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One thought I had regarding "ethnic" food is that they could become popular not necessarily in the form of people going to dining establishments but also individual dishes/items becoming mainstream in the culture, so that you don't have to go far out of your way to eat/get them.
For example, perogies are pretty mainstream in many parts of Canada, often where there was a large Ukrainian presence, such as in the prairie provinces, but also many places elsewhere (and in fact they're even sometimes thought of as a "Canadian" food).
Another example I can think of particularly from my city are Jamaican patties. They are Caribbean cuisine, but really popular/mainstream in the Greater Toronto area, so that you can get them to eat at many corner stores, cafeterias, grocery stores etc.. It seems you can also get them easily in the northeast US, such as the tri-state area. I've been eating them since I was a kid (and really didn't really think of them as "ethnic" food until I realized/was told they are of Caribbean origin).
In Minnesota, we have potato sausages (which I thought were everywhere), (Cornish) pasties (kind of like empanadas), and porketta roast at grocery stores, which are not even thought of as foreign or even regional foods.
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