I'm inclined to agree. I've lived in Japan (5 years), in San Francisco (6 years), and now live in Germany. The food quality goes Europe -> Japan -> USA, with a sharp drop between Japan and the USA.
I'm currently living in Leipzig, which still has bombed-out looking empty buildings from the time of the Iron Curtain (although things have finally been picking up over the past few years). And yet even here the infrastructure is better than in San Francisco or any other part of the USA I've visited. I'm originally from Canada, and I'm sad to say that, although some things are better than the USA (like the roads and the trash), it's not by much, and it's still terrible compared to the rest of the first world.
I'd ague that Japan's quality is a bit better than EU but also depends on what food you are used to. Mainly healthy options wise I think Japan stands out even more.
In much of the rural US, it’s easy (ask folks which farmstand they go to). In cities, it’s also pretty easy (asian or mexican grocery for non-organic, specialty produce shop if you want organic). The problem is the suburbs. Don’t live in the suburbs. If you must, get veggies at the farmer’s market.
Every suburb I've been in has a big box grocery store with a large selection of fresh produce. If you want something specific you might need to go to a specialty store, but there are plenty of vegetables where people buy groceries. You won't find them at gas stations, but nobody buys groceries at gas stations.
As identified in sibling posters, the issue with these vegetables, in as much as one exists, and speaking very broadly, is that they look pretty but are flavorless.
> On top of that, the tomatoes you see in those supermarkets have been bred for high yields and durability, not flavor. "As a farmer once said — an honest farmer — 'I don't get paid a cent for flavor,'" Estabrook says.
Which shops? That's true of the big chains (Safeway, Trader Joe's, Costco can be hit or miss), but you can get ugly-but-great-tasting fruit in plenty of the local produce markets.
What I meant to say was “as convenience food” as in already cooked and not a salad. Plenty of good stuff in stores, but not a lot from the available quick food places
Infrastructure in Leipzig is awesome because it was newly created after joining Western Germany for the money from westerners. Infrastructure in Western Germany is crap! My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains. Buildings of universities in Western Germany is a bad joke. University in Regensburg was literally collapsing while one in Dresden got many new buildings. It’s not fair comparison.
At least there are trains... and Munich in particular is slightly weird in that the subway (U-Bahn) is run by a municipal company and works very reliably given the amount of people they're moving, while the suburban trains (S-Bahn) are run by Deutsche Bahn and are often a mess at rush hour. In part that's due to the design flaw of having a massive central bottleneck.
Similarly for universities, the quality differs. Go to Munich's technical university and you'll see buildings in the top percentiles. Go to other universities and the substance is easily going to be much older - but then again, Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education.
Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?
> Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?
Literally any city in Asia (or at least Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, whose subway company has now branched out to run subways in many parts of the world like Stockholm). In one year of living in Nagoya the subway was late once.
That said it has a way more sensible layout than Munich where one failure in a central point does not cascade to paralyze the entire rest of the network. It is not the worst of course, since it is pretty extensive, but routing nearly every single line through Hbf or Sendlinger Tor couldn't ever have been a good idea.
Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education
That is true to some extent. However, the noise of the rainwater dripping into many buckets at the central library of the University of Regensburg made it hard to concentrate on anything.
That was around 2010. Not sure if the leaky roof has been fixed since. Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.
Exactly. People in Germany think that if your train is late it is the end of the world. Their trains and subways tend to be very clean and punctual, yet very affordable. In the US this is not true. BART in SF nowhere near to the quality of service in Munich.
You could say that not having public transportation is better than having crappy public transportation. And I'm not talking about some occasional hiccup but the fact is that Deutsche Bahn operated trains are an enormous shit show. They are constantly late or even cancelled. You buy a ticket for a train and few mins before the train is supposed to arrive the board will say "zug fellt aus" (train cancelled). Have fun waiting 20-40 mins for the next one. If you have to be somewhere on time then you're going to have look for an alternative way of transport and you have practically no recourse for recouping the cost of your wasted ticket money.
Now if the public transportation didn't exist you'd just shrug and go by your car saving yourself a whole bunch of stress and fist clenching and cursing.
A delay of 10m is different than a delay of 1h or a lack of public transport. The Munich Transport Corporation (MVG) guarantees a return of fare, equivalent to a full day's ticket, if they delay is more than 20m [0].
I've seen others, Arianna Grande on a amateur video amongst them, complaining about the diff in quality between European and US street food being inconceivable .
