• Just in my immediate area I could go to (when they’re being held that is):

    A peach festival, a garlic festival, a chocolate festival, the state fair which is like a giant stereotype all of its own, an apricot festival, a Sturgis satellite thing, classic car festival and tribute to American Graffiti fucking up traffic downtown, and so many more I haven’t personally been to or even heard of, I’m sure.

    We celebrate everything because then we have an excuse to party.

    • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      Are all the fests now just corporate greed and overpriced subpar options of the normal thing?

      They are here at least. Poutine fest…ugh…like $16 for a medium and anywhere else is like $6-$9 outside of the fest.

      Ribfest…holy crap, 1 beef rib. They wanted $20 for ONE RIB. not a rack, literally a single rib. Sauce is paintbrushes on after so it never gets caramelized. Overall garbage.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        The fests I’ve been to have been overpriced but that’s mostly because they’re food truck pricing. They aren’t so much corporate as they’re organized by the city, or a non profit, and so on. Like, imagine an organization that promotes Asian cultures having a Asian food fest.

        Long ago, my wife was a waitress at a mom and pop restaurant that once participated in the other end of a community event and they sold it about the same as usual, but had a limited menu for things that could be cooked in portably. Great food, but we’re talking 16 bucks for fries covered in Okinawan pork belly prepped in advance.

        • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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          10 days ago

          The better prices I mentioned for the poutine are from chiptrucks. I don’t ever get poutine at a restaurant. It’s always grated cheese and not real squeeky curd.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        10 days ago

        I mean, that seems about normal for beef ribs. One rib is a whole meal, the BBQ place near me calls them “Dino Ribs”. The sauce thing is crazy though.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        10 days ago

        The chocolate one, maybe? I don’t remember who owns the factory in Oakdale and I haven’t been in a few years anyway. And the state fair is fairly commercialized. The rest of the food festivals are all pretty much just local events with not a corporate sponsor in sight.

    • Synapse@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      That’s what’s great about Germans, they don’t even look for a reason to have a festival.

      Let’s do a festival!

      • About what ? Music ? Dance ?
      • Irrelevant, we just bring tables and grills, there will be drinks and sausages!
      • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I go to Wurstfest almost every year. I couldn’t make it this year for personal reasons. I just love the fact that there’s a whole festival about sausages. That’s it. There’s also plenty of beer, dancing, and music but mostly they just want you to put their sausage in your mouth.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          9 days ago

          The city I grew up in is home to the “world’s largest” Bratfest. The sell close to 300k brats every year (and it’s hosted in a city with a population of about 280k!)

          • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Wisconsin gets fucking serious about their German sausages. There’s a joint down from y’all’s state capital that used to serve a pretty good cheddarwurst but it’s been a few years since I’ve been.

  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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    10 days ago

    One of my favorite games is Earthbound, made by a Japanese company who made a game with a setting similar to America.

    I want more JPRGs from an outsiders lens looking in.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      They really captured it with police brutality and trashcan hamburgers.

      Real talk, though, Earthbound is unique in that they hired a famous comedian to write it. Same for the other Mother games.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      Startropics for the NES. It was made for American audiences and only sold and marketed outside Japan.

      Not quite a JRPG but worth checking out if you haven’t heard of it.

  • ericbomb@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Picking a food that doesn’t have a festival in the US would be harder than the other way around.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Also, the menu screen needs to say…

    • SAVE (the children)

    • LOAD (the gun)

  • Lad@reddthat.com
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    10 days ago

    I need to go to the USA and actually try an American hamburger. Not a McDonald’s, a proper big fuck off freedom burger

    • Please_Do_Not@lemm.ee
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      10 days ago

      Honestly there’s nothing like it. I’ve never had a European hamburger with the same taste and texture as a classic American burger–which I say totally independent of/not about quality. Euro burgers use a totally different grind that changes the density and flavor of the patty, and then of course the toppings and bun tend to be a bit different. Sort of like NYC pizza being relatively simple, but apparently impossible to 100% recreate in any other city, there’s nothing immediately notable about an American burger that you couldn’t do somewhere else, but it does still come out differently. I hope you get your chance to try one!

      • makyo@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        It’s way better than it used to be - 10 years ago I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly but finally places like Five Guys are making their mark on the big European cities and people have a better understanding of what a hamburger should taste like.

        It’s still like 75/25 bad to good but it used to be 95/5 or worse.

