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> Why on Earth would they intentionally export only their garbage cheese?

This usually happens when one population is discerning and the other is not.

I don't know what to make of that statement. It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

pazimzadeh 229 days ago

Most Americans aren’t exposed to enough quality foods of certain types at a young age to develop the taste for them.

For example, most Americans think Hershey’s is what chocolate is supposed to taste like, because they grew up with it.

Same with the mushy Chorleywood processed bread and most American “cheese”

bruce511 229 days ago

I think this is certainly the root of the misunderstandings in this (and other) spaces.

At the very-local level of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking US food is terrible compared to European food. The US optimizes for volume and cost, Europe leans more towards quality.

Yes, there's a lot of cheap rubbish food in Europe, but those consuming it know it's cheap rubbish.

By contrast, and to your point, most Americans have never experienced really good food, and so it's harder to grasp that their "regular" quality is so low. We don't miss what we've never had.

My local, nothing special, supermarket stocks over 100 species of cheese. I remember going to the US and being confronted either 3 (American, whatever that is, Swiss and Cheddar. Um, which is unlike any cheddar I've ever had. Frankly the biggest difference seemed to be the color (which is artificial).

Think is, you can't describe sailing to someone who has never seen the ocean.

Increased travel, the growth of "American in Europe" YouTube videos, have slowly started permeating though and quality food is starting to appear here and there. But (naturally) its more expensive, so most Americans will be slow to adapt.

com2kid 229 days ago

> My local, nothing special, supermarket stocks over 100 species of cheese. I remember going to the US and being confronted either 3 (American, whatever that is, Swiss and Cheddar. Um, which is unlike any cheddar I've ever had. Frankly the biggest difference seemed to be the color (which is artificial).

When was this comparison done?

In the last decade or so American grocery stores have dramatically improved their cheese selections. I don't know if it is 100 different cheeses, but it is pretty darn close. And unusual regional cheeses come in all the time.

bruce511 228 days ago

This is from more than a decade ago. Nice to here things are improving:)

thatfrenchguy 228 days ago

> In the last decade or so American grocery stores have dramatically improved their cheese selections. I don't know if it is 100 different cheeses, but it is pretty darn close. And unusual regional cheeses come in all the time.

Eh, I mean, sure, if you go to a Whole Foods or Trader Joe, you’ll find cheese that might rival a discount chain in France at premium prices. If you go to Safeway, Target or Walmart, the cheese will not be anywhere near what a French (or I assume, a Swiss) person would find acceptable.

CrimsonCape 228 days ago

It is increasingly trendy for grocery stores in America to have a "fancy cheese" section because the unit cost (eg dollar-per-ounce) of cheese makes it profitable. I'm guessing Europeans are paying high unit cost too, but don't mind because it's more socially engrained to seek out "quality" foods like fancy cheese.

In the USA, cheese is either a salad topping, a sandwich/burger topping, or a pizza topping, and not much else. I once bought some pecorino romano to make cacio-e-pepe and regret doing that, it's an overhyped dish.

elzbardico 229 days ago

I hate Hershey’s with passion.

dietr1ch 228 days ago

I, too hate vomit

Gabriel54 229 days ago

It's an observation, not a value judgement. Try finding a fresh loaf of bread in the average American suburb.

cm2012 229 days ago

American suburbs tend to have excellent bread in middle class neighborhoods or higher. This isn't the 90s.

Insanity 229 days ago

Honest question.. where? Most bread seems to be high in additives and promoted as a “healthy food”, like additional vitamines etc.

And even when buying natural bread without these added “benefits”, it often has high levels of sodium (up to like 200mg per slice).

Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States. But I do really want to know which shops and which brand you get, I’d love to find good bread lol.

[1] https://www.president.de/produkte/butter/meersalzbutter-250-...

kstenerud 229 days ago

Yup, agreed. The first thing my gf complained about when coming to North America for 6 months was the food. And she never stopped complaining.

Then we went to Germany and I finally understood.

Not only can I pop in to the local bakery on the corner (or the next corner, or the next) for the most amazing breads ever, but I could also go to a Rewe or Edeka and get quite good bread that's still head-and-shoulders above anything in America.

My fav right now is a walnut spelt bread roll that I get for 90 cents apiece at Edeka. A bit pricey but it's worth it. Put on some President butter [1] and some cheeses and it's divine!

slibhb 229 days ago

Search Google maps for "bakery" and sort by rating.

