Hillary reading.Something like 300, 000 Arabs from 22 countries live in the Detroit Metro area. No, this is not Monday because I am really talking about food today.
Detroit and its su
burbs are sprinkled with outstanding Middle-eastern cuisine, and I have become one of its biggest fans. It's a healthy cuisine, lots of veggies. But the Arabic restaurants have lots of meat too, boys. Middle-eastern chefs know how to use spices to enhance flavor. It's all you can do not to lick the plate.It's also a incredibly reasonable cuisine in these hard economic times. The restaurants around here give you free turnips, pita and garlic sauce with a $3.oo sandwich. Most of them are modest but there are some upscale ones too.
What are the most common types of restaurants in your neck of the wood? (We also have a ton of Thai). What ethnic food do like the most and barbecue doesn't co
unt if you live in the southwest.
29 comments:
Probably a close race here between Chinese and Mexican. I like both, but prefer Chinese, which is probably the single most common ethnic cuisine I eat. I also love Sushi, though.
Portland is blessed with a lot of fantastic ethnic cuisine. We've got more sushi places than I can count, and most of 'em are pretty damn good. We've also got some great Thai and Indian, although oddly, our Chinese is sorely lacking. If I'm choosing favorites, though, I'd have to go with our sushi (Miyake, Sapporo, Yosaku) or the one Brit-Indi place in town (Haggarty's) -- their curries are absolutely phenomenal.
That's a frumpy looking Hilary pic.
Hillary ain't looking too good there.
American. They love Maccy D's here in Poland.
As you probably know, Buffalo is the home of the chicken wing so there are dozens of those kinds of places. The most numerous restaurants are Italian and Asian, but we have a broad variety for almost every taste and income level.
Vietnamese seems to be the growing trend out here in Phoenix, (I'm not complaining about this at all.) same thing goes with Thai (also not complaining.)
By far it is Mexican here and most of them are very good. most are Tex-Mex but we have a few genuine Mexican restaurants as well.
Houston is unique in Texas. It's urban, global, a real melting pot. San Antonio and Ft. Worth are western. Austin is a mixture of high-tech and western. Dallas is a bit like Houston but more conservative. With the oil and gas industry here, many foreign nationals live here. Here in west Houston, you can go to a park and hear 3-5 languages being spoken on any given sunny Saturday.
Thus, our cuisine has to cater to these folks. Naturally, Tex-Mex and Mexican (yes, they are different) is the #1 cuisine here after "American" (whatever that is). And we have the traditional European (Italian, Spanish, German, French) and Asian (Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese) cuisine here. What makes Houston special are the other types you can't find just everywhere. We have a large Vietnamese population and there are sections of town where all the signs are in Vietnamese. We have grocery stores and restaurants in these areas and it's like traveling to Vietnam without a passport.
For our Middle Eastern citizens, you name the country and we have a restaurant that features that food. We even have a grocery store that caters to Middle Eastern and Indian foods. Boy, is it fun to go in there.
We have a good number of folks from India and I live a few blocks down from one of the best Indian restaurants in the city. It's one of me and my wife's favorite restaurants. We also love our local Persian restaurant, about a mile away.
My wife and I have often wondered what a TV show about Houston cuisine would be like. We decided it would be eclectic. We may not necessarily have the #1 (insert your adjective) restaurant in the world. But we have an example of just about everything in the world. It's one of the best things about living in Houston.
Indian food is my fave, and only in the last few years has it (just barely) passed Greek food as my favorite. Chicken jalafraize, spinach pakora, coriander chutney, naan, kheer... Yum. But I won't ever turn down moussaka, keftades, dolmades and baklava either.
Once upon a time we had a really great tiki bar/restaurant here (the Kahiki's Malagasy steak was wonderful) but no more, thanks to Walgreen.
My small town seems evenly divided between Chinese, Mexican, and pizza restaurants. I'm a big fan of both Chinese and Mexican(and I don't count the Taco Bell we have), but I don't care for any of the chain pizzas(we have a locally owned restaurant that outdoes them all).
My favourite eating places in Toronto are Indian restaurants.
The food in Portland was amazing.
Now Chinese and Mexican were the most popular types when we moved here 40 (yikes) years ago. Now it's a much bigger mix.
It was the only pic I could find with her reading. But it's not flattering. What's Maccy Ds.
We have several fantastic Vietnamese restaurant because we have a huge Asian population in several suburbs.
