[Logs and Dogs]

Originally Posted by Bang!

For the record, beef and broccoli is not Chinese food, California rolls made with Crab Classic Supreme is not Japanese food, and Tum Yum soup made with fully dressed shrimp and button white mushrooms is pretty hard to come by in Thailand. Of course, if anybody did make authentic ethnic food in Vermont I'm confident very few people would eat it. I'd rather not describe some of the things you'll find on the menu when you travel in Asia (or South America for that matter).

This isn't a Vermont-specific condition.........Asian restaurants have to sell what people want made from what is widely available for supplies, and Americanized tastes don’t always lend themselves to traditional versions of many dishes.

I think some of this falls into the category of appreciating VT for what it is, vs. trying to make it what you left behind. If a plethora of more authentic ethnic eateries is what someone is looking for, perhaps VT isn’t the most appropriate place to find it.

Just a thought..........

[GypsySoul22]

I have a Turkish friend who has to go to Boston to get her ingredients. (I guess part of it is her religion as well).

I have to say I have yet to have a memorable meal here in VT or NH. Then again, I think it's a reflection of the times not the area.

I miss GOOD Chinese food. The pizza here is okay but I usually make my own because I have found eating out quite expensive even for a few pizzas.

When I watch Phantom Gourmet from Mass. I just want to go south and stay there. It makes me miss decent NY food, especially bakeries and places that know kosher salt, not table salt, belongs on bagels.

[68vette]

We as Americans would not eat many things that are everyday foods in other countries unless we didn't know what we were eating. Asian countries are widely known for eating what we call bizarre foods, but other countries like Italy or Greece for example eat many things we would not associate in this country as Italian or Greek food. Like any other country outside of the US and Canada when an animal is butchered or a vegetable is harvested, everything is used from brain, blood, bone, organs, stems, flower, etc. My brother to this day can not eat rabbit because when we were younger he witnessed my grandmother butchering rabbits. Prior to that he thought he was eating chicken.
Vermont is not an ethnic state. We have a small mix of people from different countries, but it's nothing compared to what you will find in a large city. Just because a person who cooks your food is Asian, Mexican or Italian does not mean the food is good. There are restaurants in Burlington that seem to do a good business and to me the food tastes fine, but when a person who has had great Mexican or Indian food eat there, they are not always impressed.
Like another poster mentioned, this is not just a Vermont thing. If you went to a Mexican restaurant in Central New York state, I'm sure the comments would be similar.

[tkln]

Honestly, it's hard to find good ethnic restaurants in NYC too...there's a TON of them, yes, but finding GOOD ones is not as easy as one would think. And many of them are in fact Americanized, because most people would not eat what is served in a lot of foreign countries.

That being said, I have had some pretty decent ethnic meals in VT.

[arel]

I ate Chinese food all my life in Brooklyn and even Manhattan. But when looked at a Chinese menu in Flushing, a heavily Asian section of Queens, I saw all sorts of dishes that would never be on an American Chinese menu, and that, frankly, did not seem appealing to my American taste.

But when I was served home cooked food in a Chinese home, I liked it.

[ssouina]

I think the problem of "ethnic" food being tailored for the area in which it is being served is universal. Even in Seattle, where we have a lot of diversity in cuisine, many of the Chinese folks travel to Vancouver to eat out. I was married to a Chinese man and the food at the restaurants we went to in Vancouver and what his parents cooked was much more similar to what I ate in China than anything I have had in a Chinese restaurant in Seattle. In Germany the Italian food tastes quite different than what one receives in an Italian place here and both are different than what one receives in Italy. So, I don't really expect anything "authentic" except when I eat the local cuisine in another country.