Getting acquainted with traditional foods from around the world can be an exciting experience. Or something absolutely terrifying, depending on your taste buds and, of course, the meal itself. Some cuisines, such as Italian, Mediterranean, or Japanese are praised by people from all over. Others, as you’re about to see, are way less appreciated.
A curious redditor, u/KPH102, recently addressed the 'Ask Reddit' community in hopes to find out which country has the overall worst food. The answers provided not only locations, but some amusing commentary as well, which we put on this list for you to giggle at. Sadly, for some countries, they appeared there quite a few times.
#1
England. They spent centuries conquering the world in search of spices and decided not to use any of them.
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#2
Scottish cuisine is basically based off a dare.CharityMacklin added:
I was once gifted a Scottish cookbook and nah I’m good
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#3
Unfortunately: Iceland.I can handle bland or bad food…but when I’m paying 5x normal prices for that same bland food…it just pisses me off.
Iceland was one of my favourite places I’ve ever seen. But the food situation there is brutal.
franknorth2010 added:
Iceland. Ever had fermented shark? Horrible.
Entity0027 added:
If I Recall Correctly, Iceland was the one place Anthony Bourdain couldn't wait to leave. When a guy who made a living eating his way around the world, comes to your nation and concludes even the alcohol is disgusting, there be a lot of problems.
Iceland: Pack A Lunch
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#4
"Technically, all Australian cuisine is prison food" - Jimmy Carr
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#5
Years ago I went to a Somalian restaurant with an African friend. They had some sort of…soup….that was basically liquid grass fat. Ugh.
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#6
Cambodia.Never seen something good from there... But I've seen literal fried spiders...
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#7
Russia. It's not even a question.Yzzy1 added:
Never been to Russia, but had dinner at a Russian family's apartment in Israel. They served chicken feet in a jello mold. What the f**k?
Francesca_N_Furter added::
I've never been to Mongolia or Iceland (the clear winners in this thread), but Russian food is the stuff of nightmares. Mystery soups seem to be big there - you will put bones out of several different species, and the flavor will give you no clue to the origin of those bones. I also saw bread that made me think of the war years....seemed to be made of sawdust and plaster.
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#8
Kenya. Poor refrigeration meant that meat was often cooked until extremely chewy. I lost so much weight in the six months I lived there.
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#9
There must be a reason why I've never seen a Finnish restaurant outside of Finland.roygbiv-it replied:
I went out to lunch in Finland. It was a buffet. I s**t you not, everything on the buffet was a form of potato.
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#10
I'm a chef, and I've cooked all over the world.This is my *opinion*, but Norway and Russia have the worst local cuisine.
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#11
I don't know about the rest of Canada, but Quebec's everyday cuisine was pretty much boiled meat and potatoes and shepherd's pie until the 1970's, when the province underwent a foodie revolution fueled in part by immigration and in part by the increasing sophistication of cooking shows.
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#12
Hungarian food. I worked there for 6 months and the canteen had a stew consisting of chicken, peaches and vinegar. One day they served what I thought was lasagne. It’s was actually glass noodles in ketchup with cottage cheese on top. Another day they served spaghetti with butter, sugar and cinnamon. I ended up going to a Chinese restaurant where they put your cold food on a plate and microwaved it in front of you. It’s was far better than the canteen.
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#13
North Korea. Cold noodles and whatever the hell pine mushrooms are.I’ve actually had soju (weak liquor) made in North Korea. It tasted like a cleaner version of the watered down vodka you can buy at gas stations where I live.
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#14
New Zealand is pretty sh**t. Everything is borrowed, and the native cuisine is just meat and vegetables cooked in the ground. We don’t seem to have a defined dish or taste.
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#15
I had some truly terrible food in Ukraine, particularly in the Chernobyl exclusion zone workers cafeteria, which we were kindly allowed to use when touring. The best food I had there was in Kyiv in an Indian restaurant!
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#16
Specific cuisine so not what food you can buy in the country it’s absolutely hands down Dutch food. Boiled potatoes, boiled vegetables, a piece of overcooked meat and some packaged gravy is what most Dutch kids eat 5/7 days a week. The other day it’s bread for dinner(no joke) and Sunday more than likely you’re eating Fries and some other deep fried snacks.It’s the most underwhelming cuisine I can think of. Granted I have never been to Russia, North Korea or Antartica.
