What do American expats miss the most about living in America?

[BostonBucket]

which ones do you consider to be good sushi?

if they serve most of their rolls with cream cheese and salmon make up 80% of the options they don't qualify as good.

Osaka 10/10 (Not specifically a sushi restaurant, but the sushi is out of this world)
Dashi
Taki Onqoy
Nicky Ny
Mirutaki has a great niguiri/sashimi platter

That's just a short list of the many great sushi restaurants that offer a wide variety of pieces with good quality ingredients and great taste

 

[on the brink]

Something else I miss: good Vietnamese restaurants. And decent spring rolls - crisp, instead of greasy and soggy.

 

[sts7049]

Osaka 10/10 (Not specifically a sushi restaurant, but the sushi is out of this world)
Dashi
Taki Onqoy
Nicky Ny
Mirutaki has a great niguiri/sashimi platter

That's just a short list of the many great sushi restaurants that offer a wide variety of pieces with good quality ingredients and great taste

i agree osaka is fantastic. i'll give you that one.

i haven't tried any of the others so i'll take your word about quality, but just checking the menus of dashi and nicky ny for example i see the same problem. salmon, pulpo, langostinos, and maybe whitefish of some kind. mix and match all those with usual suspects to try to make it look like variety but it's all the same to me.

i want fresh tuna (and bluefin), fatty tuna, eel, yellowtail, mackerel, flounder, maybe even uni. maybe some of the other places you mentioned have those but that's the variety i'm talking about.

 

[Coleburger]

Trader Joe's
IKEA
Tijuana
Huevos Rancheros, fish tacos, refried beans, the universal availability of fresh tortillas, and Mexican food in general.
FRESH eggs, they're always old here.
A chain of distribution that actually works, (though it seems from the news that this died in the USA two years ago)
Charmin
The ready availability of hearty breakfasts
Balboa Park
Excellent weed and hash, delivered to my house, and it's all totally legal. Roberto's at 3am with the raging munchies.
Tequila that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
People that speak Mexican Spanish, which I can understand, without all this bastardized-Italian platense sh sh sh sh bullshit.
Mexicans in general. They are good people.

As far as my family, ehhhh, I don't miss them all that much, and they sure don't miss me; after 8 years, I can barely get a reply to an email.

Roberto's. Fuck. Yes.

 

[MercyRego]

After 23 years living in the heart of Buenos Aires, I don't miss anything about/from/in the USA. That absolutely includes the harsh winters of Chicago.

When I need items from my neighborhood health food shop, I leave my shopping list, a bag, and my debit card with one of the owners (who know me by name for many years) before taking my morning walk around the plaza. When I return an hour later, I receive my order with a receipt. That's customer service. I can't imagine doing this anywhere in the USA.

I never ate organic food in the USA because it wasn't available where I lived. I've gotten spoiled by Tallo Verde. I place an order online once a week for fruits, vegetables, etc. I pay with a debit card. Everything is harvested, washed, and packaged at the farm for delivery the following day to my door. I'm eating better than I ever could in the USA.

That's because you live in Buenos Aires, but here -in the west part of conurbano bonaerense- is a different story....I miss my ALDI's black angus steak....!

 

[Greg S]

After 23 years living in the heart of Buenos Aires, I don't miss anything about/from/in the USA. That absolutely includes the harsh winters of Chicago.

When I need items from my neighborhood health food shop, I leave my shopping list, a bag, and my debit card with one of the owners (who know me by name for many years) before taking my morning walk around the plaza. When I return an hour later, I receive my order with a receipt. That's customer service. I can't imagine doing this anywhere in the USA.

I never ate organic food in the USA because it wasn't available where I lived. I've gotten spoiled by Tallo Verde. I place an order online once a week for fruits, vegetables, etc. I pay with a debit card. Everything is harvested, washed, and packaged at the farm for delivery the following day to my door. I'm eating better than I ever could in the USA.

We find the quality of life substantially better in CABA than NYC, la, Seattle and Chicago, the places we have lived in USA.

However, if you miss huge box stores filled with Chinese merchandise and chain restaurants and Starbucks on every corner, horrific traffic, out of control violent crime, unaffordable healthcare, and racial tensions from 300 years of slavery, USA is peachy. We're back a couple months between here and Florence. Hard to find good refried beans in Florence, so I guess it sucks too.

 

[FrankPintor]

for a country with so many cows, the local cheese is depressing.

Where on earth do you shop for cheese? Even Coto has a reasonable selection of non mass-produced cheese, and I get most of mine from Maja Jamoneria (https://majajamoneria.com/) which has a very good selection of foreign and local cheeses (and I always go for the local produce, it's cheaper and quite often better).

 

[BostonBucket]

i agree osaka is fantastic. i'll give you that one.

i haven't tried any of the others so i'll take your word about quality, but just checking the menus of dashi and nicky ny for example i see the same problem. salmon, pulpo, langostinos, and maybe whitefish of some kind. mix and match all those with usual suspects to try to make it look like variety but it's all the same to me.

i want fresh tuna (and bluefin), fatty tuna, eel, yellowtail, mackerel, flounder, maybe even uni. maybe some of the other places you mentioned have those but that's the variety i'm talking about.

Yes true, the variety in the animal products is clearly inferior, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it makes the sushi itself inferior. Of course it's a subjective matter.

I would suggest trying Mirutaki's Sashimi/Niguiri Moriawase Platter not sure exactly what fish they use, but some of the ones you mentioned are included and from my experience, great quality!

 

[FrankPintor]

Trader Joe's
IKEA
Tijuana
Huevos Rancheros, fish tacos, refried beans, the universal availability of fresh tortillas, and Mexican food in general.
FRESH eggs, they're always old here.
A chain of distribution that actually works, (though it seems from the news that this died in the USA two years ago)
Charmin
The ready availability of hearty breakfasts
Balboa Park
Excellent weed and hash, delivered to my house, and it's all totally legal. Roberto's at 3am with the raging munchies.
Tequila that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
People that speak Mexican Spanish, which I can understand, without all this bastardized-Italian platense sh sh sh sh bullshit.
Mexicans in general. They are good people.

As far as my family, ehhhh, I don't miss them all that much, and they sure don't miss me; after 8 years, I can barely get a reply to an email.

You can't really beat up on Buenos Aires in particular for poor Mexican food: Mexican food sucks all around the world, with the lone exception of Mexico, and possibly California and Texas which have the great culinary fortune of having been Mexico until they were annexed in the slave wars.

The ingredients just aren't available elsewhere, where else are you going to find all the different chiles? Not to mention the different types of corn. And a basic bottle of Tequila costs 4600 pesos or so here or a bit over USD 20 at the blue rate, that's not bad by Euro / US price standards. Admittedly there isn't a lot of variety, but it doesn't really cost an arm and a leg either.

We're lucky we can get decent Peruvian food in Argentina, it's close enough for the essential ingredients to get here. It can be a lot poorer further away.

Your comment about the language is spot-on though

 

[FrankPintor]

Yes true, the variety in the animal products is clearly inferior, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it makes the sushi itself inferior. Of course it's a subjective matter.

I would suggest trying Mirutaki's Sashimi/Niguiri Moriawase Platter not sure exactly what fish they use, but some of the ones you mentioned are included and from my experience, great quality!

Executive lunch on weekdays at Osaka is excellent to get to know the restaurant, and a bit less of a shock to the wallet than evenings or weekends.