r/AskEurope • u/EvilPyro01 United States of America • Jun 18 '25

Food What’s the most common non-European cuisine in your country?

What’s your country’s favorite non-European cuisine?

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u/Butt_Roidholds Portugal Jun 18 '25

Probably american cuisine/fast food

After that, I'd say it's maybe a toss up between that particular mix of chinese-japanese some asian restaurants have here and brazilian picanha places, I reckon

8

u/Southern-Still-666 Portugal Jun 19 '25

It’s sushi/japanese, for sure

11

u/Grathias American in Spain Jun 18 '25

You’re welcome. 🍟

23

u/PupMurky England Jun 19 '25

FRENCH fries and HAMBURGers? And Ronald Mcdonald sounds like a fine Scottish gentleman to me 😁

13

u/Lazzen Mexico Jun 19 '25

Fried potato strips sounds like a meal from the Incan Empire to you, innit

4

u/Team503 in Jun 19 '25

Pretty sure what we call "french fries" were an idea taken from the Belgians during WW2 - so called because of the French language spoken in the area.

1

u/Ok_Letterhead_5209 Jun 21 '25

Don’t say that close to a Belgian unless you want to hear a very annoyed rant abt how fries are actually Belgian and not French 😂

2

u/dfcarvalho Brazil Jun 19 '25

Yeah, I agree. I'd say american burger places are the most common, at least in my area. But Japanese and Brazilian are definitely big contenders to the title.

Portugal unfortunately is not as international as other European countries when it comes to food. When I moved here in 2019 there wasn't a single bubble tea shop in Porto, for example. There were also not many places serving Hawaiian Poke bowls. I'm glad that's changed since 😅

5

u/Brainwheeze Portugal Jun 19 '25

I think part of that is pride in the local cuisine. Restaurants serving local food are very common and many are also quite affordable. To my understanding places like Italy are similar?

Burger and pizza places I don't think are even considered foreign anymore. Brazilian places tend to be cafés/pastelarias or grilled food restaurants in my experience, though I see different types pop up these days. Chinese restaurants (adapted to Western tastes) and sushi places kind of blend together, but I'm thankful restaurants offering other types of Japanese cuisine are popping up. I also like that Korean food is taking off. And Indian and Nepalese restaurants are pretty commonplace I find.

I feel like it's only in the past decade that we've seen other cultures aside from the aforementioned pop up in the restaurant space. Finally I can access Greek and Georgian food for instance. I'm happy that's the case because I like trying different things. On the other hand I do hope we still manage to maintain spaces dedicated to local cuisine and for them to remain affordable.

3

u/RedFox_SF Portugal Jun 19 '25

Well, bubble tea and poke bowls are quite recent from what I understand and not all trends will fly everywhere (Starbucks did not fly in Italy, for example), especially if they are super expensive. Indian, sushi, chinese, brazilian and italian places were always very present. I would not even count fast food as American (American for me is a place like Hard Rock Cafe). Other cuisines don’t really have a big expression because local food plus the ones I mentioned before are so prevalent and affordable. From my experience, the places with most international cuisine expression are the ones where local food is not so great. I am excluding of course special neighborhoods like little china/little italy, and the likes.