I’ve had such an education in the exotic foods of the world by looking up the names of #FFXIV food items on Wikipedia.
One example here. I'd never heard of Ema Datshi before. In game, it's described as a cheese and hot chilli pepper dish from the Azim Steppe.
In reality, it's from Bhutan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ema_datshi
The game is packed with references to world food… from Vietnamese rice pancakes (Banh xeo) to Italian mushroom sauce for pasta (Boscaiola) to Turkish stuffed aubergines (Imam bayildi) to Welsh leek soup (Cawl cennin).
As with everything else in the game, the localisation team did a fantastic job digging up this stuff. Some of these dishes don't even have a Wikipedia entry.
@retrohistories I feel like it was the combination of FFXIV and the Yakuza games, hitting me at roughly the same time, that turned me into such a foodie. They put so much into just _describing_ the food that it makes me want to try it for real. And then they add little cutscenes where you watch it get made and watch your dude enjoying it and... augh it's just so great.