It's not hard to find a good bakery in any dense area in the US. I have to imagine people claiming otherwise are indulging in Yankee-bashing, a favorite European pastime.

trenchpilgrim 229 days ago

I can walk five minutes to a local grocery store and get fresh bread from their bakery. Immigrant bakeries are also great, I had some buns from a chinese bakery last weekend that were a "if this is what food is supposed to taste like, what have I been eating until now???" moment

hulitu 229 days ago

> Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States

Finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward anywhere in EU. It either has sugar or additives or it is cooked at a too low temperature to be useful.

https://www.ibfoods.com/locations/

cm2012 229 days ago

Long island new york, here is a a store chain with out of this world bread.

murukesh_s 229 days ago

Wondering why someone did not solve the problem already? Of all the countries in the world US is brimming with entrepreneurs who want to "solve" a consumer problem, and with modern population I assume there is enough demand on fresh/healthier products - why on earth someone wouldn't try to fix it there?

> where?

Wealthy communities. Upper-middle class, maybe.

That, or an immigrant bakery. (Mexican. Korean. Taiwanese. Japanese.)

ericfr11 229 days ago

Most suburbs have very artificial breads. Best bread would be in NY or DC, with a big population of foreigners ready to pay the price for fresh bread.

chipsrafferty 228 days ago

No they don't, lol

The garden variety baguettes in Spain that go for 50 cents are superior to $8 "gourmet, artisanal" bread in the US.

fragmede 229 days ago

they said bread, not sugar fluff with a brown outside.

Don't get me wrong, shit's delicious. It's just not what bread should be.

cm2012 229 days ago

If you can only find wonderbread I am surprised.

Example of great bread: https://www.ibfoods.com/search.php?search_query=Bread

dietr1ch 229 days ago

It's arrogant, but have you travelled to Europe? Food is generally a lot better than in the US, and I mean this starting from the ingredients themselves, so it might have some snarky truth to it.

https://www.migros.ch/en/product/210119408500

panick21 228 days ago

Good cheese is hard to like, and even here we are judgmental. People who buy the cheap Emmentaler from the supermarket vs the more fancy one from the cheese shop. Most American 'swiss cheese is garbage' sorry. Then the 'Mild' here isn't that good.

I would watcher most American literally have never in their live ever seen how 'rezent' Emmentaler is supposed to look. Honestly its hard to get even in Switzerland.

A proper 'rezent' Emmentaler literally has a thick salt crust inside of the holes.

This is typical even in Switzerland, and I wager its better then most 'Swiss' you get in the US:

But if you want the elite stuff, it looks like this:

https://emmentaler-schaukaeserei.ch/en/shop/produkte/Emmenta...

But to get that, you are going to have to store it a long time, and that reflects in the price. The stuff sold in the US is usually stored much shorter.

robocat 228 days ago

> literally has a thick salt crust inside of the holes.

It is hard to take you seriously when you spread misinformation.

  The Calcium lactate crystals are technically a salt, but not what we would commonly refer to as salt (sodium chloride).

Yes, your language might transliterate to salt or salt crystals in English but it is misleading to call them salt in English.

To me this is very obvious when you eat the crystals (they don't taste salty, and they have only a very soft crunch).

panick21 228 days ago

Sorry that I called something that is called salt salt. I guess I shouldn't have said 'literally'.

And that doesn't really change any argument I made in my post.

Magmalgebra 229 days ago

Standards come from a mixture of culture and attention. The reason SF pizza is so much worse than NY pizza is that SF does not have culture of high quality pizza (I say this as an SF native). Conversely we have higher standards for Sourdough. Seoul has higher standards for Kimchi, you get the idea.

Everywhere is like this to some extent - no people can be an expert in all things.

> It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

You’re parsing discernment as a value judgement. Don’t do that.

New York City has America’s best bagels. This is because OG bagels are best fresh, and making them fresh multiple times a day takes a lot of work. (They stale super fast because gluten is a bastard. Hence toasting.) To pay for that work at a non-ludicrous cost per bagel, you need lots of reliable demand. That really only happens when you have an ecosystem of people who have been eating bagels all their lives made by folks who have been making them similarly.

You don’t find great bagels outside New York (at an affordable price) because the demand isn’t there. Meanwhile, if you haven’t spent time in New York, you probably don’t know (or care about) the difference. Which means you’re unlikely to give excess patronage to anyone who tries to do it right if they try to do it near you. That doesn’t make anyone outside New York who likes their local bagel wrong; it’s just that economies make it very difficult, and frankly pointless, to replicate the New York bagel elsewhere.

If the people in your town will pay extra only for great cheese and the guys across the pond will pay the same price for mediocre and great cheeses, the deck is stacked. (And to be clear, you can find great Swiss cheeses in America. What you can’t is great Swiss wines.)

pclmulqdq 229 days ago

I'm not a fan of New York bagels. They're generally too doughy and "white bread" tasting for me. Plenty of places have excellent bagels that are pre-boiled with lye. The lye boiling process is not special. What is unique is the particular taste and texture, and it's just one kind of bagel that you can prefer or not prefer.

