If you live in America, England or Canada, chances are good that you can find restaurants of different ethnicities: Mexican, Italian, Indian, Greek, Thai, Chinese, and so forth.
But if you live in China, are there Mexican restaurants? Chinese carryouts in Greece?
Are there Greek restaurants in Selma, Alabama?
Big cities tend to attract more “multicultural” audiences with a taste for the foreign. The bigger the city, the better the chance you have of finding a foreign restaurant.
Well, when I visited Germany our favorite take out place was a Doner joint. Better than in the US - where we servew it made with lettuce, they used shredded cabbage=)
The friend I was visiting kept wanting to take me to a fairly expensive ‘american food’ restaraunt for dinner. I pointed out to him that I used to be a chef and I could cook my own american food if I really missed it.
It never occured to him that I have a heavy german background in teh family - on my mothers side, and a german nanny/maid of all work in my fathers family. I cook almost as much german food as ‘american’ food.
Trattorias Chinas make pizza.
Chinese restaurants in Costa Rica make huevos rancheros, but they’re different from mexican huevos rancheros (the ones in CR swam).
I’ve eaten Mexican (very watered-down) in Spain, as well as Chinese, Thai and Italian - actually, Italian food is kind of a part of Spanish food. I’ve eaten Spanish in the US, UK and Ireland. I’ve already located three Spanish restaurants here in Basel (as well as a bunch of bars with names in Spanish).
There are plenty of Thai places in the parts of Switzerland and Germany that I lived in, and some other ethnic places as well. Decent number of Mexican places in Frankfurt. Italian places are very popular throughout Europe.
In Bangkok there were several fairly good Italian restaurants, at least one Cajun place in Washington Square, a Tony Roma’s place for ribs. Even a Sizzler in one mall if I recall correctly. Also at least a couple of Mexican restaurants, some outstanding Indian food, several good Vietnamese and some incredible Japanese restaurants, plus a few “chain” pizza and Japanese places. Chinese food in Bangkok, at least outside of the big Chinatown area seems to be of the very bland Cantonese variety and is extremely expensive, more expensive than most Japanese or American style places.
Oh, most bizarre experience in eating in a different country: I was in Buenos Aires on business, and after a while I just needed some vegetables. Meat and potatoes is fantastic but gets a bit tiring after several days. So I asked the guy I was working with could we go for something different at lunch. He took me to a Chinese “Tenedor Libre” (spelling?), an all you can eat buffet. We were seated, and the server, who I thought was going to take our drink order, asked us “How do you want your steak cooked?” Apparently it was impossible to not serve steak of some sort and maintain business in the area. So we had steak, all you can eat Chinese, and all for $5.
FWIW Lima, Peru also has a sizeable Japanese and other asian contingent. You could get Japanese food, sushi and beyond there, Chinese, but not a lot of other options. This was about 5-10 years ago.
In the Middle East there are numerous Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Thai, Tex-Mex(not good) Spanish, Brit, French, Italian restaurants along with the American/European chains.
In much of Latin America there are Chinese and Italian (at least pizzarias) restaurants even in small towns.
Panama City is quite cosmopolitan, and here we have good French, German, English, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Lebanese, Indian, Colombian, Argentinian, Peruvian, Mexican, and Brazilian restaurants. There used to be a Thai restaurant but it closed (though you can still get Thai dishes at some of the more eclectic restaurants.) There was once a Russian restaurant but it didn’t last long. There are also plenty of “American style” restaurants, like Bennigan’s, TGIFriday’s, etc., as well as fusion and nouvelle-cuisine type places and the usual fast-food chains. There are also several restaurants that specialize in traditional Panamanian food.
You could find a similar diversity in many other large Latin American cities I’m sure.
I’ve eaten at TGI Friday’s in India, Italian in Nepal, and Tex-Mex in China. It’s really down to the affluence of the place, and the influx of visitors.
