> I was visiting an overseas team in Bangalore for a week and the team took me out to ... a steakhouse.

Right, this is exactly the problem I was talking about! And to be fair, there probably are a lot of Americans who would prefer a steakhouse; and many more who want to try "real" Indian food but just aren't ready for how different cultural food tastes actually are.

But when you've eaten chicken feet a dozen times, and incorporated "century egg" into your own personal cooking repertoire, it's a bit frustrating to make your way to a third-tier city in China and be fed breaded deep-fried bits of chicken with a bland sweet-and-sour sauce!

You’d be surprised.

There was a roaring trade in American coca-cola in Beijing because enough people wanted to avoid the local version. As a non-American, I couldn’t taste the difference, but the imported stuff was 3x the price.

Another phrase I heard often was an irate “This would never happen in America!”

Usually I try to avoid American Coca-Cola and prefer Mexican Coca-Cola. If Mexican Coca-Cola is not available, I prefer not to drink it. While visiting US, I buy the overpriced Mexican version.

And yes, the taste is different, even for Coca-Cola light.

From what I know, this is because the american coca-cola is sweetened with corn syrup, while in other countries it's usually cane sugar.

I'm not sure if the corn syrup thing has changed in recent years or not.

AFAIK the Coca-Cola light doesn't have any sugar, so the usual cane sugar explanation does not apply.

The difference in taste is the glass bottle vs aluminum can or plastic bottle.