U.S. food that should go down a storm in Europe

I have nothing but good memories of school lunch 40 years ago. Our fave was Cincy style chili with a peanut butter sandwich to dip in it. Nom Nom Nom

Dan, as an expat or near, sounds like he may have the kind of culinary deprivation we've experienced in Europe. We've not had many bad meals there but sure started to notice what we COULDN'T have after a while. His post hit a nerve with us on something we've kicked around for years reflecting on trips there, though based on only half a dozen visits to about eight countries.

One thing they seem deprived of is a plain old PB sandwich, let alone PB&J or PB & honey. First time I tried Nutella, in Italy I think, I almost gagged.

Also, where the heck are the onion rings? Cornbread? Bacon (crispy, not that sad limp boiled stuff in the U.K.)?

We've considered some entrepreneur would cause a sensation if they opened chili parlors, Cincy style as well as Tex-Mex.

Real BBQ in various styles (Texas, Kansas City, etc.) is the other conspicuous hole in European
dining.

Maybe carne adovada?

Some attempts at this type of food we'd tried in ostensibly American themed restaurants were so anemic compared to the real thing that, if representative of what the European operators try to reproduce / dumb down for the locals, it's no wonder it hasn't caught on.

Of course Europe is as big and nearly as culturally diverse as the U.S., as anyone who has been to the high desert of New Mexico and the Catskills can tell you.

They've proved to embrace spice as witness the success of Indian and Thai cuisine on the continent as well as the U.K.

So my questions to the Forum are:

1} What are the best opportunities for an enterprising restauranteur from the U.S. to evangelize some aspect of our cuisine in Europe?

2) Would it be practical for anyone from the U.S. to actually try it within the E.U. business legal system? Forgive the buzzkill but it's a necessary follow up. Seems OK if you are a mom & pop with family working there or if you are a multinational Burger King (yeah, BK will make them interested in the nuances of American cuisine), etc., but I wonder if an operation in between those extremes could be viable.

Lonnie I think it's enough that you see the need for these culinary additions to Europe's menu. There are a ton of expats there that would appreciate good BBQ or real bacon. My daughter lives in London and frequently talks that there are some foods that the English just don't "get" or have aviable. She can't be the only one.
Go. Blaze your trail!

Lonnie I think it's enough that you see the need for these culinary additions to Europe's menu. There are a ton of expats there that would appreciate good BBQ or real bacon. My daughter lives in London and frequently talks that there are some foods that the English just don't "get" or have aviable. She can't be the only one.
Go. Blaze your trail!

English bacon IS real bacon. round bit of meat and then streaky bits, American bacon just has the streaky bits.

Well I wouldn't try to import anything into Italy... their food is just too good from top to bottom. It is virtually impossible to get a good hamburger in Europe. 99.999% are always those frozen disks of indeterminate "meat". Typically they seem to equate "size" with "American" so they make these large, horrid, dried out hocky pucks with an entire caesar salad on them on a dry, untoasted bun. Real barbecue is also essentially nonexistent here. They don't even know what it is. Barbecue here means a weber grill in the back yard. So I think a bbq/burger joint could go over well. The worst food countries (I'm looking at you Germany and Holland) also have a lack of good steaks so that could work.

Mexican and Texmex is also awful here.. Just horrible. Part of that I think is just that certain countries just have no real interest in authentic cuisine. They seem unable to do more than make a reasonable (and usually unspicy) facsimile of something they remembered from vacation. In Germany they put canned corn in any Mexican recipe, as if the inclusion somehow made it "Mexican". So a good Texmex or even a bad Taco Bell place would work well in many places. In Frankfurt we just six months ago got our first build your own burrito place (ten years late to the party) and it's doing quite well. Generally any good quality Latin food would work really well.

I was about to list Louisville restaurants that I thought could work over here and it occurred to me that the list is just too long. Frankly the uncomfortable truth is that restaurant choices in America blow away what's on offer in may countries in Europe, particularly Germany, Holland, parts of Scandi, and all of Eastern Europe. Take a Seviche or Hammerheads or Harvest, get a couple of really good cooks, do it in a largish city with enough inquisitiive diners and you could do well. Obviously the rents in European city centers are pricey, labor is pricey, taxes are mostly high. But it's definitely doable.