Arnold Zwicky's Blog

On Playbuzz on the 8th, this piece, “Here’s What Breakfast Looks Like Around The World: You should totally plan your next travel destination according to this list”, by Ariel White. Beautiful food photography, but very strange text.

Each country is represented by only one plate of food, and the choices are odd: Hawaii (not strictly speaking a country) is bagels and fresh fruit (bagels?); Australia gets nothing but Vegemite and toast (how Spartan, though salty), with coffee;

(#1)

all of America (except for Hawaii) is just pancakes and bacon. Some of the food is misidentified: for instance, on the Scots page, black pudding is misidentified as haggis (I guess because haggis is so quintessentially Scottish); and the Korea page specifies kimchi but shows bi bim bap (which is truly wonderful, but goes way beyond kimchi):

(#2)

Bibimbap (… sometimes anglicized bi bim bap or bi bim bop) is a signature Korean dish. The word literally means “mixed rice”. Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating. It is best served hot. (Wikipedia link)

I don’t know anything, really, about Brazilian (misspelled Brazillian) breakfasts, though I  admire the one pictured here (sliced meat, cheeses, and bread); it’s very similar to the pictured Danish breakfast, and almost exactly what I was once offered (with pleasure) in the Netherlands:

(#3)

The comments are pretty much on the mark: food is misidentified, lunch or dinner food is presented as breakfast food, some of it is just off the mark, and the text allows for none of the enormous variation within a country. But the photos are handsome.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2014 at 8:55 am and is filed under Language and food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.