I think that people's perception of taste is unified, rather, they are the expectations, the definitions and the associations they have that makes them dispute over what tastes better. Associations are one element that is hard to control, but aside from that, people can get rid of both the expectations and the definitions (i.e. "how one food should taste like") to reach a level of satisfactory agreement. "Coffee taste" in my opinion is a material full of expectations and definitions that are often laid by someone's culture. Arabs -like Italians in that matter, expect a detailed taste profile from coffee. Therefore, an Arab examining his Turkish coffee will never be doing an objective tasting experiment but rather will be matching the taste of the drink he has to the taste agreed upon by his culture to be "good" or "satisfactory". This has always made my experience as an amateur cook devastating, as I happen to be of the type that is very open-minded regarding new taste experiences. And to make things even worse, an Arab will not only plan a detailed profile of the taste he expects from one type of food but will also plan a detailed picture of how the food should look like, so that my dad will require that the steak will look dark brown with a beautiful crust on the outside and real brown on the inside, but in the same time will have the tenderness and the juiciness of a medium-rare steak. Well, I am just not that good!!

Note: This irritating quality may as well explain the wide deployment of the really-hybrid and sequential cooking methods that are often advised in the Arabic cuisine, where you are supposed to cook one raw material a number of times using very different cooking methods in order to meet all the taste-oriented and non-taste-oriented (aesthetic) requirements people would expect from that food, which I find equally irritating.

Not sure how this thread took this little (big) tangent, but food quality is such a different beast than coffee quality. People all over the world can and do drink coffee grown on the same farm half way around the world. All things being equal, you should be able to produce just as fine a cup of coffee in jungles of Asia as you can in NYC. Food is very different. Produce should be local as should meats. There are limitations and advantages to location.

As far as US versus [insert country here] for food, I don't care what Michelin or anyone else says, the US has wonderful food. Like anywhere else, you need to know where to find it. And like anywhere else, there is plenty of terrible food. I go to Napa once a year to buy wine and there are a number of wonderful restaurants just within the valley. French Laundry (the icon of food in the valley) might not even be the best. That said, Spain is a real treasure when it comes to food. Coffee/wine, not so much, but food yes.

No, this thread won't make a turn for wines, but:

Coffee/wine, not so much, but food yes.

,.... that's not my experience. They're not that expensive and more or less ripe when on bottle and I have had some really great Spanish wines.
About the food: yes! In the smallest villages consisting of only three houses, one of them will be a restaurant!

Back to coffee?

No way, Spanish wines are a pet peeve of mine.

There are a lot of good wines from Spain, if you like the way they taste. I find them not quite what I want in a wine, but they are perfectly drinkable and I can understand their appeal.

BUT, I have a bit of a hard time taking them seriously as Spain also is the main producer of the "2 liter bottle of Anti-Freeze" type of wine.

Stuggi wrote:BUT, I have a bit of a hard time taking them seriously as Spain also is the main producer of the "2 liter bottle of Anti-Freeze" type of wine.

Yeah, I know... You probably have to drink these as the Spanish do themselves: ice cold, right out of the freezer (is seems). When it is scorching hot on the planes, with a mid day meal, lots of garlic and fish...., I even sort of like them, this way.