Any Aussies who have travelled to the States?

Question

What are your thoughts on the meals there from restaurants and the like? Sounds like a dumb question, but i was just wondering, as i often hear from people who have gone over there that the meals are absolutley massive and its hard to get any fresh stuff cos most of the meals are fatty junk

Answer 1

well my hubbies american and we are constantly between australia and america and yes there is a differance but it also depends on which restraunts you are talking about.

fast food (which there are heaps of burger chains) have large meals and they are super fatty.

with restraunts it depends where you go but on average you do get a bigger portion and there are many fatty like steak house places that love to lather on the butter and cream on potatoes ect. i do get sick of everything being heaped up with one kind of gravy or cream or sauce.

although if you go to good restraunts you will find graeat food but its a little harder to find is all. although in america (normally) the service is c**p. you get to the table and they are asking what you want straight away and while eating salads they are asking what you want for dessert and constantlly asking to refill drinks. its annoying and we do not go back to lots of them as we like sitting and enjoying wine and talking without someone asking something every 2 seconds.

another huge draw back is a tip. ussually 20-25% of the bill. if i know im not going to come back i play silly australian tourist and dont tip. although if you want to come back tip them or they end up hating you. remember the waitresses get paid only $3 an hour so they need tips. cruel employers.

Answer 2

The servings are generally very large, but the 'fatty junk' is too much of a generalisation. I'm sure that if an overseas visitor ate with some (make that MANY) Australian families, they would think that all Australians live on Maccas, pizza and other rubbish like that.

I've had many great meals there and some ordinary ones, but you get that in Australia too. They have a variety of salads in decent restaurants, but usually serve them before your main course and you're expected to eat the salad before you get anything else, though once you're in the know, you can ask for it with your meal. On my first trip, I couldn't understand why my main course (called an entree!) never seemed to arrive until I was so starving that I picked at my salad. Their salads are usually complex and smothered in creamy sauces and it can be difficult to get something simple.

I found them to have a reasonable amount of fresh food in supermarkets but I was always shopping in fairly up market areas and it may be different elsewhere.

Answer 3

I lived in the states for a couple of years.

The food is usually in larger portions, alot more takeaway joints.

A Australian medium is an American small at McDonalds.

The food generally tastes like normal food, besides the fact that the bread is very sugary and not that savory.

Have you ever tasted those breadrolls at KFC that the put in in those snackboxes etc that are really sweet and sugary?

The bread is like that.

For a takeaway joint I recommend Wendys and for a restaurant I recommend Sam Seltzer's steakhouse and Cracker Barrel.

http://www.samseltzers.com/main.html

http://www.crackerbarrel.com/

http://www.wendys.com/

These sites will give you information about locations etc.

Wendys isn't very fatty and is not icecream like it Australia.

If you want to go to Sam Seltzers it is only located in Floridia but I lived there and it is warm so it's good alot of other states have a bad climate.

Answer 4

The meal are generous but no bigger than Australia now ,however McDonald's has huge cokes more like a bucket than a single drink but if you are on a budget as we where buy one and divide by 2 or 3 kids into smaller glasses ,also beware of the ribs we went to a restaurant and I ordered ribs and what came out looked more like a meal off a Fred Flin stone cartoon than anything I had ever had on Australia ,it seems if you want smaller ribs you must ask for Baby-back ribs anyway it was funny.

Answer 5

We visited LA and Las Vegas in the past December.

We  agree with the massive size of the meals at restaurants but lets face it most of our restaurants over here are sending out bigger and bigger plate fulls or they are those crazy expensive ones that send out one mouth ful meals.

Anyway returning to the US meals we had no problems with getting fresh salad or nice veges on the plate. One day my fiance even had fresh fruit with his bacon and eggs instead of hash browns!

In the shopping centre food courts we felt it was quite different to over here. In Australia most food courts usually have at least one health food type place but over there they were really junky and the stuff they call cheese we would call a sauce.

Still we are all different and we really enjoyed our time (and our meals) over in the USA.

PS The meals were a lot cheaper even counting the tip than what we pay over here.

Answer 6

I found restaurants to be wide-ranging in style, quality and value in the US. The same as anywhere else really, it depends on how the place is run.

It is quite hard to find fresh produce in the states. I don't know if it's because local farming production is low, or Americans just don't like veggies much, but at supermarkets the range is limited. You can buy lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes and those grapefruit things. That's about it.