      • parricc@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Texan here. I’ve had some damn good hamburgers in my life, and I’ve been to numerous states. But the one of the best burgers I’ve ever had was in Luleå, Sweden at a place called Bastard Burgers. Specifically, you have to ask for them to add 3 pieces of Västerbottensoft crispy bites to the burger. It brought tears to my eyes just knowing I can’t get anything like that in Texas.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
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          10 days ago

          bastard used to be great when it was just one restaurant. went there a lot in uni. then they got popular, and while i haven’t been to the original place in like five years all their new locations are just… expensive and average.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I’ve eaten pizza all across the United States and can confirm that there is absolutely nothing special about New York pizza. If the minerals in the water actually change anything, it’s imperceptible when covered with cheese. Most of my visits were with NY natives so I was not eating at tourist traps.

        I can say that American food kind of sucks in every Asian country I’ve been to^1 but I have never been to Europe, though, so I didn’t know how the phenomena compare.

        ^1 Most of my international trips have been for work so I may not have gone to the “good” American restaurants

        [Edit] how do I superscript on Lemmy? ^1 is supposed to be a footnote

        • Please_Do_Not@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          As a pizza enthusiast who’s lived in NY, Chicago, and multiple foreign countries, I have to disagree. I don’t think it’s the water like people say, though NYC’s filtration system is completely unique, but you’ve got thousands of people all trying to perfect a similar style within a few square miles of each other, all within a city that has a very different culture and economy than any other in the US.

          I think that that culture and competition alone lead folks to develop traditions and techniques that don’t happen elsewhere, and I think it’s also likely a commerce thing. NYC has the foot traffic to support dozens of shops making dozens of 24-inch pizzas, cooking them 65%, and then finishing them to order in a 700⁰ oven that stays preheated all day. Size of the pizza affects how the crust cooks, how they use the oven affects the even heating and final texture, along with a number of other tiny variables that only really make sense to do that way when running a counter service booth for 15 million people.

          Much thin crust pizza is similar enough, but I think folks who taste no difference between NY style pizza in and outside the city are probably not putting their full palate into it, and are probably just hungry for/happy with anything with bread, tomato, and cheese. And hey, fair game.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Sounds like we agree that the water is doing nothing! It’s all about the restaurant making it.

            I’ve had great pizza in New York and awful pizza in New York but the same goes for the other cities I’ve visited/lived in. My favorite standard topping pizza is actually from a restaurant in a suburb

          • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
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            9 days ago

            All those variables that go into making a successful counter service booth for 15 million people might actually make the pizza quality worse than somewhere else where people have more time to get things right. Like, parbaking a pizza doesn’t improve it over just baking it fresh?

            • Please_Do_Not@lemm.ee
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              8 days ago

              It sounds like they would, but techniques of scale (and, oddly enough, cooking things twice) are one of the reasons restaurant food always tastes different, and often better, though certainly often worse, than home cooked food. Parbaking or parboiling before finishing in an oven or pan is a really common way to be able to control texture and browning while also getting an even cook. Restaurants will do it with rolls, potatoes, steaks, large cuts of fish, and a lot of fibrous vegetables. With bread/crust, it changes how flexible and crispy it is, because water evaporates differently if it’s cooked twice for 5 minutes versus once for 10 minutes. With fries, it allows the inside to get soft rather than dry while the outside gets extra crispy. It offers lots of benefits, it just doesn’t make sense to do outside of a professional kitchen making dozens of servings at once.

              Of course, plenty of restaurants go the opposite direction with how they take advantage of scale, and they make everything as cheap as possible and wind up as an Olive Garden knockoff, but good restaurants, fancy or not, make good food by using it to their advantage.

      • realitista@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        As someone who’s spent half his life in the US and the other half in Europe, the best burgers I’ve had have all been in Europe. It became a fad here starting about 10 years ago and now we have some really top notch places.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      The biggest difference between a burger I’ve gotten in Europe and here in the USA is seasoning.

      The beef talks here stateside.

      Over in Europe they were OFTEN closer to a sausage patty.

      https://meneersmakers.nl/ takes the cake as the best looking disappointment

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      10 days ago

      Meh. As an American, Big burgers are overrated. A bar might serve you a good burger. But the best burgers imo are the ones you grill at home.

      Also, maybe this is the FREEDOM speaking, but does your country have the ingredients to make a burger?

      Maybe the burger buns might be the hardest to find.

        • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          Normally I’m a little more picky about my food recommendations, but I fully agree.

          It’s a texture thing, it’s not so much about the flavor the cheese adds as it is that sort of drippy, plasticy smoothness.

          I understand people that prefer cheddar or whatever, and that’s fine, but it really is completely different.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            10 days ago

            American cheese does that. Kraft Singles are not cheese, but American cheese is actual cheese, and it does the melt all over thing that you’re looking for. This is about the one thing it’s good for.

