Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 July 21

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July 21

American cuisine around the world

In the United States, restaurants serving the cuisine of another country are quite common. There are many Chinese, French, Mexican, Italian, etc., restaurants in just about every city. (There is even a quite fine English restaurant in Washington, D.C.) ... How prevalent are American restaurants in other countries? (I am not referring to fast food places or chains, but real sit-down restaurants.) For example, is there a restaurant in Paris where one can get steak, baked potato and corn-on-the-cob? Or someplace in Tokyo that serves New England clam chowder? If such places exist, do local people patronize them just as Americans go to international-themed restaurants in the U.S.?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 03:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

See What Is The Best American Restaurant In London? and American restaurants in Paris. Alansplodge (talk) 15:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Planet Hollywood exists in many cities around the world, although there seem to be more closed locations than open ones.-gadfium 21:48, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

First of all, American cuisine is quite a broad concept. Like with Chinese, Indian, etc. food, the type of cuisine stereotyped as American abroad represents a minority of the diversity in different types of American cuisine. Secondly, generally restaurants profiled as 'American' abroad tend to be part of franchises, such as T.G.I. Friday's or Ruby Tuesday. I think you will find rather few small, family-owned restaurants profiled as American outside of the US. --Soman (talk) 00:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Having worked at TGI Fridays, one could call their food American, but it is not typically American, rather intentionally distinctive, like standard fries coming with curry powder, salt and pepper, or onion rings made with red (purple) onions. Typical American food is going to be German, Irish, or English cuisine or Soul Food (those four being the most common ethnicities in America) with regional specialities: Lobster roll, Boston and Manhattan clam chowder, pierogies from the Ruthenian diaspora, Jewish Deli sandwiches, scrapple, pancakes, grits, Maple syrup, funnel cake, Southern food, including fried chicken and watermelon, Cajun cuisine including jambalaya and dirty rice, corn on the cob, jersey tomato, Tex Mex, barbecue, and various things with salmon and avocado from out west, although I have never been to California. Hot dogs, Hamburger, Ice Cream and cotton candy all got their impetus from world and county fairs. Much of this you can get at a diner, deli, or specialty store, but little of it save maybe the soups from an upper ranger American restaurant, where you'll get filet mignon, various grilled fishes, chicken marsala, crab cakes and veal. μηδείς (talk) 00:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

There are some American-style diners in Europe, where they go overboard on the kitschy 1950s decor. You will also find Tex-Mex restaurants, which are usually a lot more American than Mexican. Other non-chain American restaurants would be burger joints or places serving American-style brunch. --Xuxl (talk) 08:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

There was an independent soul-food place in Brighton, on the south coast of England. It was featured on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares but sadly it didn't survive. Ramsay advised the owner to cook everything from scratch and not cut corners by cooking items in advance and freezing them. He has no background in small mid-market restaurants anyway. [1] Itsmejudith (talk) 09:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

In the trendier metropolises in Asia, Tex-Mex restaurants and American steak houses or burger restaurants (proper sit down places, very expensive by local standards) are common. One random example is Blue Frog, a chain that serves American cuisine in various countries in Asia. The Boxing Cat Brewery is also a memorable example from Shanghai.

Some American cuisine chains which you might think are a little down market in the West enjoy a much higher market position elsewhere. Sizzler is a big thing in Asia - you will find its "semi-formal" restaurants at prominent and prestigious locations from Tokyo to Jakarta. Despite its financial woes elsewhere, its Asian market presence has been stable and growing. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

There's the Buffalo Grill chain in France. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:22, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

You might also want to consider pizza to be largely American cuisine. Yes, it started out in Italy (although tomatoes came from the Americas), but pizza was changed dramatically in the US, by allowing customers to choose individual toppings, adding home delivery, a variety of crusts, etc. So, American pizza is as different from it's origins in Europe as the hot dog is from it's origins in Germany.

