alt Hacker News>Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured?
No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that.
>Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat! And Oxtail Stew,
Yes... I would expect one to know these. At least that oxtail stew is a popular Jamaican delicacy.
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I think you're vastly overestimating the popularity of Jamaican cuisine. I've never in my life seen a Jamaican restaurant. I've had Jamaican food at a Jamaican friend's house, it was pretty good, but I'd never heard about their beef patties until literally today just reading about them on here. If you live in a part of the world where it's more prominent, good for you, but not everybody does.
> No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that.
Man, I so don't care about food. I pay attention to it enough that it doesn't hurt me and gives me the nutrients I need.
193? Top five? 10-15? 50-75? I could not care less to have a standard regarding knowledge about cuisines.
I get what food I can from the options I have available to me and use the words on the menu or out of the staff's mouth.
Edit: stick to the point
> You should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least.
Leaving aside how ridiculous these numbers you pulled out of nowhere are, what godsent culturedness list are you using that is somehow so common knowledge and that yet the rest of us uncultured boneheads somehow missed the memo for? Even searching this now, and no disrespect whatsoever to Jamaica, I neither see "Jamaica" nor even "patty" listed in the top search result for the 100 top cuisines in the world [1]. For reference, they have Russian, Dutch, English, etc. listed, which (again, no disrespect intended) are the ones you often hear people complain/joke about as being bland.
You’re asserting that Jamaican is in the top 15?
That’s quite the claim.
I'm from Australia where we really don't have any 'national dishes', so we just eat a wide variety of everyone else's dishes. I've never heard of ackee, saltfish, oxtail stew, or Jamaican beef patties. Does that make me uncultured? I'd argue not. Do you know what a schnitty is? Or a sausage sambo? Everyone here does, but I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to know about them because 'of course' they're everywhere and significant.
Everyone's perspective is from their local area, so please don't expect everyone globally to know about your local food, no matter how broadly you think it's known.