Yes. The tiny town of Bocas del Toro in Panama has recently taken off as a tourist destination. Five years ago you could probably only get Chinese and Italian there, plus local food. Now in addition you can get Thai, Vietnamese, and Mexican, plus there are places offering ecletic and fusion dishes from all over.
India has its own variety of Chinese restaurants. Chinese is particularly popular in Calcutta, where there has been a local Chinese community for quite a while.
There are several good Indian restaurants in Hong Kong.
I’ve eaten at Applebee’s in Cairo. What a shame.
In Italy I saw Chinese restaurants which have a menu that mirrors the Italian menu–one section of the menu for Primo, or pasta, and then another for Secondo, meat & fish. I never ate at one, though. But in Italy I did not see nearly the same proliferation of foreign cuisines that you see in the U.S.
I’ve had Italian food in a few different places in India, at restaurants boasting “Italian-trained” chefs. One common peculiarity of the places I ate was that the tomato sauce (whether on pasta or on pizza) was very sweet - there was little by way of salt, pepper, oregano, or basil. Which frankly surprised me - I would have thought something closer to a puttanesca would have been more popular.
Indian-style Chinese food was out of this world though. Familiar sorts of dishes like fried rice, but spiced in a subtly different way… just delicious. I wish I could find that here.
Perhaps it’s because it’s more exotic that way than if they used hot sauces. You want hot, you eat Indian.
Of the two Mexican restaurants where I’ve eaten in Spain, the one that had watered down stuff a lot (their sauce could have been made by my grandmother, neither of whom had the patience to turn a proper tomato sauce) is always empty. Yet it’s been there for years; the neighbors suspect it of being a money-laundry operation because they can’t imagine how come it’s still open otherwise. Either that of they make all their income during Sanfermines (it’s in Pamplona). The other one was “mild” by Mexican standards but “hot” by Spanish ones, it’s not uncommon to see lines.
Sure. I’ve travelled pretty extensively through Mexico. Chinese and the occasional Italian restaurants aren’t all that rare. They don’t seem to have quite the affinity for the foreign as we do in the US though.
I visited Beijing about 10 years ago, While there, I dined in an Italian restaurant (the host did not like Chinese food 
) and in a Mongolian restaurant (Mongolia is not all that far from Beijing, but it’s still “ethnic”).
It’s been posted on these boards before that there are Indian-style Chinese restaurants in California. Don’t know if they’ve got them anywhere else in the U.S., though.
In the Toronto area (that’s Canada, a foreign country) there are a few Texas-style places, but they kind of suck. Also there seems to be a lack of Mexican restaurants, and the few that there are are kind of mediocre.
In Mexico there’s all kinds of foreign stuff. Let’s stick to just Leon to limit things: two German places I’ve been too, lots of Italian places, Applebees, Chilis, McD’s, BK, KFC, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Carl’s Jr., a Japanese place in front of the house, lots of Chinese, Argentinian, Brasilian, Thai, Irish (well, it was an Irish pub), Spanish, Tony Romas, Sirloin Stockade. I’m sure there are some more in there. Oh, yeah, if you want Mexican food, you’ve usually got to go to a fonda or a tiny little neighborhood place, or know where the truly Mexican true restaurants are. Everything else is “international” although they’ll usually have at least some antojitos mexicanos on the back page of their menu.
There are several peculiarities of Chinese food in Panama. Despite having a fairly large Chinese minority, in most places the food has little variety. It’s almost entirely Cantonese, and a take-out place will maybe have a dozen things on the menu, in contrast to even a small restaurant in the US may run to 50+ items. Also, Panama is the only place where I’ve seen people put ketchup on Chinese food. If you get take-out, they will throw a couple of packets of ketchup in the bag along with the soy sauce. No hot mustard or duck sauce, though.
Mexican food usually isn’t all that good. The best Mexican food is often at places like TGIFriday’s, which isn’t saying much.