And other foods Americans think of as foreign are at least partially American. "Chinese food" in the US, for example, has changed a lot in relation with what is served in China. For example, the fortune cookie was invented in the US. I wonder if US Chinese food chains, like Panda Express, will be successful in China. StuRat (talk) 19:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Second that about pizza, actually. Papa Johns, for example, is emphatically American in its overseas marketing. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Somehow I odn't think US Chinese food would suit the Chinese palate. It would cater only to a fairly narrow market segment made up of expats who prefer their Americanised Chinese food to Chinese Chinese food. However, the American fast food concept has been successfully married in China with actual Chinese food - East Dawning, a KFC subsidiary, has created a brand of fast food-ised Chinese food which is doing very well (and has spawned home-grown imitators in China). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

In Japan, they have KFC as Christmas dinner. Massive bloody let-down for me, when I was married to a Japanese woman, because we had this fast-food crap which she considered to be exotic and keeping in with the spirit of this 'foreign festival', whereas to me, it was just a load of shite which may or may not have been home to a whole bunch of parasitic insects - shite that we can buy any day, every day, in England. We only had that once. The following year, I introduced her to proper Christams food (except that I had to improvise with the sage for the sage and onion bit). They also consider MacDonalds to be quite exotic, even though many of us educated ones in the west tend to think of MacDonalds as being the lowest of the low. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

To reply to Michael's last question, some people like to patronize American food while refusing to let it pass their lips. Neat trick, that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Here in Hong Kong we have many different styles of delis, Hard Rock Café, Ruby Tuesday, Dan Ryan’s (Chicago-themed ribs and burgers), Al’s Diner (burgers and malts), The Flying Pan (breakfast), The Bostonian (lobster), California Vintage (a wine bar with excellent California cuisine), Bubba Gump Shrimp (fried seafood), Knutsford American Bourbon Bar, Anthony’s Ranch, and the now closed California Restaurant (variety), Planet Hollywood

Interestingly, the American Restaurant has very good and inexpensive Chinese cuisine.DOR (HK) (talk) 08:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

On Serving People !

I have always had this doubt - Why is that people become social entrepreneurs and why do donors support them? What is the whole point ?

NOTE this is being asked at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 05:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Hotpixel fixing

So I was asked to fix hotpixels in this image of mine, but I don't even know what they look like or how to fix them. 1. Can someone point out a couple examples, and 2. How do I fix them? Thanks in advance, Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 07:24, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

A hot pixel is an isolated fault in a digital camera or LCD screen that exhibits a fixed bright or dark spot that does not belong in the image. Deciding which speck of light in your picture is a hot pixel or is actually in the scene needs interpreting and it would help you spot them if you have a picture of plain black from the same camera. I downloaded your picture and opened it in MS PAINT which is an image editor in every Windows PC. I found a first likely hot spot at (527,369) and brushed it over with the colour of surrounding pixels. This you can do. DreadRed (talk) 09:24, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking at this particular photo (at full resolution), the hot pixels have been marked by the camera as definite white "X"'s, which can easily be distinguished from genuine spots of light. Not all cameras will be so helpful, of course. Tevildo (talk) 09:35, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

See the attached for detail near the horizon at the far left of the image, showing both a hot pixel and a real light source. Tevildo (talk) 09:53, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

A truly helpful camera, or a program that one can write, would brush out the hot pixels automatically instead of just detecting them. DreadRed (talk) 10:04, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I use a free open souce image manipulation program called GIMP. [2] There are other free plugins such as [3] & [4]. Once down-loaded, you can do most most of your photo editing with it.--Aspro (talk) 17:05, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, very helpful information. Thanks y'all! Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 09:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

crane lifting safety

I don't need help with crane lifting safety -- I know enough about it -- I just need help finding where (if anywhere) Wikipedia discusses crane lifting safety! There's nothing on it at Crane (machine), and I can't find a separate article on it, either. (The question comes up because I'm trying to fix the faulty disambiguation reference at tagline to guy-wire; I'd like to have it point at the section on tag lines in the article on lifting safety, if there were one. Perhaps I'll have to write it.) —Steve Summit (talk) 11:38, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It does look as though the article needs to be written. Safety engineering covers the general topic, but only from a theoretical/legal standpoint. Safe working load and lifting equipment are currently just stub articles. We have an article on LOLER, but that's (a) jurisdiction-specific, and (b) more about law than engineering. Tevildo (talk) 12:44, 21 July 2013 (UTC)