Tag Archives: The World’s Saddest Cuisines

The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Estonia

Posted on May 24, 2017 | 6 comments

“Oh…oh no.  It’s another Russia-bordering country.  This is going to be so sad.”

~AFFotD’s Resident Food Critic

estonia

We know America does food better than any other country, primarily because when other countries make good things, we just steal it ourselves and make it bigger and better. We didn’t invent pizza, but have you had pizza in Italy? Our staff has.  t’s, like, fine. America does it much better, with a few notable exceptions.  Now, there are other countries that have great food as well (Italy’s still got us beat in the pasta game , for example).

And there are countries that have bad food.  But we don’t care about any of those countries. No, we take interest in countries whose food is not just generally bad, but wholeheartedly depressing in ways that cling to your soul.  We don’t know what caused our fascination with nations whose recipe books come pre-streaked with tears, but we’re not going to stop now.

Our latest nation with food that makes us so, so sad? The small Russia-adjacent nation of Estonia.  Strap in, this is going to be a doozy.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines:  Estonia

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Mordvinia

Posted on January 18, 2017 | 4 comments

“Wait, so this is depressing even for RUSSIA?  Jesus.”

~AFFotD’s Food Critic

 mordvinia

We very clearly love food here, but we also love calling out other countries for how bad their food is. Granted, it’s not particularly noteworthy to have bad food (cough, sup England) or weird food (how you living, Japan). But we prefer to focus on depressing food cultures. Like, yes, Iceland eats rotted fermented shark, and that’s gross, but the fact that they ferment everything because they can’t afford to import salt, or that the shark has to be fermented so that it stops being poisonous is legitimately depressing.

So we are here to keep our proud tradition of looking at rich, steeped culinary histories and going, “Oh God, that’s so sad.” Now let’s hop on a plane to the federal subject of Russia, Mordvinia, where things get depressing, even for Russia.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Mordvinia

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Wherein AFFotD Denounced the Culinary Lies Perpetuated By the Brainless Fools Behind thetoptens.com

Posted on June 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

“Were you born without goddamn taste buds?”

~AFFotD Staffers reading The Top Tens’ list of Countries With the Worst Food

food pic

Occasionally, we have been known to read websites other than our own.  It goes against our general ego-centric, ignorance-embracing lifestyle that we’ve worked very hard to foster, but it happens. Granted, most of the time we wander to the other darker corners of the internet, we find horrific, un-American things, so we try to limit how often we stray out, because the doctors have been telling us for years that we gotta start watching our blood pressure.

Anyway, this brings us to the purpose of today’s article. In researching for our lovely borderline-xenophobic series, The World’s Saddest Cuisines, we stumbled across an article from thetoptens.com that claimed to list the 10 Countries with the worst food in the world.

We were interested. Would they include Armenia? Botswana? Oh, God, Latvia?

What we clicked was, very possibly, the most wrong a top 10 list has ever been about anything in the history of the internet.

Fuck you, thetoptens.com, we’re going to write an article about how shit you are now.

Wherein AFFotD Denounced the Culinary Lies Perpetuated By the Brainless Fools Behind thetoptens.com

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Iceland

Posted on April 26, 2016 | 3 comments

“The horror. The fermented horror.”

~Tourists looking at a list of Icelandic dishes

hanging meats

Iceland is a country so far north that you basically never see the sunlight during their winters, which are only made somewhat tolerable, temperature wise, because when God made that island as somewhere no one would try to live he forgot about the volcanoes he accidentally put there.

When “well, the cold’s not so bad, thanks to the volcanoes” is something an entire nation can say, it’s probably not surprising that their culinary culture embraces “bad, depressing foods” that existed solely to make sure 300,000 or so crazy Norse people could muster up just enough energy not to starve or freeze.

Now, Iceland is a perfectly lovely country, and apparently is very beautiful to visit in the summer. That being said, here’s what Icelandic people have to say about Icelandic winters.

Anyway, rich culture notwithstanding, we took a look at the kind of meals you can expect from traditional Icelandic cooking and discovered, well, that it’s going to be our next installment in our ongoing series, The World’s Saddest Cuisines. So let’s dive in.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines:  Iceland

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Djibouti

Posted on April 5, 2016 | 2 comments

“I mean, it’s not as bad as the Balkans, but that’s not saying much.”

~AFFotD’s World Food Critic

djibouti stew

We’ve talked a few times in the past about the culinary practices of other countries that we find to be, in a word, depressing as shit.

Okay, we used three words there, but two of them are superfluous because we dream of someday being paid to write by the word.

But the point stands—as great as America is at cramming delicious foods into our stomachs at alarming rates, or finding cheap ways to maintain our impressive obesity goals, there are maybe even dozens of other countries that exist outside of here. We know, it’s shocking. There might even be like, 30 other countries in the world for all we know.

And not all of them come blessed with a local cuisine that is worth being Americanized and turned into an award winning fusion restaurant in the States. So for every Italy, we have an Armenia.

And we decided to start a series where we’d occasionally take the time to look at one of these lesser known national food styles and list off the dishes that are so sad they make us feel like holding a puppy until the world starts to make sense again.

Speaking of puppies…oh, no, thank God, this country doesn’t come anywhere close to eating puppies. But they still have some food options that are extreme bummers. Come with us on a boat or whatever to…

The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Djibouti

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Armenia

Posted on December 1, 2015 | 21 comments

“Oh, sweet mother of…”

~The average American looking at an Armenian restaurant menu

armenian food

We recently began a new article series where we described to you some of the most terrifying and, well, depressing national cuisines around the world. We started things off with Latvia, because we felt like you hadn’t had a good cry in a long time.

This time around, we’re going to take our xenophobic discussion of gross food that is weird and wrong compared to American food all the way to Armenia, where everything is soup, and everything is awful.

We’ll also be going pretty hard out of our way to avoid making jokes about that whole “Armenian genocide” thing because, as a general rule of thumb, genocide jokes are not funny and they never will be funny until douchebags who aggressively hit on their bartenders become their own ethnic group.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines:  Armenia

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The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Latvia

Posted on October 27, 2015 | 65 comments

“This is what you guys eat for dinner?  Great, now I’m hungry AND sad.”

~Tourists in Latvia

 latvian food

America, in case you didn’t get the memo, is better than all the rest of you wannabe country motherfuckers out there. That’s just a basic truth, and if you disagree with it you’re either French or one of those jerkwads that writes those magazine articles about “happiness indexes.”

Why is America great? Our education and health care system? Okay, don’t be a sarcastic asshole, we’re asking a serious question here.

Well, many of you shouted all sorts of great things, like freedom, whiskey, and we’re pretty sure we heard someone shout “the world’s largest charcoal grill in Magnolia, Arkansas” which, um, that’s definitely unique but hey we’ll give it to you.

But if you ask us, of the many, many aspects of America we truly love, there’s one that tends to take a special place in our heart. Well, yes, booze, but we’re talking about something that has a special place in our heart because it’s physically lodged there.

That’s right, America’s tradition of culinary excellence. We make amazing food! Horrifically unhealthy, sure, but amazing nonetheless.

Which is what brings us to our latest series here at AFFotD. While America is clearly the pinnacle of the food world (sit down and shut up, France) there are other countries whose national cuisines, the food they grew up eating out of a sense of identity and history, are…well, pretty depressing.

So we’re going to take some time to tell you about countries who don’t just do food worse than us, they do food worse in us in a way that we don’t even want to make fun of them for it, we just feel kind of bad for the poor guys. Plus, we’re totally going to make fun of them.

The World’s Saddest Cuisines:  Latvia

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