One Cuisine to eat for the rest of your life

[phatch]

I've asked this question with good effect of some of my friends. I've also asked it for one restaurant to eat in for the rest of your life and found some sleeper restaurants that are very good.

Anyway, the poll option only gives me 10 types to list so I may not have picked your favorite. I tried to pick major gustatory groups but it's not possible to be complete or plsease everyone with my groupings. Just reply with your favorite in the thread if that's the case.

I'd pick Chinese. A wide range of flavors, textures and food stuffs. Good soups too. Plenty of celebratory holiday fare as well.

Phil

[shroomgirl]

American for me....there's Californian heavy in veg and fruits, Pacific NW with shrooms and seafood, Tex Mex, BBQ, Southern in all her glory, Midwest plain eatin', Cajun, Creole, PENN Dutch, NY with it's melting pot.........

Feels almost like cheating the quiz by saying USA

[ChefDrizzle]

id have to go with thai food.. really id be content with any asian style cooking but i enjoy spicy food and thai for me reigns supreme... cleans out the colon lol..

[KYHeirloomer]

I don't know if I could really live happily with just one.

And what, exactly, is "American" cuisine?, other than an amalgum of all the listed ones plus others.

In the end, I went with Mid-Eastern. But mentally I include the whole Eastern Meditaranian basin when I say that. With North Africa creeping in as well.

[George©]

Hands down I would choose Middle Eastern......no question about it imo.

[phatch]

Yes, where to draw boundaries is certainly an issue. Tex Mex and New York for example probably include some dishes I would rule out of American Cuisine to Shroom's consternation.

If one withdrew the greek influences from Italian food and the greek and italian influences from French what would be left? Is that fair to french cuisine which is still different from its influencing sources. So very difficult to draw and quantify boundaries for the question.

And I wouldn't want to limit myself to just one either.

But I think the topic starts some interesting conversations.

[bughut]

I'm happy to see my vote for Thai is doing well in the poll and i'm not surprised. Second choice would be middle eastern by the way. Like you KY I'm including Turkish and north African there too

[phoebe]

It's really tough, but I voted for Italian. There are so many regional differences and so much emphasis on fresh, local foods. And then there's all that wonderful wine!

[Blueicus]

I love every cuisine, but I'd really miss the one I grew up with. Chinese.

[kuan]

I voted other. Kuan cuisine, a mix of midwestern sensibility, French based stocks and sauces, Asian ingredients and techniques, and Indian spices.

[MikeLM]

Way to go, Kuan! If I could afford a personal chef, I'd give you a call.

My lifelong "cuisine" would be... Missouri country ham.

Mike

[indianwells]

Indian for me. A huge variety between all the regions. A common mis-conception is people tend to think all Indian food is hot but they couldn't be further from the truth.
Here in the UK it has almost become our national cuisine but whenever i'm in the US I have the devils own job trying to get a good curry fix!

[foodnfoto]

I have to vote "Other" as my favorite type of cuisine is kind of hard to describe. The closest would be "high-end flexitarian".

There's a restaurant that used to exist in my home town named Pyewacket that had a predominantly vegetarian menu with a few killer non-veg dishes thrown in. Everything was great! salads, hot veggies in pita, lasagne, grilled fish, everything. The culinary style drew from all nations but was not a mish-mash of everything-it all fit together quite well.

Pyewacket no longer exists, but I make many of the dishes from there at home as my husband used to be a cook there. We toy with the idea of opening a resto in the same style here in NY, but I think I'm just too old to go back to the food service biz.

[siduri]

I would vote for american, simply because being a melting pot, you can get anything, it;s all been incorporated, so it's kind of cheating to include it in a list of cuisines to eat for the rest of your life to the exclusion of all others. Of course i would choose it - i could eat anything. .

After american, i would have to choose italian. It's the simplest, with good raw materials, healthy, lots of vegetables, starches of various kinds, etc. It's what i cook mainly at home. So i;d have to say italian, but that is with the note that i am thoroughly sick of it. (I would be sick of any cuisine i had to eat exclusively, mind you, and it took a good 20 years to get sick of it, so that;s not bad).

[shroomgirl]

no consternation.....wasn't defined so figured it would be up to the posters to define whichever country/region's food they'd consume for all time....so of course the broadest explaination seemed appropriate.
Global cuisine, we discussed through the years, there's an old thread up now on local cuisine that's pretty diverse......
as Kuan wrote, techniques~ingredients~including seasonings~.....morphing food....look at recent developments in the UK, for years their food was considered stodgy at best, certainly bland & heavy (sorry UKians....) that perception has changed dramatically within the past 5 years....and would Indian be considered part and parcel of UK's cuisine?
Look at Spains awakening to the world....molecular cooking is all over the world so what would that be considered.....? Spainish, or a cuisine technique unto it's own.?
Creole...wow, well 7 countries in several continents melded into one cuisine....
so is it North American?

Phil, can you pull up old past threads that have decent logic in defining a cuisine?

this would be a wonderful essay question for students (especially culinary but any age would benefit), just so open to different paths of rationalization.