this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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For example, Marmite Crumpets don't exist. You cannot buy them at the supermarket. To be clear: you can buy crumpets, you can buy marmite, you can buy butter; but you have to assemble them at home.

If you walk into a breakfast cafe, they will happily serve you sausage / egg / bacon / french toast / bubble / squeak (whatever that is). But no marmite crumpets. If you ask them to make it, they will give you a very strange look. It's not typically offered. It's something you just have to make at home.

It is unbuyable. Any tourist who comes to the UK to try a Marmite crumpet would need to bring a toaster or an oven with them, or quickly befriend a brit and hope that they have all the ingredients at home.

It's not a secret. You just can't have it.

*munches into crumpet thoughtfully, and salivates at the juicy savory delight, whilst staring at you pityingly and condescendingly*

Anyway, what's something that I could never experience unless I made it myself in your local?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Maple Walnut ice cream seems to be impossible to find in stores outside of New England

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Lots in Canada

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Speculoos and jelly sandwiches. It's possible they serve that in Europe somewhere, but you could never find that served in the US.

I'd like to be proven wrong though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Speculoos

That sounds like a belgian thing. It's gingerbread dust?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Sorry for not being clear, I meant the speculoos butter spread, most commonly Biscoff butter.

Chunky speculoos spread and strawberry spread is the way to go. I need to try it on brioche one of these days.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Properly cooked hash browns. It takes too long for a restaurant to do it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Disagree, mcdonalds does it perfect and I will die on this hill, or fight in this trench. Also their coffee is great. I am not paid by mcdonalds to shill their awful products

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

IMO a hash brown patty from Trader Joe's is far better if it's skillet-fried at home with a little bit of oil. It's also far cheaper if you don't need to eat on the go.

Their breakfast steak patty sandwiches though, no place makes it like them and I absolutely love them. I wish they made burgers with their steak patties, but that probably won't happen.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

The Cannibal Sandwich, which doesn't actually use human flesh, but is also not a sandwich. Anyway, you take a slice of rye cocktail bread, spread on some raw, ground beef, then top it with some sliced onion, salt, and pepper. You can't get it ready-made, because nobody likes e. coli or salmonella poisoning. In fact, you have to make special arrangements to get the beef ground by a butcher in a clean grinder, and pretty much eat it the same day.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Marmite on Weetbix.

Ingredients:

  • 1 Weetbix
  • butter (lots)
  • Marmite (lots)

Method:
Select a choice looking compressed wheat brick, apply a thick layer of butter, spread the Marmite across the layer of butter.

This was a common school snack when I was growing up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'm gonna try this. Does the brick need to be wet or toasted?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 25 minutes ago

Nope.

Weetbix is a dry brick of wheat.

Bix

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Some cafes will do it - not as standard, but a few - maybe try the ones trying to be 1-up from a greasy. https://seahousescafe.co.uk/the-breakfast-menu

As will many hotel breakfasts, there's often little single serving marmite things in with the single serving jam packets. I'd say about half the hotels i've stayed in with decent cooked breakfast have had it on offer.

I've also seen it in little roadside food van / trailer type things too.

Anyway, you want sainsbury's yeast extract instead of marmite, it's way gloopier and nicer tasting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

sainsbury’s yeast extract

It just sounds wrong but I'll be on the lookout

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

The Marmite causes the eggs to hatch in your tummy πŸ€—

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (7 children)

A Twinkie weiner sandwich.

  1. Cook a hot dog
  2. Slice a twinkie halfway through the bottom longwise to get something like a hotdog bun
  3. Insert the cooked hotdog into newly created bun
  4. Squirt easy cheese along the length of the hot dog
  5. Dip in milk
  6. Eat

Weird Al invented this in 1989 in his movie UHF and it’s still not available in stores for some reason

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

If I'm going to have a twinkie, I'll grill it (or toss it in the air fryer I have to try that) just enough until it starts to caramelize on the outside

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

YES CHEF that sounds unironically delicious

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

it is. some friends in college were getting together around thanksgiving for a turkey roast. i'm allergic to turkey so I intentionally misheard them and showed up with a box of twinkies. a tradition was born that day.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Yeah some foods are too powerful for the general public to consume freely.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Decent fitting clothes with deep pockets and quality fabrics with the colors i like

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Are hotels in the UK not equipped with toasters?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You’re supposed to wash it out after you shit in it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

