That’s also common with small restaurants run by Middle Eastern families; they’ll advertise as “Mediterranean” food, probably hoping to attract customers looking for “Greek” food. In fact, I recall one restaurant owned by a Lebanese family that advertised as “Greek” food.
I lived in a mid-sized city in Wisconsin that had a large Hmong population and several Thai restaurants (including one billing itself as Thai-Lao).
In the suburbs of Chicago, in my experience, they speak Spanish.
There’s a Japanese restaurant just up the street. It is owned, and run, and the cooks, are all Korean.
That’s really common. Just about every buffet in Koreatown will have decent sushi section. Not only is sushi very popular in Korea, but many things that are trendy in Japan will subsequently become trendy in Korea thereafter.
There’s a Laotian or maybe its Cambodian food stand, frying things up at the regional market. Looks like a mom and pop operation (there are quite a few Laotian and Cambodian refugees settling here). Sorry, I can’t bring myself to try anything, I don’t like the looks of the food, the stand, or the cooks. Imma square unadventurous suburban girl who loves her sushi, Thai, and curry, but this stuff is too darn strange.
Another factor may be that tourism has only been open in Laos and Cambodia relatively recently, so they haven’t necessarily been on a lot of people’s radar.
Amok is delicious. I found Lao food pretty good although sticky rice isn’t my favorite, and BeerLao was surprisingly good.