I guess we can all agree that now it’s easier to get whatever you can think of: accessories, clothing, shoes, electronics, books, magazines, etc., from all around the world. However, there are still some things that are hard to get in a certain country. Especially when we talk about food and drinks.
Reddit users were asked: “What common foods in your country are considered delicacies by foreigners?” The list of things that people love but find hard to get in their country goes on and on, from common things such as tap water or bread to caviar, rare meat, or maple syrup. These not only include products but also various dishes that are hard to make right. One of the things that some people named were French pastries. Even though you can find a baguette or croissant in almost every country, people still find these pastries to be best made by the French. And it seems that people who find them seize the opportunity to savor them as much as possible. So, if you are French, don’t be surprised to see a person with 12 or so baguettes going down the street. Also, some people were surprised to find that caviar is found as a delicacy, while for them, it’s a common food. The question that has almost 47k upvotes received many more funny yet understandable answers.
Do you have any foods that didn't make it to the list? Then don’t forget to leave them in the comments down below!
More Info: Reddit
#1
Stroopwafel
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#2
French here so, a lot of our food. If there's one thing we know how to do, it's exporting our food as fancy delicacies.The truth is, apart from pastries/desserts which can be pretty complicated to put together (the effort to make even just twelve croissants...), most French food is just peasant stuff spruced up for the modern times. The logic is almost always:
Take a cheap-ish cut of meat
Cook it either in wine or in broth for a few hours with a bunch of onions and whatever herbs grow nearby
Add carrots/potatoes, enjoy
That's the basis for bœuf bourguignon, coq au vin, gigot d'agneau, pot-au-feu, blanquette de veau, etc. If you want to get fancy you can wrap it in pastry, and that's another dozen French specialties right there.
There's not really a way to f**k it up, really. It's meat, cooked at low heat over several hours, with a bunch of aromatic herbs; as long as you've got a sturdy pot and you don't let it dry, you'll get something in the range from edible to delicious.
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#3
We had some Japanese exchange students at our university in the US, and when they saw the cubed melon on the salad bar (the standard watermelon/cantaloupe/honeydew mix), they thought we were living like royalty. Apparently melon is a really expensive, special occasion food over there.
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#4
Hmm, forest berries perhaps.I live in Finland. We have a lot of forests, so lot of berries such as blueberries and lingonberries. Everyman's Rights mean that you can just go and pick as much as you can find. It's kinda one of those things where if you live near any forested area, and are willing to spent time there come late summer, you'll probably have enough to last until next year in your freezer.
We have so much berries that people from poorer countries (Thailand is a common one for some reason) are hired to pick them up, because doing berrypicking enough to actually profit monetarily is heavy work, and apparently the pay isn't worth it for most Finns.
At the same time, forest berries are considered a superfood around the world, very healthy and trendy. Dunno about actual delicacy status, but definitely a difference in how we think about them.
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#5
Water, our tap water is perfect and no local ever buys bottled (iceland)A lot of people are mentioning the sulfur smell of the hot water, and that depends on the area. For example where I live the hot water comes directly from a nearby hot spring area so naturally its gonna have a smell. Locals dont smell it though.
For drinking water you just need to run the tap for a bit, that will get any hot water outta the pipes and bring you spring water.
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#6
Avocados here in Mexico, pretty common and cheap
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#7
Hawaii has somehow turned spam into a sought after food, especially by visitors from Japan.
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#8
a good baguette. I've seen american tourist walk out of a bakery with like 12 of them. Slow down dude, they are made all day long, you don't need that many
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#9
I worked for a charity in Iraq for a year and we'd buy a dozen lamb chops for the equivalent of $5. That's like $60 to buy in the US and it's worse quality.
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#10
(good) olive oil.
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#11
It was supposed to be caviar, but now it's also unaffordable for us. cries in Russian
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#12
Good french pastries and stuff like croissant and "pain au chocolat", we call them "viennoiserie" in french, no idea if there is a specific word for it in english.Obviously in France they are super easy to find in any bakery and they are cheaper. It's so common that honestly not a lot of people do go buy some croissants every day.
Macarons are also relatively easy to find, usually they are made in special shops but some bakery do make them.
Oh, and if you go to France or go to a (GOOD) french bakery in your country, try a Paris-Brest . You will not regret it.
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#13
I'm from Russia and I had an acquaintance who was going to marry an Irish guy. They lived in Russia for some time the guy went completely bonkers for caviar of capelin fish. It's not really a delicacy, it's not rare or expensive at all (probably approx $2.5-3 a can) but he liked it so much he wanted to bring a crate of it for their wedding in Europe. Needless to say his soon to be wife wife was not amused (imagine wanting to bring a crate of peanut butter or something to your wedding).
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#14
Speculaas/Speculoos/Biscoff cookies. Delicacy might be a big word but people seem to loose their minds over these cookies.They're originally from Belgium & the Netherlands.
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#15
Prosciutto. Like, it's just ham, guys. No biggie.
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#16
Halloumi cheese. It's a huge staple in Cyprus and we eat it all the times but in the US I only ever see it as Barbaques and sometimes at exotic cheese plates.For the halloumi lovers out there try white bread, halloumi and strawberry jam. You are welcome
Try halloumi with watermelon. A groundbreaking combo that is the staple of many summer evenings
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#17
Fried Chicken, it's actually become a special holiday meal in countries like japan where you have to reserve your bucket weeks in advance! (mainly because of clever marketing)But here, people would laugh so hard at that, cause it's just fried chicken!
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#18
Jamón serrano, here in Spain is really common and you can find very good product for a very affordable price.