I would never. The next guest would want to savor my peaty aroma and be awed.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Here's something that you can't buy outside of Italy: mozzarella. I tasted proper mozzarella in Tuscany and it's nothing like the shit labeled mozzarella sold in supermarkets around the world, and for a good reason: real mozzarella has a shelf life shorter than Trump's attention span.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You mean those watery packets of cheese I sometimes buy aren't supposed to taste like watered down kangaroo testicles?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago

Look at the plus side: at least you know what kangaroo testicles taste like.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

We have a deli here that makes fresh moz daily, you can find places that do it all over. Shelf-life really only keeps it out of supermarkets. The problem for many forms of cheese in many countries, and especially the US, is the requirements around pasturization. Completely changes the texture and taste. And for moz specifically, the lack of Buffalo.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Buffalo...sauce? Buffalo, New York? Buffalo the ungulate? I am confused

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

As the other commenter stated, Italian moz is made from water buffalo milk, which the US doesn't have. And unfortunately, it's not importable because it wouldn't survive the trip without pasteurization (and current risks of bird flu with less pasturized milks due to lax US handling laws). There are also laws in the EU about what can be called moz, which dont exist in the US (don't get cheddar lovers started).

US moz is made with cows milk, and while it can be very good when made fresh, most people find the Itallian version to be a completely different cheese, and much more applicable to the dishes it is served with in Italy.

In the US, American-Italian food has made shifts to items like chicken parm, etc, partly because of historic American tastes, but also because of what pairs better with the cheese.

All this to say, moz is good, in Italy and in the US. But they are very different cheeses.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

Buffalo the animal (I think it's water buffalo for mozzarella)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Ha! We can get marmite and vegemite here in the states. And they're both fucking delicious when used right.

But, you can't get applebutter anything in the wild around here. Might be possible elsewhere, but I haven't run across it.

Not sure what is and isn't a thing elsewhere, but applebutter isa strongly spiced apple product used as a spread. It's sweet rather than savory. It typically features cloves, cinnamon and allspice as the main spices, in varying proportions. It is also fucking amazing.

But you won't find it in restaurants at all.

There is a great southern tradition of applebutter biscuits. Biscuits here, again in case it isn't known, are a fluffy, light, scone-like quickbread. And it's similar to your scenario. Places could offer that as a menu option and bring it to you. They could possibly make a deal for individual packets of it like exist for jelly, and bring that with biscuits. But nobody does.

It's one of those things that if you came over here, you can't find it in restaurants. Even worse, while you can buy commercially made applebutter (there's a few brands out there) they are all inferior to even mid tier homemade applebutter. So you can't even buy the experience the way people can at home. You can't just go out and buy Whitehouse applebutter and get the right texture and taste on your biscuits (or toast, or crumpets).

The commercially made options are all too thin for one thing. They don't spread like applebutter is supposed to. It's supposed to have a thick consistency, closer to something like a jam or preserve. The commercial stuff is also over-homogeneous and too finely textured. Homemade is going to have small chunks of softened apple as opposed to a blended texture.

The spice mix in store bought also tends to be both blander and too , I dunno, even? Homemade, you get layers of the spices. Store bought, you get one layer, there's no depth to it. Part of that is it being made in huge batches, and part is the longer time from jar to your mouth; so I can't say it's anything the makers have cheaped out on or anything. But it is not as good as what you make yourself (or someone's grammy makes).

Also, marmite and applebutter on toast is absurd in how good it is. The savory and salty bang of marmite with a spoonful of sweet, spicy applebutter on top will make you want to slap yo mama. I find marmite and vegemite don't do well on biscuits compared to toast, english muffins, or the like. Too much bread for it to really pop unless you do an entire spoonful, at which point it's too much.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Have you tried Branston pickle in a cheese sandwich?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

No, but I'll be looking to see if I can obtain those. I really do love trying stuff like that. It doesn't always turn out that I like it, but even a bad experience is a good experience, if you dig.

Awww yeah, the Publix two towns over has it. And I looked at the ingredients, I think I'm going to love it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

Here in Louisiana it's pretty common

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Cracker Barrel gives you biscuits before they bring out your meal and you can request Apple Butter for them. I think usually they bring out sausage gravy.

I remember the apple butter being ok, but nothing like the homemade stuff cooked over a fire and stirred continously for 12 hours.

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