alt Hacker News1. Jamaican cuisine is fairly popular globally.
2. Patties are popular within Jamaican cuisine.
It's not something very niche. I think my comment was perfectly fair. It's like not knowing what empanadas, samosas, shumai, or takoyaki are (and yes, one would be uncultured for not knowing any of these too). It betrays something about the cosmopolitan-ness of your life experiences.
It's not even about geography. I'm pretty sure a good proportion of even Torontonians don't know about the Jamaican patty, and I'd call them uncultured too.
There's nothing wrong about being uncultured, it's not the end of the world. You can even work to improve it.
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Obligatory https://xkcd.com/2501/
"The average North American probably only knows about Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat!"
"And Oxtail Stew, of course."
"Of course!"
Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? If not, which ones are OK to be ignorant of? Clearly Jamaica's a must-have, but I'd like the full list so I can remediate the issue at once.
If we're going by anecdotes, let's add mine: I've lived in 4 continents, about 15 countries, I speak 6 languages, I hold a few citizenships, I consider myself fairly cultured and not only I've never eaten a Jamaican meat patty but I've also never seen one for sale.
In fact the only way I know about their existence is through watching news reports of what happened in Canada in 1985.
How familiar are you with food from the Amazon basin region? I wouldn't consider you uncultured for not knowing much about it, but orders of magnitude more people eat food from the Amazon basin than Jamaican food.