Your whole comment below about "discernment" and seeking New York bagels out sounds like a personal preference (bred by familiarity), not actually finding the creme de la creme of bagels.

The same goes for Chicago/New York pizza. It's not special. It's just the pizza you metaphorically grew up with.

> The lye boiling process is not special

It’s one element. The result, however, is highly perishable. You can make it last a full day in the counter, but that fucks with the texture.

> it's just one kind of bagel that you can prefer or not prefer

Sure. Same with various cheeses. Or beef.

Kobe beef is predominantly consumed in Japan. A bit makes it out. But you can generally serve someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time in Japan other wagyu and they’ll be happy. You won’t get away with that with a Kobe aficionado, and there are simply more of those in Japan for self-reïnforcing reasons. (I personally like a range of beef, and while Kobe is great, it’s not something I seek out.)

pclmulqdq 229 days ago

Almost every city has several bakeries that make lye-boiled bagels and plenty of other things that are baked and stocked daily. Most bakers I know will donate their stock of all breads to a homeless shelter at the end of the day and start fresh on new bread in the morning. You don't need extremely high volume for that.

sunrunner 228 days ago

> bred by familiarity

Bread by familiarity, surely? Sorry for the awful bun. I mean pun.

I'm definitely not on the same wavelength as you this evening.

> New York City has America’s best bagels

That's a big claim.

You say it's because they are best fresh -- are you saying that the rest of the country does not have anybody who makes fresh bagels? That's what I get from your first comment, but then you moved the goalposts a bit by qualifying "at an affordable price." So maybe other cities in the US do have bagels that are just as good as NYC but they are more expensive?

I see there is one final qualification you've made: "the New York bagel." In that case, obviously NYC has the best New York bagel ;).

> are you saying that the rest of the country does not have anybody who makes fresh bagels?

Of the kind that stale in two hours? Yes. It wouldn’t be economical.

> maybe other cities in the US do have bagels that are just as good as NYC but they are more expensive?

Never say never, but I haven’t seen it. I have seen private chefs pull it off. But they basically required a sous chef to deal with the lye and boiling.

> there is one final qualification you've made: "the New York bagel." In that case, obviously NYC has the best New York bagel

Yup :). (I qualified the first reference with OG, btw.)

But I’m going further. You can’t make a New York bagel outside New York without hundreds of customers reliably streaming through the door who will fuck off if you try to take a shortcut.

Other cities have great bagels. (Montrèal.) But they’re not that. That’s what I mean by discernment. Literally, discerning one thing from another. If you’ve eaten New York bagels for a stretch, you can discern them from others. If you like that, you’ll seek it out, rewarding those who do the work and punishing those who dope them with preservatives. That creates symbiosis between the bagel eater and maker.

Same with cheese. Same with barbecue. Or chivitos or chaat or all the other local, perishable yummies that are peculiar in an infuriatingly-tedious way.

com2kid 229 days ago

A minor correction to your base premise - There is a bagel shop in Newton MA that is open for a few hours in the morning that has bagels just as good as NYC.

People line to before they open and the bagels are quickly sold out in a mad rush.

There is a French bakery close to me in Seattle there makes croissants in the morning and they sell out in less than 2 hours. IMHO they are the best croissants in the city, although we have quite a few good local bakeries.

chamomeal 229 days ago

The American population as a whole is definitely less discerning when it comes to Swiss cheese than the Swiss

karlgkk 229 days ago

No? I’d say it’s fair to trash about 300 million of us tbh

watwut 228 days ago

Why does "being less discerning" equals "inferior" in your eyes? People from different cultures like different things and care about different things.

fransje26 228 days ago

> I don't know what to make of that statement. It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

Not arrogant, just a fact of life.

In the same way that the average Dutch palate is content with food produce of mediocre quality and taste, and is satisfied with food that would make the average French or Italian wince.

Being discerning about the quality of your food is something you pick-up intuitively from birth. Some cultures have it, others don't.

uwagar 228 days ago

tbh for food in general, the farther the product from the source of production, the lower the quality. and lower the diversity too.

PetitPrince 228 days ago

Different countries have different tastes (Coca Cola has a different syrup mixture for each countries for instance). There's a YouTube video from a franco-japanese guy who interview a Japanese cheese maker. He was trained by a Swiss person (but in the US, of all places) and softly complained that Japanese palate favored more bland cheese compared to what he experienced.

So it makes sense for a Swiss cheese maker to export a more marketable cheese, which are generally less strong and younger than the local one. Just like there's an export Guinness or Kilkenny that different from one you'd get in Ireland.

Of note: cheese label are strongly protected in Europe; you cannot legally sell an AOP labelled cheese without adhering to strict guideline about the raw material (including geographic provenance) and processing.

marklubi 228 days ago

Similar thing with orange juice. The producers add 'flavor packs' to adjust the taste for different regions of the US.