Edit: if we’re counting take out or restaurants then definitely not the Netherlands lol. There’s such a variety of restaurants and the food is honestly great.
NinjaSelect3581 added:
The Netherlands. As soon as I could drive we’d go to Belgium for dinner with my high school class mates.
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#17
Worst I experienced as a national cuisine - Kazakh. There are good restaurants there, but they are more Uzbek, Uighur or Dungan.I am not a fan of boiled meat, especially if it is horse; fermented horse milk, or dried fermented milk. There are a few dishes that are ok, but the lack of strong spices or seasoning make this something I don't enjoy much.
That said, I always eat it when we go to family events with my wife (from KZ!) - I respect the culture, but it is not something I would ever actively choose to eat!
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#18
I seriously cannot stand Indian food.
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#19
Can't say overall.But for my tastes Thailand.
I cannot even eat a tiny bit of spice.
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#20
Surströmming, the fermented fish from Sweden, smells very bad, tastes very salty and fermented, and has a gooey texture. Surströmming might just be the ultimate disgusting food. Disgust has a very important evolutionary function, it warns us of weird foods that could be potentially dangerous or deadly.
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#21
For the places I've been:Colombia is the worst overall. Not saying there is bad food there, but next to other countries I've been to (20) it's just not good. It seems that all the restaurants there are just hamburgers and pizza, with some empanada or arepa street stalls sprinkled around. Went to San Andres Island and all of the Ceviche street stalls would smother the amazingly fresh seafood with ketchup. From what I have experienced, Mexico has the best food in Latin America, but I'm really looking forward to Peru. No cuisines measure up to what Asia has to offer though.
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#22
Antarctica. Just those disgusting meat paste pouches
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#23
Out of the countries I’ve visited, Tunisia was the worst.It’s probably prudent to answer this question if you’ve actually tried the cuisine, which I suspect a lot of people haven’t, looking at the answers
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#24
gee man good gracious, the onslaught of answers all saying UK.. have you ever experienced German food? It's like they don't have anything of their own and douse it in schokolade to make it taste better, that's not how it works!! I especially get disgusted by that kind of gingerbread they call pumperknickle and it is coated in chocolate. How can anyone possibly like that?
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#25
Just about everywhere I've been in Sub Saharan Africa had some offerings that were pretty unappetizing to me. A lot of pasty starches and stews, some of them rather funky. Perhaps acquired tastes I didn't spend enough time acquiring
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#26
MongoliaGiven its harsh climate necessitating a largely nomadic and pastoral lifestyle, just not a lot of crops that could historically be incorporated into traditional meals. So everything is either straight up dairy or meat, with little spices of any kind to add any flavor.
Maverick1-618 added:
"Mongolian is definitely the worst cuisine I have ever had. It’s just fermented horse milk and boiled meat (like mutton and marmots). Vegetables don’t exist and they literally don’t season anything because they don’t have any spices at all."
"I don’t like Russian cuisine (it’s pretty mid) but Russian cuisine actually helps to improve Mongolian food at some of the trendier Mongolian restaurants (which don’t serve pure traditional Mongolian food)."
"Generally, cold places with a lack of access to spices or not much agricultural history make the worst food and Mongolia checks all those boxes. Kazakhstani food is similar, but they have more ethnic diversity so you can get some decent Georgian or Korean hyphenated foods."
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#27
Hands down. Philippines.I’ve tried so many times to like it but it’s just too damn sweet. There’s no umami in their cuisine in general.
But then I’ve tried the fried chicken skin and lechon and it’s always been so over salted that it’s inedible.
I really want to love it because there’s so many Filipinos in my country and they’re amazing but honestly …. Wouldn’t want to be invited to dinner.
It’s bad. Doesn’t work with my pallet.
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#28
The Vatican has the worst cuisine. The bread is so flat that you have to wash it down with mediocre wine. And they have outlets for the stuff all over the world.
