I grew habaneros one year when I lived in my old town. Man, that plant was prolific - and I ended up giving them to the food pantry, FWIW. The stems even had heat, which I found out the hard way when I rubbed my eyes afterwards!
When and how was the Vietnamese banh mi sandwich popularized in the US? The first time I had one was on my first visit to New York in 2008. It seemed exotic at the time. Now they seem to have spread throughout the country.
[Hijack] in our house, the SECOND rule of cooking is "if you are working with hot peppers, wash your hands BEFORE you go to the bathroom. [/hijack]
Thinking about Vietnamese food made me realize, of course a contributing factor its rise in popularity here was the influx of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. So now I wonder if Afghani food is going to be the next food trend in a decade or so. (I actually went to an Afghani restaurant in New York once, but right now that’s the type of food you’d only find in a really big, diverse city).
OK, looks like my timeline is fairly OK on the peppers. Red Savina was Guinness Book of World Records “hottest pepper” from 1994 until 2007, when the Ghost Pepper overtook it. The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T came in 2011; the Moruga scorpion in 2012, and the Carolina Reaper in 2013. Once they were declared “hottest pepper in the world” it was usually about a year or two before they started hitting the market in products, and two or three years before they started really showing up as seedlings (though you could get the seeds earlier.)
? I think if you google “Afghan restaurants near me” you’ll be surprised? There are quite a few along the Hudson Valley in upstate NY, in northern New Jersey, in Madison WI, in Arlington VA, in all sorts of smaller cities and metro regions.
Maybe you were talking about a really high-end or specialized Afghan restaurant, which I agree is likely to be limited to major metropolises. But Afghan food in general isn’t all that esoteric, and can form part of the menu of “Middle Eastern” or Persian or North Indian restaurants as well.
I assume that some of the Americans who served in the Vietnam War were exposed to Vietnamese food, and would seek it out when back in the US. I think that’s one of the reasons that pizza, for example, became more common after WWII.
There was also a huge influx of Vietnamese into the US starting around 1975, and the population has grown substantially since. I suspect that has something to do with it as well.
So I did try that, and I discovered a restaurant in my town that I didn’t even know existed. It looks like I have a new restaurant to try now.
You’re right, the menu at the place I discovered looks like basically a blend of Persian and Indian cuisine.
Yup, geographically that’s basically what Afghan food is, right between Iran and North India/Pakistan. My quite small city had an Afghan restaurant until pretty recently, they were good and I miss them!
The Vietnamese were colonized by the French. The French know how to make bread. Therefore , the Vietnamese know how to make bread. Banh Mi is basically a sub sandwich.
Hamid Karzai’s brother, Qayum, owns five Afghan restaurants in the Baltimore area. I knew a freelance journalist in Bangkok who was from Baltimore, and he interviewed Qayum during a trip back home. That was 10 or 15 years ago.
EDIT: Well, the link seems to indicate one of those restaurants is a tapas place.
In the late 1970s, there were soy-based meat analogues (a term I’ve only just learned) made to look and taste like bacon in strips and slices (“Canadian” bacon in the US) and sausage in links and patties. The brand name I remember is Morningstar Farms.
There have “always” been upscale “ethnic” restaurants. Once there’s enough demand for anything, there’s always a high-end niche.
The big thing I’ve noticed in food in the past decade is BBQ sauce except it’s now a specific regions BBQ not just generic BBQ. So you can get a Kansas City BBQ or Carolina BBQ or Houston BBQ.
Morningstar Farms is still in business and still selling meat analogues
Yes, I saw that before posting. Previously, I hadn’t seen or even heard of their products since the late 1970s. Looks like they’ve undergone much development since then. As I recall, the sausage links and patties were pretty good.
I don’t know if their products were available nationwide back then, but they were sold at a chain supermarket in a small low-to-middle-income suburb at the time, so I’m assuming they were fairly well known.
The whole ‘Street Food’ thing.
As an Australian, I grew up knowing that for most of us, the first experience of overseas travel was somewhere in South-East Asia. And Rule No 2 (after ‘Don’t drink the water’) was ‘Don’t eat food bought on the street or at markets’.
OK - that’s changed. We’re now allowed( 
) to eat Street Food. But also Street Food is now held up as this amazing gourmet experience - when in many cases it’s just rice with a bit of spice in it or some cheap noodles with a sauce.
I think it depends where in SEA you are. The street food in Singapore and Malaysia is just divine and (in the cities) perfectly safe to eat. In fact, I’ve told my wife that once the borders are open again, the first thing I’m doing is making a beeline for Singapore and eating so much hawker food she’s going to have to roll me along Orchard Rd.
How about pressed sandwiches aka Paninis?
A friend has a food truck called Pittsburgh Tortas, delicious paninis.
ETA: seems like one day I’d never heard of paninis, then they were everywhere.
What makes them guilty of cultural appropriation any more than a smaller restaurant catering to the middle class or lower?