The Dutch and British just took home the natives of their colonies as immigrants who opened restaurants. Why try to emulate when you can get the real deal?
Fucks me up as a German, too. Globalization gave us all kinds of tasty spices, but go to any public event and you'd be convinced our greatest culinary achievement is sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder.
Legitimately, though: I listened to my sister tell her 4-year about "yummy spices" at Thanksgiving. The example she used was "like salt!" I was horrified.
She also made & brought the absolute worst green bean casserole I have ever tasted in my life. It was like wet, crunchy green beans covered in French-fried onions (which came from a can, which is why it's pretty much the only thing she got right).
She used "no added salt/sodium" cream-of-mushroom soup, the green beans, and the canned fried onions, and added nothing else.
I love green bean casserole, as it's one of my favorite Thanksgiving foods. Even offered to make it for everyone this year! But she insisted that she wanted to do it.
The only thing that was salty this Thanksgiving was me.
Theres a lot of great dutch food! I will defend pannenkoek, stampot, oliebollen, Gouda, spekkoek, krokets, poffertjes, stroopwafel... hell, I love pickled herring.
This reminds me of an old post I remember seeing where it depicted the contrast between anime food and English film food with some eggs. The anime ones were drawn with utmost care to look downright heavenly, while the English film eggs were very scraggly.