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I live in one of the burbs of Portland. And in our town it's mostly Mexican food. We've not tried many of them because some of the them provide menus only in Spanish (which I won't patronize). One simple but very good barbeque shop just opened. A couple of decent Thai and Vietnamese. A few Chinese, though most are not good. One terrific East Indian place with a great lunch buffet, a Salvadorian, a Sushi, two chain Italian places. A few American restaurants and an I-Hop. But for the most part, mostly Mexican.
The next burb town houses a LOT of Asian restaurants, mostly good. Some Mexican, quite a number of Middle Eastern, and a few good Italian.
Portland itself is lush with eateries, though many closed with the economy crash. Quite a variety, and it can depend on 'where', since Portland sprawls out into neighborhoods. Downtown city center is a mix of just about everything, but there's a block that contains "food carts" only ~ a successful unique venture in Portland.
North Portland has several barbeque joints, mostly good. SE Portland, especially on 82nd Street, has a lot of Asian (in fact, SE 82nd is the "new Chinatown").
The one thing that is rare here is GOOD southern cooking. Most Louisianan restaurants have failed, and you can't find tasty GOOD fried chicken anywhere. What people here call "good" is chicken dredged in flour and fried real crispy, but no spices. And Oregonians tend to have tame tastes in spices.
My personal preferences: Thai, good barbeque, American, and good Italian. Louisianan cooking, or good southern in general, is also among my favorites but hard to find.
My town has mostly Mexican and Chinese, but we do have Tai, Greek, and Mongolian restaurants (one of each). Out of all those I've only tried one Mexican restaurant (which was delicious) and one Chinese restaurant (which was awful).
Cleveland has tons of Eastern European Restaurants. For Example, myfavorite Polish place!!! Sokolowski's: If you ever come to Cleveland, you gotta eat here!!
I was hoping someone from Austin posted! We don't have a very diverse ethnic presence, so I think there isn't a big demand for different varieties. I'd love to go back to Nyc just for the options!
I agree. Yeah, I don't know if Americanized Vietnamese restaurants even exist yet. My friend took me to one and the menu was all in Vietnamese, so I just pointed to a number and asked if it was good.
In Honolulu there is a chain of Americanized Vietnamese places.
In the Dallas area, there isnt really a type of ethnic food that doesnt exist. My personal favorites here (besides the obvious-Mexican) are Korean, Indian, and Persian.
NYC has one type of ethnic restaurant I've never run into anywhere else and always sort of amazes out-of-towners when they see them: the Chinese-Spanish restaurants.
I understand they got started after Castro took over in Cuba. There were plenty of ethnic Chinese there already and like a lot of entrepreneurs they fled Cuba after the Revolution. So those that landed in NYC had two cuisines to wrok with, and we had a spate of Latin/Chinese places--although I think they're dying out. As their owners age and retire, as I don't see as many around now as I did when I was kid. But maybe they have them in South Florida where a lot of Cubans also landed after 1960.
Wars and revolutions are good for the restaurant business. You lose a war, you come to the US and open a restaurant to feed all you other refugee friends. We got French restaurants in NYC in droves after WWII (which we won and the French lost) and Afghan places sprouted after the Russians tried to take over that country in the 80's. We got Vietnamese after we lost that war--though I'll bet that the best Vietnamese places are probably on the West Coast.
But we get most ethnic cusines in NYC from the torrent of immigrants that have passed through. Right now we're seeing a lot of Dominican, Senegalese, Ecuadorian and Mexican places. Almost every nationality has culinary representation here because of the immigration thing, wars notwithstanding.
NYC has one type of ethnic restaurant I've never run into anywhere else and always sort of amazes out-of-towners when they see them: the Chinese-Spanish restaurants.
They're not Chinese-Spanish; most are Chinese-Cuban, but some are also Chinese-Mexican and Chinese-Colombian. There have been Chinese (and Japanese, and even Korean) communities in Latin America for centuries. And these restaurants are not just in NYC; they're in Miami, LA, New Jersey and other areas where Chinese Latinos live.
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I understand they got started after Castro took over in Cuba. There were plenty of ethnic Chinese there already and like a lot of entrepreneurs they fled Cuba after the Revolution.
Yes, a disproportionate number of the Chinese Cubans left after Castro took over. While Cuba was only 0.5% Chinese (including Batista, the guy he overthrew) before Castro, almost 3% of Cuban Americans have some Chinese ancestry.
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