My son and I travel all over the US for various competitions, and there are certain regions where he refuses to get OJ because of the flavor differences.

MiddleEndian 228 days ago

I never looked into why, but when I moved from Boston to Seattle, I noticed dairy products (milk, cottage cheese) tasted different in Seattle. Confirmed it again when I moved back to Boston.

marklubi 227 days ago

Haven't noticed that one. Oxidation perhaps, or maybe salt in the air based on the locations?

West coast food (particularly oysters) seems to be a little bit more salty/briny.

PetitPrince 227 days ago

What you feed your cattle change how their milk taste; where I live there's a noticeable different between summer (where cows graze on alpine meadows) and winter (hay) milk.

robocat 228 days ago

Modern America doesn't seem to have much of a culture of cheese.

I've just visited New Orleans, and the selection of cheese available in supermarkets was extremely limited. I recall the same issue from past visits elsewhere in the US. The fist time I visited I was horrified to see fake Bega cheese.

For more choice in New Orleans I would have needed to go to a cheese shop/restaurant chain called the St James Cheese Company (I didn't visit it).

I watched someone cooking a hamburger grab a slice of processed cheese (looked like a standard individual plastic packaged slice to me) and place it on top of the burger to melt (admittedly it turned out fine).

Oh, and all the milk I found in New Orleans was ultra-pasteurised (abominable taste) - I didn't see any standard/HTST pasteurized milk. Apparently shelflife is more important than taste. For comparison, Supermarket milk is pasteurized here in NZ (not ultra except for longlife tetrapack) and unpasteurized milk is available in Christchurch (not at supermarket, I think in a shop in St Martins or from dairy 30km out of Christchurch).

I admit that here in Christchurch for better imported cheeses I need to go to a cheesemonger. At my local supermarket today I didn't buy a yummy local aged gouda (Meyer) because it was USD40/kg : instead I bought 1 double-cream Brie (Mainland), 1 goatsmilk feta (Foodsnob - Bulgarian - cheap on special), and some "smoked flavour" processed cheese slices (Chesdale - plastic but I like it!).

For Emmentaler, the supermarket has "Swiss cheese" which isn't great. They have an imported brand from Germany Emborg Emmentaler Swiss Cheese block 200g NZD9.69 (USD12.7/lb) which you wouldn't buy for its flavour.

soulofmischief 228 days ago

To be fair, Louisiana, for all its talk of culinary tradition, really doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of variety, compared to other states that I have lived in.

This state is a backwater shithole that reminds me of a war-torn Eastern European country, even in New Orleans (which to be fair, is quite small) I wouldn't let it be a typical example of the kind of variety you can find in a modern American city.

https://www.kraftheinz.com/kraft-deli-deluxe/products/000210...

PopAlongKid 228 days ago

>grab a slice of processed cheese (looked like a standard individual plastic packaged slice to me)

Kraft makes a plastic wrapped slice that is "cheese food", however they also make an American cheese slice that is actual cheese. I suspect you saw the latter.

schainks 229 days ago

Same reason why it’s hard to buy a decent Swiss wine: the good stuff makes it into bellies before it gets to the border!

helicone 229 days ago

because their garbage cheese is still miles better than what other people make, and there's no cheese market large enough and rich enough to pay them what their top cheese is worth, so its worth more just to keep it for themselves

> there's no cheese market large enough and rich enough to pay them what their top cheese is worth

That sounds like the market expressing the collective opinion that their cheese is not miles better than what other people make.

On a related note, the best seems to be considered Emmentaler AOC, and it does not seem especially difficult to purchase outside of Switzerland.

eru 229 days ago

Emmentaler is a fairly common cheese. I would expect the 'best' to be some obscure cheese that neither you nor me have heard of.

I'm quite fond of the Belper Knolle, but even that ain't particularly obscure.

> would expect the 'best' to be some obscure cheese that neither you nor me have heard of

…why? Gruyère and Appenzeller are delicious. They’re also well known. My favorite blue in the world is Point Reyes. Controversial when I’m in France. But not some secret undiscovered jewel.

If obscurity is an important factor, there are going to be as many 'best' cheeses as there are people. For this discussion to make any sense we need something of a consensus opinion, for which Emmentaler gets nominated often enough.

eru 229 days ago

> because their garbage cheese is still miles better than what other people make, [...]

Some other people, maybe. But not all other people.

tekno45 229 days ago

so a tourist will go to switzerland love it and hate it once they're home? very good export business

com2kid 229 days ago

That's how I felt about eggs after visiting Japan. American eggs are bland and tasteless in comparison. Backyard eggs are a general exception to that rule.