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#19
As Italian living in Germany I can say that basically every food from my culture is considered fancy here.A couple of days ago I saw an Arancino ( cheap fried rice cake ) sold for 5€
In Italy a good Arancino is 1€
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#20
I live in Japan but I’m from the US. Whenever I go back home I buy a few bags of Lindt chocolates from the drugstore as souvenirs. They’re dirt cheap in the US, but for whatever reason they’re a luxury chocolate in Japan, and the same bags would cost $30 here.
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#21
Krainer wurst or carniolan sausage, protected by EU for being slovenian speciality that can only be made here but loved and eaten by milions of germans and austrians.It's the name that can't be used if made outside of Slovenia and sold commercialy not the actual sausage.
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#22
Reindeer meat, wild blueberries and cloudberries.
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#23
Do maple syrup or poutine count? I know at the least, in university I had a friend who came up from the US and thought poutine was the greatest thing ever. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised more of the US hasn't adopted it. Fries, cheese curds, and gravy, sounds more like an American thing. Not sure what other country's opinions on it are.
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#24
Butter Chicken.As an Indian staying in Europe, I hate butter chicken because it has taken over Indian cuisine in Europe and noone wants to try the real stuff.
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#25
Barbecue.I live in Texas and any time anyone comes from out of state we HAVE to go get barbecue.
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#26
An indian prepared bajji on master chef AustraliaBajji is available at every 5 blocks or so.
The whole recipe is cut onion/potato, coat it with gramflour and spice and fry. Indians who saw that surely laughed
(In south indian states bhaji is called bajji)
Image credits: lonewolfman003
#27
Depending on where in the US you live, lobster, king crab, Dungeness crab, abalone, spotted prawns, geoduck, etc. can be pretty cheap, normal food but for foreigners they go nuts over these things because they are so expensive elsewhere.
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#28
Pheasant. I grew up in South Dakota and we hunted pheasants every day during the season. In college it was a cheap source of food and ate it all the time. In Central and South American countries it is a delicacy and people could not believe I ate it every day.
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#29
are quail eggs delicacies? because I could just buy them at a grocery store here like normal eggs but I rarely ever hear of them anywhere else
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#30
Especially in my region its called "blutwurst" roughly translated as "blood sausage" or "black pudding" and i hate it
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#31
Piña Coladas i guess. Here in PR you can get them absolutely everywhere with or without alcohol, its mostly just a refreshing drink.
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#32
Timtams
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#33
I've had American friends ask me to send over Cadbury chocolate. IMO it's not as nice as it used to be since it was bought out by Kraft (the irony!) but people still go nuts for it.#34
In my experience a lot of common everyday French foods are high-end specialty foods here in the US. In France, every corner store I went to sold the type of cheese, charcuterie, and pâté that you'd have to go to Whole Foods for here. And it isn't particularly expensive, it's just normal food. Like I went to a little grocer in Paris and got pieces of 4 different cheeses, and I thought, this is going to be like $28. No, it was like $6. I'm just used to what Whole Foods charges. I went to a big department store in the Paris suburbs and there was just an aisle that had all the dry-cured ham and such and tins of pâté, laid out as casually as Lunchables in the US. It's just regular food.#35
Any kind of sheep meat. Lamb, mutton, etc.In non-sheep countries it can be quite expensive. Here it is the cheapest meat and commonly used instead of pork as the "filler meat" in grocery store products such as sausages.
Also, fresh fish - the fish processing time is pretty short here, with fish instantly getting unloaded and sent to factories after the boats arrive, and then quickly processed and sold to consumers - so that the fish is even fresher than in some other seaside countries.
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#36
Kofta: it's so simple to make, you need ground beef and tons of spices and cook them in the grill or bbq.#37
Carnitas, literally something i see prepared on the side of the street everyday#38
Fried plantains, or mofongo, Wich is just more fried plantains mashed with garlic and some Bs toppings.
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#39
Durian. The number of durian farmers who have found overnight wealth are astonishing due to export demandDue to land scarcity, the durian you have tasted are either from Malaysia (where I'm from) or Thailand. Singapore and China are our biggest exporters.
Also, during pre-covid times, hundreds of coaches ferrying Chinese tourists would visit these commercialised durian orchards on a daily basis for their durian fix. They are offered an all-you-can eat service for a fix price. In other words, it's a durian buffet !
My family owns about few hundred trees of durian on our land but it's only for own comsumption and we'll share it with our friends&family when the harvest is huge. We are far from commercial scale.
Durian is an acquired taste and very polarizing. You either love it or hate it. I'm the latter and the only one in my family, to the dismay of my family. Growing up around the scent, it doesn't bother me. Just dislike the taste. However, I still respect it as the King of the Fruit!
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#40
Goji berries. We put that stuff in our soups and many people pick that out when they drink the soup.
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#41
Gulyás in Hungary is a common soup dish. But for other countries it is uncommon.#42
Morel Mushrooms. I never had them though.#43
Crawfish Etouffee#44
Not just my country but my locality... scallops.#45
Feijoada. In its core it's working class food, though usually a fancier version is considered a delicacy. And it's rarely as good as the real thing btw.Also those are not as known but when I lived abroad I blew people's mind with pão de queijo and brigadeiro, which are incredibly common and easy to make.
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#46
Stella Artois, apparently. I've seen it being served on a tray with a little glass of nuts and whatnot abroad. You don't get that with a Stella or in fact any pils-style beer over here...#47
Poutine or maple syrup#48
Bier and Brezeln#49
HotDogs :D I'm a foreigner and I consider HotDogs and Taco Bell Delicacies.#50
KFC in China. They can't get enuff of that sh*t.from Bored Panda https://bit.ly/3w8j6Hu
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