods) & Dessert do not count. Alcohol only counts if part of the meal itself. )
My personal ranking goes (in order):
Tier 1
Tier 1.5
Tier 2
Tier dunno much but probably good
Tier bad
Everything else is mid.
A lot of Japanese food is extremely mid and bland, though. Dining in Tokyo is great but that’s because chefs have adopted all the best French methods and cook with rare precision (compared to the rest of the world). The best, most flavorful ramen is available outside of Japan reinvented by others who wanted more from it. Japanese curries are more bland than Currywurst. A lot of bland deep fried food, almost Dutch in character.
Sushi and wagyu are good but stand out because of the ingredients (and the same is true for other Northern Euro cuisines, one could say the same about British wild game or Dover sole or oysters for example). Eating in Japan is great but it is only rarely so because Japanese cuisine is.
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