Fresh cabbage. But shredded fine, like coleslaw. I use 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices in Czech soup.
Aside from the slightly sour vinegar marinades and condiments, the profile I get from Filipino food is SWEET.
I doubt our recipe is anything special! It’s just sour soup maybe with barley and mushrooms. It’s actually supposed to be shitty for Christmas Eve dinner to remind you how awesome Jesus is or something 
No one in my family makes cabbage soup outside of Christmas. If they’re doing cabbage, it’s stuffed cabbage!
I’ve only been to a self-proclaimed Malaysian restaurant once. It was this one.
Personally, I found the food indistinguishable from Chinese (and I can tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese). I don’t know if that reflects Malaysian cuisine in general or just what they were serving at this particular restaurant.
I haven’t found any place in America that serves decent smoked meat sandwiches and poutine.
Absolutely certain no sour component? Some soups have a mix of fresh and sour cabbage. Also, marjoram is not uncommon in Hungarian cabbage soup. (And I could swear I’ve seen it in Austrian renditions, too. It’s just a ubiquitous Central European herb,) Caraway is more popular, but a mix is not unusual, either. Any meats or other vegetables that you remember? Smoked sausage? Ham hock? Bacon?
Yeah, I’m always at a loss as to how to describe Serbian food, because it comes from such a crossroads. It is not generally a fancy cuisine, nor is it so rigid as many French or Italian cuisines. So. Think German/Polish food. You got your sausages, your cutlets (schnitzels), your soured cabbages and other pickles, etc. in the winter. But Serbia has a longer summer, and growing season, so there’s a huge emphasis on barbecue (!). Spit or pit roasted pig, lamb, etc. Lots of fresh salads then. Seasoning profiles tend to be Greek or Turkish. Lots of Turkish-ish “salads” too (eggplant and/or red pepper salsas are ubiquitous). Red sweet peppers, both fresh and preserved, are huge in any form, actually. Cucumbers everyday in season. Desserts can be rather fancy when they aren’t of the baklava type, and that comes from the Victorian-era Austrian/Franco-Russe influence. Oh, and it’s not a meal without copious bread, butter, and fresh cheese. More so than in other cultures I’m familiar with.
Oh, and very strong coffee and sometimes booze (rakija) for breakfast, along with bread, butter, cheese, and some pork product.
So to stereotype, as the OP wants, mix up German food and Greek food, subtract some fish and add moar meat (preferably barbecued) and you have Serbian cuisine. I like it.
BTW,this scene is equally applicable to 1st to 3rd generation Serb families (as is the rest of the film). 
Oh, I forgot to include a link I found on Serbian desserts that shows the Franco-Russe elements. Not the best pictures, but you get the idea.
As a bonus, check out this dudeon Youtube.
Malay food will have some Chinese Malay food, some Indian Malay food, and some Malay malay food. That variety is absolutely characteristic, although what you get at home will tend to one direction or another.
The Chinese food is often not strongly spiced, often with a ginger sauce. Very hot sauce/peper is used as a condiment rather than included. Rice of course (served separately).
I don’t know enough about Indian food to make a judgement. Potato and wheat are used. Indian rice rather than Chinese rice.
I’d say that the Malay strand is less likely to include soup or even stew, often vegetarian, may likely to include fruit, fixh. Rice and noodles, in my experience served as part of the item.
Filipino here. My advice to anyone interested in trying out good Filipino cooking is to come to the Philippines, be a guest to a rich family outside Manila, where people still live the slow, easy life of Filipinos in days past. While the main complaints are there (tonnes of grease and dead vegetables) at least the food is prepared right using fresh ingredients, and no skimping on portions. Filipino food is comfort food. No fast food potential, no nonsense about healthy cooking.
The last two statements are the reason I don’t recommend restaurants. Take the case of kare-kare mentioned above. If you ate it in a restau, my bet is the meat tasted bland because it sat in the freezer for too long, and the sauce was all pasty and over-sweet from peanuts. And I hate that fermented shrimp paste that goes on the side. Real kare-kare is supposed to be oxtail soup. It should produce a fine-tasting and smelling soup, similar to the German version. You don’t need to add peanuts. Just a little pounded browned rice to thicken the soup will do.
It’s the Spanish-style dishes that produce a lot of fat (menudo, afritada, mechado, pochero, morcon.) Untrimmed pork is braised until the fat is nearly all melted. Chefs braise lean parts, separate the grease from the soup, and then put in the tomato sauce. The meat is braised whole, and then carved, taking out the fatty parts. But some of the fat bits is still served in a corner of the platter for those who want it (I do.)
I hate sisig. I understand Bourdain is all set to introduce it. I’m guessing it will be a hit in the bars and pubs, but I was never a fan. It’s the young bar crowd that likes it. Not a serious dish, IMHO.
I think that the Germans get a bad rap, at least an unfair rap, for “bland food.”
I like to think that they don’t try to camouflage the flavor of the base foods with an overabundance of spices. Haven’t had a “German” meal yet that I didn’t like.
^
I think their boiled asparagus in white egg sauce with boiled ham and potatoes on the side is a genius dish.
I dined in a Sri Lankan restaurant once, In Ottawa, Ontario. I was expecting a variant of indian food, but what I got was quite unique and extremely delicious. It seemed like a mix of India and Indonesia. Lots of coconut.
What I remember most is food served in a nest of stringlike fried dough, and it was amazing.
Using Icarus’s formula from upthread, a cross between Central European (German/Slavic) and Turkish cuisine seems to be a reasonable summary. I personally think Slavic food with much more grilled meats (a la Turk), Mediterranean vegetables like eggplant and red peppers (especially in the form of ajvar), and Greek/Turkish things like burek, moussaka, and Turkish coffee. But I can take my Polish parents there, and they’d feel reasonably at home with the menu, whereas if I took them to a Greek or Turkish restaurant, the food would be fairly unfamiliar to them.
My mother-in-law, wife, and step-daughter would all look at you crooked if you left out the peanut and the bagoong (did I spell that right?). To them, oxtail soup and kare-kare are different dishes (and they enjoy both).
I’ve tried it a few times, and I’m not a fan either. But credit where credit is due, that dish really characterizes the phrase “from the rooter to the tooter”.
Mile End Delicatessen. The original on Hoyt in Brooklyn is revelatory, especially during Poutine Week (where the standard poutine gets Americanized in many meat-laden ways), but the day-to-day stuff is stylistically damned near perfect Montreal homage.
Fumare Meats and Deli in Chicago’s Ogilvie station delivers a wonder Montreal smoked meat sandwich. My only point of comparison is Schwartz’s in Montreal, but this sandwich took me back there.
I can’t help you with the poutine. Seems like everybody wants to put wild boar ragu and shit like that on it, without offering just a basic cheap-ass fries, gravy, and curds option. I’m sure there must be some place here that does a reasonable rendition, but I haven’t researched it.
I agree enthusiastically with your assessment of Hungarian desserts. They heartily embraced the Viennese bakery traditions during the years of their political pairing with Austria. Hungarian food is tasty, but fundamentally rustic. Their pairing of rustic food with sophisticated desserts is a disconnect, but a wonderful one.
I agree that if you want an oxtail soup, then just make an oxtail soup. Or a sinigang. Or a kaldereta. Or a straight up stew. Don’t call it kare-kare unless it has peanut sauce and bagoong on the side. Many will cut corners on the peanut sauce by using commercial peanut butter. But almost all peanut butters will have sugar added and most will have added salt. What you really want for proper kare-kare is unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter.