That’s not odd, that’s just having standards.
To answer the direct question, kosher restaurants have signage indicating what rabbinical organization provides oversight to ensure the restaurant meets kosher standards.
I was in my late 30s the first time I ever ate at a Taco Bell. It was also the last time I ever ate at one.
As for the OP, I was around 20 the first time I ate at a Chinese Restaurant. We just didn’t eat that kind of food when I was growing up. The most foreign we ever got was spaghetti.
Typical evening meal would be:
Chicken
Pork Chops
Fish (always on Fridays), and usually some crappy, frozen kind
Steak (only on Sundays)
Hot dogs/Hamburgers
Irish Stew or what my mom called New England Boiled Dinner
Spaghetti (usually on Wednesdays)
When my wife and I moved to Urbana, IL in 1964, one of the first things we did was try out the only Chinese restaurant in town. It was dreadful. Neither of us had ever had bad Chinese food before. Had we stayed in Urbana, none of our kids would have eaten in a Chinese restaurant until they left town.
On the other the Chinese food situation in Montreal was wonderful. There was a period of several years in which we went out for dim sum nearly every Sunday.
I had never been in a Chinese restaurant until I was in my late 20’s. I had eaten that canned stuff from La Choy, but that was pretty much my entire experience with “Chinese” cooking.
I would argue that 95% of Americans have never eaten authentic Chinese food. 
I never had Indian food till I was in my late 30s. Indian food gets bagged on sometimes so I just never bothered. I went out with some work friends and boy was I missing out.
… So the rabbi says to the priest, ‘It’s better than ham, isn’t it!’
I moved to Champaign 13 years after you, and I can’t remember a Chinese restaurant there, though I’m sure there was one. I can’t remember eating at one, though as I said I’d already been to lots of Chinese places. Odd.
This from me also. In fact, if it’s not a steak medium well and a baked potato, she won’t touch it in a restaurant.
The availability today in Bucks County has already been confirmed, and I can confirm it was available in the 80s there
I think the only times you’re going to see this are in picky eaters or “never eat out / takeaway” scenarios
Which is the category range I fit in. I’ve never eaten in or from any resturant that can be described with an ethnic label. No Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Itallian, Mexican, etc. My favorite Mexican food is Taco Bell crunchy tacos, my favorite Itallian food is a Little Caesars $5.00 Hot and Ready pepporoni pizza. And paying as much as $10 for a meal is my idea of a rare, very reluctant extravagance.
Early exposure to “ethnic” food is going to be
- Proportional to the size of the city or town you grew up in, and
- Inversely proportional to your age
The larger the city, the greater the opportunity to sample different foods. The older you are, the less likely different foods were available when you were young.
My daughter was eating sushi, Thai, and Indian food by the time she could walk. When I grew up, there was no sushi or Thai in my home town at all, and only one Indian restaurant most people didn’t go to.
It seems to me there’s a huge difference between (1) not having tried X food simply because it isn’t readily available to you and (2) avoiding entire categories of food that you could easily get at nearby restaurants or prepared from the local market.
I’ll never understand the mentality of “I only eat things that I’ve always eaten.” Human beings would never have been able to expand across the globe if that had been a common trait.
Whenever I find myself on a place I’ve never been before or a restaurant for the first time, my goal is to try the things I’ve never tried.
I’d never have discovered the majority of things I love if I stuck only to the things I knew I already liked.
And that includes things that I didn’t like as a kid but love now. Like zucchini squash or Brussels sprouts or onions.
I’m sure there are people who have never had a hamburger despite McDonalds and Jack in the Boxes everywhere for various reasons. I never saw my paternal grandmother eat any type of beef and my Dad explained that she had a steak once and was put off by the red juices. The fact that she was Okinawan who historically eat little if any beef, pork is the preferred meat added to her choice not to eat beef.
On the other hand, my Dad didn’t care for pork because that was the primary meat his family ate growing up.
I grew up next door to Fairfield County and am a couple of years older than that woman, and I don’t remember any Taco Bell restaurants in the area until later.
As for me, my parents served home-cooked meals almost every night, but we had take-out or ate out maybe once a month. I remember being very excited the first time we got Chinese takeout that came in those folded cardboard oyster pails that I’d seen in movies and TV shows. And I also remember when a Pizza Hut delivery location opened in town, so we called for delivery but were disappointed to find that they didn’t deliver north of the parkway, where we lived. (And then in the 80s or 90s, my parents bought a used Volvo that came with a car phone built-in to the center console. We had a minimal service plan activated for it, and once ordered takeout from the car, just for the novelty of it.)
Just came to mind. I was invited to a fancy 10 course Chinese dinner by an immigrant Filipino nurse I knew. She and her fellow nurses had been in Hawaii for years, and I’m sure they must have had local Chinese food before, but I was asked what each dish was (that’s bird’s nest soup, that’s sliced jellyfish, that’s oyster rolls with a whole oyster inside, etc.). The only reason I knew what everything was, was because growing up, every year we’d go to a fancy Chinese dinner thrown by my parent’s bowling league.
And if all you ever had a dim sum place was the dumplings or buns, just about any native Chinese person would ask…What? You didn’t have the chicken feet and beef tendons???
Yeah, but we’re already across the globe, so what does that matter? Not to mention that historically speaking human beings have eaten many things now widely regarded as gross out of necessity.
Great that that works for you. For some of us, the majority of the time if we order things we’ve never had before we have a high likihood of getting something we don’t like, then having to answer the person who invited us (or waitstaff) that we’re not eating because we didn’t like it. Then people either try to accommodate (awkward) or make snide comments because we dare not to like what they like. Waste of money (because I’m really not going to choke down food I don’t like, though I know others will).
Some people like new things and adventure in food - others like predictability and safety. Neither attitude is inherently better than the other.
Things don’t stay the same, not even in one person’s lifetime. A person might suddenly have to move late in life. The climate might change, the economy might change, agricultural trends might change. Fashions definitely change, meaning that the things available change. The people around you change, which means that you will likely find yourself faced with new foods because someone else you’re close to likes something new or wants to try something new.
Being willing to try new things is not just some super-special character trait. It’s an essential trait of human beings living in a society of human beings.
Just have an occasional meal you don’t like. It won’t kill you.
In the long run, you can ask for a taste of something new that someone at your table is eating.
If someone only gets to eat out once a year, I can see being cautious. Otherwise the worst that can happen is that you eat your starch and vegetables and bread.
I was at the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago and ordered elk, since I’d never seen elk on a menu before so what the hell. It was good. I also got to say the words “what kind of wine goes with elk?”