things i miss about america, part 2

seeing as i still have nothing interesting to blog about, i figure i shall discuss another chapter of things i miss in america. this will not become some anti-nz blog or whatever, but yeah.

burgers

saying i miss burgers sounds so silly. thanks to mcdonald's and such that you can get a good burger anywhere, right? first off, i'm obviously not talking about fast food burgers, because of course by and large a mcdonald's burger tastes pretty much the same everywhere. there might be some slight differences from country to country, but beef is beef.

i'm talking about burgers in restaurants, at home, etc. here it seems a burger means to not take ground beef (or what they call mince here) and form it in a patty and cook. oooh no, that'd be too easy, i guess. here you take the mince and put all sorts of crap in it. to me, you only mess around with the mince when you're making meatloaf. then it's perfectly fine to go adding veggies and sauces to the meat, but if it's a burger? i want just meat and nothing else in that patty. it makes it taste weird, the texture is all off, and just overall ruins it.

even worse, kiwis like really weird shit on their burgers. i'm already kind of odd about just liking cheese only on a burger (though i do add ketchup - though they call that tomato sauce here - or barbecue sauce to it) and no tomato or whatever. but still, when you go to america and poll on burger toppings, you'll likely get: lettuce, tomato, maaaybe onions and pickles. as for sauces, probably ketchup and/or mustard, sometimes mayo. here, they put on the usual lettuce and tomato but then they go and add beets (which they call beetroot) to it too. wtf?? that doesn't belong on a burger! plus the veggies are called a salad. it's not a fucking salad! a salad is a side dish or if it's bigger, a meal. it's not a topping. even wikipedia agrees with me.

then there's the cheese. unsurprisingly, american cheese doesn't exist here. i can be a foodie, and i do like other cheeses, but to me this is the quintessential burger cheese. so sadly this means i need to find something else. for fast food they still either use american or something that looks an awful lot like it, unsurprisingly since they can afford to import it. tasty cheese seems to be the norm here. it's called tasty because apparently there's some big thing about calling cheddar cheese that when it's not produced in the cheddar region (either we don't have those laws in america or we just only get it from there, which i doubt) so it's a lot like cheddar. but i don't like it. i have nothing against cheddar cheese, but tasty cheese tastes like shit. it's okay when it's kind of hidden by other things (like lasagne, for example) but when it's a main ingredient like a cheeseburger it's gross. luckily there's smoky cheese which comes in slices and bars (i need to try putting it in lasagne or something) which is okay.

finally, the bread. bread is bread so this isn't really an issue.

in conclusion, the burgers here suck. at least i have fast food (mcdonald's tastes the same here as back home, and luckily burger king is actually good here instead of the bland crap back home. and wendy's is the same: shitty service at night, and the food is always a crapshoot.) that's consistent. i suppose it goes to show a burger and fries is the quintessential american meal, and at least here it's not really duplicated.