There are some exotic foods we tend to take for granted exist. Almost every city for example has a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and maybe an Outback Steakhouse. But this isn’t universal for some reason. Someone asked me if I wanted to go to an Egyptian restaurant and I was like “wait, they have restaurants?”
A question for all those who would say they consider themselves ethnically fluent. What are all the cultural categories of food you’ve had?
I try to pick something I’ve never had before first my birthday meal every year. The best one was probably the Uzbek place. Everyone there kept trying to talk to me in Uzbek as we appeared to be the only native English speakers in the house, so I’ll assume it was authentic.
All kinds of grilled meats, multiple types of breads, fancy sodas (tarragon was awesome!), sour cherry pierogies with whipped sour cream, stuffed pasta… They had some of everything with their own twist on it. I had plov, the national dish, which was a rice pilaf with grilled meat. Absolutely delicious.
I’d say the hardest cuisines to find here are anything African or anything Eastern European. For that though, the secret is keeping an eye out for church festivals. The Greek Orthodox Church has one that has African and Eastern European, the Polish shrine has a Polish festival, and the Coptic church had Egyptian.