Why did Spain leave behind such terrible food?

I can still remember it: probably the worst seafood dinner of my life. A slice of fish that was simultaneously cold, hot, dry, crumbly and rubbery, surrounded by overcooked vegetables and accompanied by a mysterious whiff of cigarette smoke. It was so repellent that even though I was famished, I summoned the waiter, returned the dish and retired to my room, there to endure a dinner of Pringles from the minibar.

What made it worse was that I was in a celebrated fishing port. All I had to do was look out the window and I could see trawlers bringing in some of the world’s finest fish from some of the planet’s richest seas. It was dismaying, saddening, deflating and left me starving. What it was not, however, was surprising. Because I was on the coast of Chile, and — as a travel writer — I have long grown used to a peculiar truth about food: with some notable exceptions, wherever the Spanish had a colony, the cuisine they left behind is mediocre or worse.

I’m talking mainly, of course, about Central and South America. I am still mentally scarred by some of the awful meals I’ve had across LatAm. A pizza in Havana that was basically undercooked dough, dotted with splodges of rancid lard and nothing else. You could blame this on the privations of life in Cuba, the embargoes and the communism, but the only pizza I’ve had that rivals theirs for inedibility was in Iquitos in Peru, where the dough was uncannily similar and the lard-splodges were replaced, it seemed, by river-toad. My meal partner nearly threw up.

The list goes on. The Argentinians do cook a wonderful steak (try Cabaña Las Lilas in Buenos Aires), and the high-altitude Malbecs are sensational, but that’s largely where it stops. Everything else is generally fried, overfried or bland, insipid and repetitive. At the other end of the continent, ultra-fertile, super-verdant, sunny and tropical Colombia is easily as bad. Sure, if you love fruit you’re in heaven — Colombia has the finest fruit in the world, including exotic varieties of citrus filled apparently with ambrosia, but unless you’re a dedicated fruitarian, at some point you will want more than soursop — and then Colombia disappoints. In four weeks there, the best meal I had was a rather decent burger. And what’s with the chewy fried plantains and rice? Who wants two carbs?

The obvious argument, of course, is that this is not a Spanish thing, but a Latin American thing (Brazilian food is quite bad, too). But this is where I present Evidence B: the Philippines, the one major Spanish colony in Asia. Given its tropical location, the Philippines should have wonderful food, because all the southeast Asian countries surrounding it — Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand — have wonderful food.

But food in the Philippines generally means something soused with fat, doused with sugar, envenomed with salt, with a fried egg on top. It’s not only dreary, it’s properly unhealthy. In nearby Vietnam, 3 percent of adults are obese; in the Philippines it is 21 percent.

So there is definitely a theme, which needs explaining. It doesn’t work to attribute the problem to the relative complexity and sophistication of the imperializing cuisine. France, with its noble culinary traditions, often left behind brilliant foods that the colonized locals have adapted: in Viet- nam, the banh mi (“the best sandwich in the world,” said Anthony Bourdain) is a magnificent collision between the baguette and umami-rich Asian fillings. You can also find brilliant Franco-Asian foods in Cambodia (Phnom Penh is becoming a grand foodie capital), and, if you’re lucky, excellent Franco-North African fusions in Morocco.

Even the British, who were definitely not known for their native cuisine, especially at the time of peak empire building, managed, firstly, not to destroy the cuisine of the gastronomically-endowed places they colonized — India, Hong Kong, Malaysia. And, secondly, the meeting of cultures sometimes created fine dishes by itself: from mulligatawny to kedgeree to chicken tikka masala. The very word “curry” is British in origin. Also, the Imperial Raj gave us the world’s greatest cocktail, in the gin and tonic (and God Save the King for that).

And so we loop back to the Spanish question. Spain has a glorious cuisine, from the seafoods of Galicia to the tapas of Andalusia. Yet none of this culinary excellence transferred to its imperial possessions; instead they mainly got rice and beans. Why? Is it because Spanish colonialism was uniquely brutal, erasing food cultures? Was it the encomienda system of farming, laying waste to local agriculture? Again, these arguments can all be countered with the peculiar outlier of the Philippines.

Perhaps a partial answer can be found in the few Spanish possessions which were not gastro-imperially devastated. And these are the colonies that already had a strong civilization before the arrival of the conquistadors. Once-Incan Peru can still do some impressive things with the native potato and intriguing things with raw fish, but mainly we are talking about Mexico, with its proud Mesoamerican history. Anyone who has traveled across Mexico will know that, despite the efforts of Cortés, it has one of the world’s noblest, most diverse cuisines: it isn’t just tacos and tortillas.

From extraordinary pozoles to chocolate-sauce moles, Mexican cuisine survived the Spanish onslaught and emerged with its native foodie flair unsullied, and it really is pre-Colombian food we are talking about. The word chocolate itself derives from the Aztec/Nahuatl xocolatl. When you eat anything chocolate you are eating a food once reserved for the emperors in Tenochtitlan, sitting on top of their pyramids, ritually piercing their penises every morning with cactus thorns to appease the angry sun gods. It sheds a whole new light on Hershey’s Kisses.

That is the best I can do, as a world traveler, in answer to this conundrum. There is no single good answer to why the Spanish left behind such disappointing food, but there is a lesson.

If you must be colonized by the Spanish, make sure you have some of your own recipes beforehand. And ask for something decent in exchange for all those lovely tomatoes, avocados and chili peppers.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2025 World edition.