What are your favorite 5 cuisines?

I’ve been really happy with a Slovenian brand of juice called Fructal , for their sour cherry and black currant juices. Better than the Polish Hortex brand.

So many languages use visne/ visnia/ vissino or other related words for sour cherries throughout the Former Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.

Indian
Mexican
Italian
Chinese
Persian

I’ll resist the temptation to break those down into regions. Barbecue doesn’t make my list because eventhough there are regional variations, I consider barbecue to more of a method than a fully developed cuisine.

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I like so many things so this is hard to answer.
Not in any particular order (pick any 5 of the following):

  • Taiwanese

  • Vietnamese

  • German & Austrian - They have some similar dishes but varies a lot regionally.

  • “Japanese” - Specifically cuisine of the southern islands.

  • Seafood-heavy cuisine - Portuguese, Japanese.

  • Tomato and aubergine-heavy cuisine - Turkish/“Italian”

  • “Middle Eastern”/Mediterranean

I also love cheese and potatoes but don’t want to mention specific nations as it’s too broad.

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  1. Japanese
  2. French
  3. Lebanese
  4. Cantonese-Chinese
  5. Keralite-Indian
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Diner
Pub
Hot Dog Cart
Ice Cream
Bakery

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Those are foods, not cuisines, no?

Fun list in any event.

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No Malaysian/Peranakan??

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My five for eating in restaurants.

Italian (preference for Northern cuisine, from Tuscany up, and especially Emilia Romagna and Veneto). Also because of the wines. I just love Italian food (but only in Italy…)

Cantonese (love how they are using a wide array of cooking techniques, from deep frying to blanching, and also just when making one dish; using every part of the animal, focus on vegetables, and just general technique and recipes from older generations being kept alive)

General South East Asian (Singapore, Thailand especially)

Spain (amazing seafood, very bold flavours)

French, mostly because of the interplay with their wines.

(Special mention at number 6 for Japanese)

At home, I mostly cook French and Italian because where I live in Northern Europe I can get their local produce, and their cuisine fits the local weather. If I were to live in Hong Kong for example I would be cooking Cantonese, and hardly any French or Italian.

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Hot Dog & Ice cream are a stretch but I’ll defend Diner, Pub (though I should’ve said Irish/English Pub), & Bakery. :yum:

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Diner cuisine.

Hot Dog Cuisine, definitely.

Hot Dogs! I want a Sonoran hot dog right now.

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Measured against the other cuisines, no. :smile:

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It’s so hard to find good ones in Toronto that the few we have automatically get a bigger following than a Cantonese restaurant because we have so many Cantonese restaurants and so few Malaysian or Peranakan options. Even fewer Macanese, if any, right now. Very little in terms of Indonesian, except for my friend’s 2 Dutch Indonesian places.

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Not sure about bakery, since offerings will vary wildly depending on the country.

For Malaysian restaurants, I guess it’s always easy to get a larger slice of the pie if there are fewer of you. Less competition.

I hear from Singaporean & Malaysian friends who’d been to Toronto that the Cantonese restaurants at your end are actually better than what we have here.

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I’ll just crib your list, and add mention’s of Hawai’ian, French, Mexican and Korean.

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(from Charles? Our friend? cc @THECHARLES ) I don’t know, and what do I know anyways? :joy: I will leave it to the experts.

(I know what I like, I’m a little obsessed with redang and laksa, and I’m seeking out a Hainanese chicken rice in TO. But the Singaporean spot/ French cheese shop in my neighborhood of Little Italy closes at 4 pm and I was too late yesterday)

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I’m a fan of everything in the nightshade family, too … save for tobacco.

For eggplant, Georgia (err Sakartvelo), Japan, China, and Bangladesh also do it well.

And re: the tomato – perhaps my favorite food – Andalucia.

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I loved checking Hawaiian regional dishes off my list, on my first visit to Maui, Kauai and Oahu, in 2019.

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Nowadays, almost all of my favorite cuisines have a ’ Japanese ’ component influence to them, be they French/Japanese fusion, Nordic/Japanese fusion, Spanish/Japanese fusion, Peruvian/Japanese fusion…etc!!
Only one that managed to escape this invasion is ‘Chinese-Cantonese’?!!

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Oh no, dear Charles, to his credit, has never, ever hinted that Toronto’s Cantonese spots are better than those in Singapore.

But it’s almost an accepted notion in Singapore that one can get better Cantonese in Toronto, due to the proliferation of good HK chefs over there, plus the availability of good produce/ingredients.

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