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#29
I wasn't a huge fan of the food in Myanmar. But it was interesting.#30
I won't say it's the worst but I grew up my entirely life thinking I liked Chinese food. After dating a woman from Shanghai for 3 years I can now honestly say that I do not like Chinese food. Anyone that grew up on a western diet and abruptly switched to eating authentic Chinese food on a regular basis knows exactly what I'm saying.#31
I'm Irish, I do plenty of family get-togethers centered around a big Irish table of food, I love it, I love the feeling of sentiment and history. The food is always just a wad of boiled ingredients. We eat it lovingly, and there's nothing wrong with it. But it's not like there's anything *right* with it.SnowMiser26 added:
Ireland
My grandparents emigrated to the US from Ireland in the 1940s, and holy hell the food they made was godawful. Everything was boiled and gray, there were no spices or sauces, and the only sides were root vegetables.
Maybe my experience was unique - please let me know if it is. It's entirely possible my grandmother was just a terrible cook as an individual, apart from her heritage.
#32
Brazil. I spent three months there and literally everything tasted like a*s. Even the best pizza tasted like American cheese on white bread.#33
As an American I'd prefer foreign food.#34
Cuba has some of the worst food. There is a lack of high quality ingredients. One particular meal was accompanied by a side salad made entirely of raw cabbage with a vinegrette that consisted of white vinegar and canola oil. I ate a hamburger from a government run burger joint and the texture of the patty was dubious to say the least. Most of the food was bland, poorly seasoned and improperly cooked. Government pizza and pasta places have such an array of toppings as cheese, processed ham, onion or some combination of the three. The pizza is essentially doughy bread. But I did go to place that served pizzagetti - a pizza topped with spaghetti (and some variation of the three toppings). Suffice to say any thoughts of great Cuban food is more likely to come from Miami than Cuba.bjeans_1945 added:
We went to Cuba for 15 days. We were very surprised that the foods were so bland. No spices! The only decent meal we had was at the Evan Chef restaurant. Probably because he, Evan, was Fidel's chef. There was a root vegetable with the consistency of a potato. It was Gray and tasted like it looked- like rot. Butter is very scarce. Coffee is the best- it's very Strong. No one drinks the tap water. Bottled water served at the Casa Particulares (think B&Bs) we were allowed to stay at.
#35
I looked at booking a week in Kyrgyzstan a couple of years ago and the consensus was that the food is pretty terrible. I still haven’t been but by the sounds of it they could be in with a shout.#36
You have to consider that there is a difference between a country's traditional "cuisine" and the modern food that you can get in that country.For example, everyone is talking about how bad traditional English food is, but when you actually go to England, their modern cuisine like Chicken Tikka Masala (probably due to Colonization) is actually pretty good.
A similar example is Japan. Almost all the food that Westerners love from Japan like ramen, teriyaki, okomomiyaki, etc. are modern incarnations. Traditional Japanese food is a bowl of white rice, a few pickles, a bowl of miso soup, and a little fish if you are lucky.
Anyway, from my experience around the world, I would say that the worst food experiences I have had were in Myanmar and the Philippines.
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#37
Austria is pretty bad.#38
Pro tip: don’t get Mexican food in SwitzerlandInPredicament4ever replied:
I would expand the scope - don’t get Mexican food in any European countries except Spain.
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#39
One of the most disgusting dishes I’ve ever had was from Nicaragua, called “Indio Viejo” which literally translates to “Old Indian”.It’s a stew made out of fermented corn and shredded beef. I’ve had some nasty s**t before, but this tasted like carcass.
#40
Not a country, but speaking as a snobby east coast native, the U.S. state of Minnesota has the overall worst food I've personally experienced. It's all like weird bland casserole "hotdish"; "salads" made with stuff like jello, marshmallows, canned pie filling, and Cool Whip; and Swedish cultural holdovers like lutefisk (dried whitefish brined in lye). Also, people just really aren't into veggies there!Even at nicer restaurants, I've never had a dish where I was like: "Wow, this was amazing! I'll have to come back to this place." Restaurant food ranged from "pretty good" to "tolerable."
Oddly, though, the food in neighboring Wisconsin was great!
Still, after reading this thread I think I would rather dine in Minnesota vs. Iceland or Mongolia.
ETA: I just remembered...if you're vegetarian, in parts of Minnesota, you really have to double-check to make sure that baked goods aren't made with lard! I once got sick after eating a doughnut I later found out was fried in lard. One bakery I encountered even used lard to make their cake frosting.
source https://www.boredpanda.com/worlds-worst-cuisines/
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