What are your favorite 5 cuisines?

I was thinking about my own top 3 and ended up having to expand my query to 5 again

In no particular order, my favorites are

Italian
Thai
Greek
Lebanese
Sichuan

Honorable mentions / second tier: Turkish, Austrian, Japanese.

Mexican
Chinese
Italian
Middle Eastern
French

To make:
Japanese
Chinese (specifically Pearl River Delta by way of the American West)
Mexican
BBQ
Italian

To eat (out):
Japanese
Thai
Mexican
Chinese
Burgers (they’re a cuisine to me!)

To cook or to eat?

Cooking:
American
Italian
Mexican
Chinese (not regionally specific; more like Americanized Chinese)

Dining out:
Italian
Mediterranean (too broad? But one of my favorite restaurants does a variety of Greek and Lebanese dishes)
French
Mexican
American

Heh . . . looks like we had the same distinction. And burgers are usually my go-to for a new restaurant that serves them. If they can’t do that right, I don’t want to try the rest of the menu.

British (of course)

Middle Eastern (mainly but not exclusively, Lebanese/Syrian/Palestinian)

South Asian (mainly North Indian & Pakistani)

Italian

Cypriot (yes, it’s a bit Greek and a bit Turkish and a lot of being itself and not Greek or Turkish. Mrs H isnt that keen but Cypriot terrorists did try to attack her school bus, so maybe understandable)

If I’m not allowed my own national cuisine, then delete British and insert Chinese (mainly Cantonese).

Of course. I considered Irish (though I am centuries removed from the actual island). Stews, fish, potatoes . . .

That’s a nice distinction!

In that case, to make:

Italian (it’s probably what I make most often over the course of the year)
Greek
some bastardized versions of German & American dishes
Thai

To dine out:
Italian
Greek
Sichuan
Thai
Turkish

Difficult to know where to draw a line between the food of the two islands, sharing a similar climate for growing foodstuffs and large chunks of shared culture. I’m only something like 170 miles from Dublin. Irish stew or Lancashire Hotpot, Kim?

(post deleted by author)

True about the similarities–same climate, same ocean.

I generally do Irish stew with beef, but mom prefers lamb–we rarely had lamb as a kid (not sure if that was dad’s preference or price\availability), but now that dad’s gone and I’m the cook I do both. In a crock pot or in the oven with lots of potatoes, onions, celery and carrots. And of course biscuits on the side.

ETA: “Biscuits” as defined by an American. “Cookies” for dessert

I hope we can keep things fairly civil and friendly, without getting into picking of nits. The challenge of this kind of broad brush approach is that it almost invites parsing. For example, what I think of as “Mexican” is probably more specifically Cal-Mex or Tex-Mex than truly Mexican…as if “Mexican” was monolithic. Same goes for Chinese, Italian, and probably a zillion other ‘cultures’, that to an anthropologist, are separate and distinct and how dare we lump them all together! I think this can be a fun discussion, as long as we keep it fun.

Funny you would say that, as I originally considered adding a plea for respect & kindness in my OP, but I’m hopeful that most of us are capable of disagreeing in a civilized manner.

Mexican entails 5 major cuisines AFAIK, and so does China. (?) And Italian has many regional styles, as probably most countries do, especially larger ones.

If people really care to geek out over this they’re welcome to, tho I’m unlikely to participate in the nitpicking.

Just don’t be a dick about it, is all

Mine vary a lot.

The 5 cuisines I’m most obsessed about lately:
Japanese
Mexican
Thai
Georgian
British

Hyper Regional cuisines I love:
Northeastern Aegean Greek Islander
Tyrolean
Pugliese
Friulian

In other words, don’t be pedandick. I coined that word . Jan 6, 2024. 2:34 pm EST.

And I am going to steal it Jan 6, 2024 2:39 EST

I was thinking that as well. I had neighbors from Northern Italy and I don’t think I ever saw “spaghetti sauce” on any dish. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I haven’t found an Italian regional food I didn’t like.

And of course . . . American cuisine is a whole 'nother issue. No cuisine is monolithic, but I’d be hard pressed to walk into any restaurant that doesn’t serve at least one dish I like and one I don’t care for.

And I love them all, which is why I didn’t differentiate and “waste” a spot

Life is too short to have preferred cuisines (either cooking or in restaurants) - just looking over the cookbooks and recently visited restaurants we covered (and liked a lot) (and without going into regional differences, e.g. food from parts of Northern Italy are very different to southern part, similar to for example in German, Spain etc.) - German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Moroccan, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Spain, French, New American/Californian, Korean, Peru, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Burmese

Really? Bc you just came up with a long list of your own

I didn’t say those were the only cuisines you could have for the rest of your life - which would indeed be silly and pointless.

But we all have preferences - including yourself.