My favorite chinese fast food delivery place when I worked in East Hartford had a carribean cook - in addition to all the chinese stuff, had fried chicken, wings, chuletas, plantains [i ADORE fried plantains!] some little cheesey biscuits, black beans … I really miss that place!
Have you ever taken an Italian to Olive Garden, Mexican to Taco Bell, Chinese to Asian buffet, etc.?
I guess it varies-I had a Chinese collegue in from Hong Kong-I took him to a local chinese (Cantonese) restaurant-he pronounced the food as pretty good. On the other hand, a spanish friend pronounced the local spanish place as bad. As for italian, where I live (Boston, MA area) the local italian restaurants are neopolitan/sicilian (lots of red sauce). It is almost impossible to find a northern italian place-so a guy from Milano would probably not like the “italian” food here.
Quite true. My ex-BIL is a huge fan of hot and spicy food, and once wrote a letter to the Tabasco Sauce manufacturers, complaining that they’d watered down their formula. They wrote back, saying their formula hadn’t changed since the company was founded, but that he might have burned out a few taste buds!
Yeah, Tabasco is what I would consider a mild-medium hot sauce. On a scale of 1-10, maybe a 3 at most.
You’ve gotta remember too that people from all over the world are exposed to more than just their “local” or ethnic cuisine at home.
Yep, an aside from the OP, but I’m in NC like Polycarp, and a local Chinese Super Buffet has a big clientele of Mexican immigrants, so has adapted by having a whole bank of their 6 food bars with Mexican type food. ( I say type because it’s all kind of generic) The local co-op grocery food bar has also featured more Mexican variations over the past few years. A big factor in both around here is that a great number of restaurant workers are Hispanic, so can contribute variations to the normal theme of cuisine.
Yeah, I figured as much. I know I was pushing my own personal envelope on that one, but it was all worth it.
That part’s fun, though.
I made the mistake of taking a Cajun to a place here in Dallas called Razoo’s (A cajun restaurant)
Boy, I didn’t think I’d ever get him to shut up about “This aint Cajun food!”.
OK I get it. I love the place tho’.
But yeah, as far as Taco bell goes; I didn’t think you could sling a dead cat with out hitting a mexican in those places.
I’m of Indian heritage, orignally from UK. I’m now in the Los Angeles area.
I’ve never been to an Indian restaurant that I’ve truly liked in the US. I was once dragged to an Indian place with two Americans, who loved the food - I thought it was crap. I need to explore Artesia more - that’s the most Indian area near LA, I may find something I like there. Worst Indian food I’ve ever eat was in Hong Kong. The servings were tiny, the food tasted crap and it messed up my stomach afterwards. The place was run by Indians too.
For British food - I’ve found places that do a decent English breakfast, but I’ve never had good fish and chips here. Usually the fish is the wrong type, or the batter is off etc. They never seem to get it right. The last decent English breakfast I had was in Thailand at a restaurant run by a Brit and his Thai wife.
I worked with ladies from China who loathed Chinese takeaways and Panda Express. They would take me for Dim Sum in Rowland Heights or San Gabriel, which was awesome, and very cheap. You can eat a shitload of food for less that $15. They cooked a shitload of food at weekend for eating for lunch during the week. They often gave me somem and it was delicious.
My ex-manager from Mexico had no issues with Chipotle, he went there often. Never asked him about Taco Bell.
I’ve met a few Japanese people have refused to go to many Sushi places in LA cos they are run by Koreans.
My Thai friend would only eat Thai food in Thaitown.
I don’t usually “take” people places, but there’s a Mexican chain called El Torito we like. It specializes in varying their menu through the different regions every so often. It’s always JAM PACKED with Mexicans every time we go, so I guess they like it pretty much. Or maybe it’s just because the margaritas are strong.
What I learned while canning Habañero-Blueberry Jam:
There are really only four taste receptors on the tongue: salty, bitter, sweet, & sour. Note I didn’t mention anything about taste receptors for savory/spicy. So spicy or hot foods register in the brain as pain. So your brain sends down endorphins (I like to say the “endolphins” go swimming.) as natural painkillers to put out the fire, so to speak. You actually can build up an addiction to hot foods because you are really chasing the endorphin high. So I would imagine that, after prolonged and frequent exposure to spicy hot foods, it takes more endolphins swimming around to relieve the pain sensation. And it also means that my Hab-berry jam is literally addictive, which should make for good business. Heh. But it also backs up what you just said.