Even in NY, the traditional "American" food carts sell hotdogs, pretzels, ice cream or $1 pizza. All of which are IMO, pretty sub-par for street food. It is only since halal carts became a thing, that NY street food has started becoming alright. There are some other great food carts, but 1 off carts get overshadowed by the dozens of familiar NYC foods.
US's culinary strength lies in the diversity of cuisines. However, most affordable international food places are not opened by aspiring chefs. Rather, it is usually struggling immigrants who use it as a way to survive in the absence of other employable skills. While I respect the hustle, these people can obviously not cook at the same level as ones that run their operations in their country of origin out of more passion driven reasons.
When American born people with a passion for cooking start affordable restaurants in the cuisine of their roots, it is often heavily colored by their American upbringing. (which for me ends up meaning more sugar, more fat and less intense flavors) Not gate keeping, but at the end of the say the experiences of someone fully immersed in a culture will always be richer than those who've vicariously experienced them.
That being said, for every cuisine in every big city in the US, there is a gem. They can be hard to find, are often not the most accessible (non-commercial area, language barrier, sketchy hygiene), but damn are they worth it. The ability to have a gem for each cuisine of the world, is a trait possibly unique to the US metro cities and their biggest strength.
I visited Portland a few years ago and the quantity and quality of street food being offered was amazing. There were entire squares packed with vendors.
I enjoy the street food scene in London, but I'd choose Portland over it any day.
In China, street food might cost 20 yuan for a dish of something. The median income for all of China’s is 18,000 yuan.
In Portland, the median income is $53,230. A street dish might cost $10.
In China, street food is actually a lot more expensive than Portland, adjusting for median income levels. Even if you bought a dish for 10¥ it is still more than twice as expensive as Portland.
Are we to say that China’s street food ain’t street food? Because that’s what you are suggesting which basically means that no street food is street food.
I meant if it costs the same as a restaurant, it's not cheaper and thus I wouldn't call it street food. I wasn't comparing across cities. If a decent restaurant decides to ditch their downtown indoor restaurant, and decide to get a food cart and offer the same food for the same price as they did, is it really street food?
A number of popular food carts in Portland have a median price of $10 or above. For things like Mediterranean food I've often found restaurants charging the same or less. At the end of the day, I'm paying for the privilege of standing in the cold/rain.
Interesting, I was under the impression that the food quality in Japan was quite good. Although I suppose I have no reason to believe Europe would be any worse, or different.
What makes you say that Europe has a better food quality?
Japan is not as strict over antibiotics or general conditions in livestock.
Japan has a huge problem with counterfeit fish meat (substituting inferior, sometimes toxin tainted, different species meat).
Japan's non-seaweed vegetables are generally watery and not as nutrient rich as what you can get in Europe (rucola & feldsalat, for example). Their staple "vegetable" tends to be a nasty variety of cabbage, and daikon and pumpkin.
Bread in Japan is blanched wheat flour. In Europe there are dozens of grains to choose from. Even grau brot tastes amazing. Japan's XYZ pan couldn't even compare. Home cooked food in France was a truly magical experience.
Bio (organic) is very popular and very strictly regulated in Europe. In Japan they don't care as much, and in the USA its a joke.
It's relatively easy in Europe to get prepackaged foods (such as canned goods/soups & frozen foods) made strictly from first ingredients (there's nothing in the ingredients list you can't pronounce, or that you wouldn't add yourself if making it from scratch).
> What makes you say that Europe has a better food quality?
More space to grow food and a large open market between EU countries, whereas Japan grows a lot of rice on the very limited space they have and is very restrictive wrt. importing foods from abroad. Which is why you can good food in Japan but sometimes fruits are ridiculously expensive. Also, bread in Japan is terrible (but then again, good Japanese food in Europe is tricky too).
>I'm originally from Canada, and I'm sad to say that, although some things are better than the USA (like the roads and the trash), it's not by much, and it's still terrible compared to the rest of the first world.
If you're from Canada you probably realize that it's a big place, and impossible to draw sweeping generalizations about. Saying Canadian infrastructure is terrible "compared to the rest of the world" is an ignorant statement.
Well, I’ve been to Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and live in the GTA; it’s pretty terrible compared to the European cities I’ve visited. Better than Cambodia but Thailand and Vietnam are catching up. Comparing to Tokyo is laughable.
I'm currently living in Leipzig, which still has bombed-out looking empty buildings from the time of the Iron Curtain (although things have finally been picking up over the past few years). And yet even here the infrastructure is better than in San Francisco or any other part of the USA I've visited. I'm originally from Canada, and I'm sad to say that, although some things are better than the USA (like the roads and the trash), it's not by much, and it's still terrible compared to the rest of the first world.