      • Lad@reddthat.com
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        10 days ago

        It was a tongue in cheek comment haha. Yeah I’ve had lots of tasty burgers at home, but if I visited the states I would definitely be checking out the best restaurants in whatever place I happened to be visiting. Maybe eventually! :)

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      As an American, do it. Seriously I don’t eat meat anymore but when you said this I started craving a giant fucking black bean burger with all my preferred fixings and enough fries to concern a cardiologist. Ooh and maybe a glass of my preferred bourbon to go with it.

      I may be some metric using socialist pescatarian but there are parts of this country that I feel deep in my soul and my cardiac tissue.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    I legitimately want this

    Japan failing to understand Western Culture is like… one of my favorite Bad Writing Tropes!

    I love it when they try to give Christianity a magic system.

    God I love Castlevania, but I gotta chuckle when I see things like Church Appointed Witches or the Catholic Church having Pan as an informant…

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        That’s awesome, and only a six hour drive! I’m even familiar with that area from previous road trips. I’ll have to put it on the list for next year

        • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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          8 days ago

          I’m only five hrs from the Cheeseburger festival in Caseville, MI and I’m a fan of the area. Summer can’t come soon enough!

      • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        Okay I admit it was the same one, but in a different year. It was still awesome.
        Also you should still go!

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 days ago

          You can tell I’m American because I have my last meals lined up as Tacos for dinner, Cranberry and Orange muffins for breakfast the next day, and a double steak burger with cheese for my final lunch and call it a life haha. Maybe I’ll put an egg on one of the burgers with a runny yolk. Haven’t decided yet. If your going to die, no reason to go out healthy. (Manicotti was for the previous days haha)

          • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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            8 days ago

            Of those food items only the burger is unqualified bad. The tacos…well bread isn’t bad in and of itself, and a taco is just flour or corn bread. A fruit muffin doesn’t have to be bad – if it was a 1000 calorie whole foods muffin, sure, but otherwise just carbs and fruit. Eggs are high in protein and vitamins. But then you had the double griddle-fried 70/30 fatty burger charred to a cancer-inducing crisp.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              8 days ago

              80/20 smash burgers. If I cook on a grill I don’t care as much about it being higher fat as the fat drips down, but smashing them on a stove top I go less., then I strain the fat off the flat pan I use and put it aside in a glass jar, to reuse when making something I want more flavor in. Same with if I ever make bacon, place it on a sheet pan, bake and strain off into a jar. I use the bacon one for vegetables like asparagus, because otherwise I honestly don’t care for asparagus on its own flavor. Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and such don’t need flavor added, but sometimes the mood hits you.

              Not the healthiest, but there are worse things than vegatables you like in life haha

            • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              How much does charred food actually increase risk of cancer? And what type of cancer?

              For some reason smokey slightly burnt food tastes really good to me and I’m not going to stop eating it.

              • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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                8 days ago

                That’s fine, we all do stupid things. I use a vape pen. You murder intelligent creatures and overcook them. Tomato tomato

                As for the cancer impacts… fucking google it dude. If you’re taking cancer advice from Lemmy you are doing health wrong. But I believe it’s specifically men/colon

                • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
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                  7 days ago

                  The point of social media is to interact with other people, asking questions is a good way to do that. I asked you because you sounded like you knew what you were talking about. I did Google it and there is no good evidence that it causes cancer. But they think it might increase risk. It’s very hard to study that.

                  Not once did I mention eating meat. I was a vegetarian for 20 years, I eat meat very occasionally nowadays.

  • ClipperDefiance@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Not a JRPG, but you guys need to check out Metal Wolf Chaos. It’s a game where the president uses a giant robot to save America from a rebel army led by the vice president. It was originally released as an Xbox exclusive and only in Japan, but there was a remaster for PS4, Xbox One, and PC that was released worldwide. Also, it was developed by FromSoftware.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    Why WOULDN’T it be real? I remember many years ago I saw a trivia fact that said around 50% of all restaurants in the United States had hamburger on the menu? Maybe that changed (it was a late 90s/ early 2000s trivia fact) but hamburger is still super common and popular.

    • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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      9 days ago

      Not to mention it’s in a town called Hamburg. What city council that wants to get reelected wouldn’t want a self-promoting festival called "Hamburg"er? Notice, they didn’t call it the cheeseburger festival.

  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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    10 days ago

    You can kind of make up anything about America and find it to be true.

    Even Americans are amazed at our own ingenuity.