Yes, chicken wings. I remember when they first became popular--probably about the time OJ was playing for the Bills.
I don't think I have ever been in a genuine Mexican restaurant except maybe once in Key West. They are all tex-mex here.
We do have many Indian restaurants but I don't think it's really caught on here. We love it though. Too spicy for the palatte here.
We have a few good pizza places. I like the east coast thin crust though and midwesterners like really doughy pizza with almost no spice. Pretty bland stuff.
The Greek restaurants here are pretty dull fare and I would call them Greek-American. I do love that lemon chicken soup though.
Here in Southern Maryland seafood (actually Bayfood) restaurants seem to dominate. Mexican restaurants are on the rise. The good Italian restaurant burned down last year. I'd kill for a decent Greek restaurant. I did find a decent Japanese place. With the economy, I suspect a number of restaurants will be going belly-up. Haven't found a single restaurant that makes a good Fluffernutter.
This seems strange to say, but I don't know what a good Greek restaurant is based on the ones in Detroit. They just seem like unseasoned Middle-eastern food here.
Oh, boy, do we have a lot of belly-ups at the high end.
We still have a lot of good burger and hot dog joints up here in Flint. Many years ago we had one downtown that had a big plate glass front window where you could see the Koegels franks [franfurters] being grilled. Inside you could sit between a G.M. exec. and a wino and drink cheap beer that theoreticily killed any mystery matter that ended up in the coney sauce--especially important if the wino was also the cook. Ahh..the good old days when the health department was more myth than fact.
John McAuley
John-do you have any ethnic restaurants? I'm still waiting to try that halo burger. Haven't been up that way in a couple years.
The closest thing to ethnic we have here is an Italian restaurant, though I did see a sign going up for a Chinese restaurant the other day. Most of our restaurants/diners stick with the usual fare of burgers, hot roast beef, ham and chicken. The classy ones serve homemade bread, cinnamon rolls and desserts. They're not much into the exotic around here.
As often as I criticize Detroit, it does have the features of a major city-within 20 miles four and one half million people live-so we have almost every cuisine imaginable.
Patti: I'm certainly no bon vivant [ I've always wanted to use that word[s?]] I find that most of the joints around Flint are a Heinz 57. I think even the Chinese restaurants sell burgers. Having said that, there's a new Mexican place on Dort Highway that makes some of the best chow north of the Rio Grande. I've eaten there half a dozen times--and of course I can't remember the name of it right now. I'll fill in the blanks later this evening. [But I do remember it's between the blond with thigh- high white vinyl boots and the Sunoco station that got robbed and firebombed last week.] I believe Anthony Bourdain would eat there.
John McAuley
I am going to have to make a trip up there soon. And, of course, if they have exotic insects in your food, Anthony would be even more attracted.
Oh, since I lived in South Louisiana for many years, it's hard for the food in WNC to compare, but, I do love Tupelo Honey in Asheville....and there was an Indian restaurant I loved ...now I can't remember the name, dang it!
In one had to go vegetarian, Middle Eastern food is the second best alternative to Indian.
In San Francisco, we have South and Central America well covered. All of the Asian cuisines are covered here as well, and not enough of European and African.
We don't have enough good Jewish delis, Russia pretty much represents all of Eastern Europe ( we have exactly two Polish restaurants, last time I checked) and forget about the German food here.
We good, cheap and plentiful: Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican, Thai, and Peruvian.
One favorite other than the above is Burmese, a wonderful mix of Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese cuisines.
I can't imagine going for want of good cuisine in SF, Cormac. Burmese, huh. Love to try that combination.
We have German but not anything to brag about. Delis are northwest of Detroit. We have it all if you're willing to drive and we put 20,000 a year on our car.
Cleveland has a ton of ethnic restaurants, from Hungarian to Thai to Chinese to Ethiopian and more.
Akron has lots of restaurants,too. Peninsula has 2: sandwiches, salads, and other mostly family style foods are on the menu.
How far are you from Cleveland, Debra? Do you go in often?
"We have it all if you're willing to drive and we put 20,000 a year on our car."
Food is one of the few things that I will tolerate traffic for and I commend your family for going the true extra mile.
I rue the day that I have to move away from here, but the economy says that barring making Daniel Handler or Danielle Steel money, we're not retiring in San Francisco.
I forgot the Ethiopian restaurant a little less than a mile away, though they're Eritrean (the east coast of Ethiopia seceded almost twenty years back) and calling them different will get you kicked out of the restaurant.
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