Oh, one more thing I learned: I grow my own habañeros (and other hot peppers). The heat of the pepper is directly proportional to the temperatures in which it ripened. So it takes about 100 days to grow a pepper plant from seed to harvesting the fruit. Here in sunny Florida, I can get about three sets or flushes of peppers off one plant in a single season – I can get the plant to set fruit three times, that is.
So the April peppers – the ones that ripened in relatively cool and mild temps, with cool nighttime temps – those are the lamest peppers. You can eat 'em raw on salad and they’re barely hot. (Well, to me, they’re barely hot. I have quite the tolerance because I’ve been making pepper jelly for several years now and have been growing the peppers even longer.)
The midsummer/August peppers ripened during the hottest part of the summer and are usually melt-your-earwax blazing freaking hot.
The late season October/November peppers are again mild, more like the April peppers. That third set of peppers tends to be pretty sparse, so I usually just pull the peppers off before they ripen, toss them in a salsa and let the plant rest and go dormant for the “winter.”
Pepper plants are tender perennials, so if you live somewhere where it doesn’t freeze and snow a lot and you can keep your pepper plants from getting frostbitten, you can pretty much grow peppers off the same plants for years and years and years.
Sorry for the multi-hijack. There doesn’t seem to be any other appropriate thread on this entire board 
in which I can share my pepper knowledge.
Some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had - including from when I visited China - was in Kingston, Jamaica. There are long-time ethnic Chinese who have lived in Jamaica for generations. And the food is awesome (but their portions are tiny… not up to the American appetite down there).
Stupid nitpick, but there’s no enye on “habanero.” It’s pronounced as “[h]abanero” not “[h]abanyero.”
Since this thread is already drifting, I’ll throw this out there. The local cheap Asian buffet had a sign above the wasabi, “No es guacomole. Muy caliente.” I can picture someone taking a huge glob of wasabi and having some “culture shock”.
The place isn’t authentic anything but is popular with all groups.
For the record, Canadian Bacon isn’t something we eat in Canada. Peameal or Back Bacon, yes (and most of our bacon was probably raised in Canada; I mean the funny nomenclature for that particular cut of pig.) - but that funny stuff on the pizza I had at U of M was alien to me.
If you think Canadian bacon is funny, in Thailand we have “American fried rice.” It’s fairly common. Contains some or all of the following: Rice, ketchup, raisins or peas (peas are not that common with it, though). Always with sides of ham and small, deep-fried wieners, always topped with a fried egg.
Supposedly, it dates back to the Vietnam War era, when thousands of American servicemen were based in the Northeast. A local cook took the ubiquitous “American breakfast” and tried to make it Thai by frying it all up with rice.
But many Thais nowadays seem to think this really is something Americans eat back stateside. They look at me funny when I tell them it’s not so, like they don’t really believe me.
Well, I often see a lot of Mexicans working at Olive Garden, High School Students making tacos at Taco Bell, and Asians working at Asian Buffets, I’m not quite sure what that tells me about the Restaurants? Anyone care to weigh in?
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My small city in China has no authentic western restaurants, but has a number of “Western Food” joints. The menus are always about the same- peppery steaks, fried chicken, ice-cream drink incorporating things that we’d never put in ice cream, pizzas- sometimes with strange things like apricots hidden under the plasticly cheese, and spaghetti with a distinctly un-Italian meat sauce. In my area, breaking an egg over anything automatically makes it “Western”, so many of these dishes come with a random fried egg on top.
They aren’t very good, but they can be okay when you need a change. But to get stuff resembling something you’d find in America or Europe, I’d have to go to a big city ex-pat restaurant.
I can second that you get used to peppers. I live in Sichuan, and every meal comes with ample tissues because at some point you are going to start crying. The food is hot. It’s awesome. When I traveled to other parts of China, I found the food to be lacking that special something and never felt quite well fed unless I went to a Sichuan restaurant.