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Comment by giantfrog | Hacker News Reader

This is a really fun exercise; a rare example of something that's "data-centric" without being soulless.

I think it's fascinating how it illustrates weirdness about how Americans think about and categorize "ethnic" food. For example, the author's analysis of Google data shows Glendale, CA ranks #1 for "Highest prevalence of Mediterranean Restaurants." But I am nearly certain the majority of these, given Glendale's demographics, are in fact Armenian or Persian restaurants. Both Iran and Armenia are of course quite far from the Mediterranean region, but for whatever reason (rice? flat breads? grilled things on a stick?) have gotten lumped in with some Americanized, genericized conception of "the Mediterranean" that's indistinguishable from "the Middle East." I would imagine you'd find the same thing happening on Yelp etc.

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> some Americanized, genericized conception of "the Mediterranean" that's indistinguishable from "the Middle East."

The same happens with the food itself. I had a chat with a restaurateur in Switzerland, and he explained all the modifications he had to make in order to sell "Chinese" food. "They didn't have bean sprouts when I first came, and they will look like they are dying if there's any amount of spice in it."

The famous example of this is Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a British take on Indian food. You can't open an "Indian" restaurant in the UK and not put it on the menu, just as you must have the step-ladder of spice with Indian sounding names (Korma, Madras, Vindaloo). IIRC similar to General Tso's Chicken when it comes to ordering Chinese in the US, gotta be on the menu.

People simply come to expect certain things with certain foods, often disconnected with the the place that inspired it. When you open an ethnic restaurant, it's almost like joining a franchise. You aren't formally paying MacDonald's when you open a Chinese takeaway, but you do have to have things on the menu that people recognize, so the labels "Thai", "Ramen", "Japanese", etc function a bit like a franchise.

> The famous example of this is Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a British take on Indian food.

as an indian i have to push back against this myth a bit - chicken tikka masala might have been invented in the UK, but it's a variant on similar indian dishes (butter chicken in particular) that not only would be right at home in many restaurants within india, but actually is! i don't even consider it fusion cuisine; it was invented by a south asian chef who happened to be living in the UK at the time, and the flavour profile is as "authentically" indian as any of the other standard punjabi-inspired north indian restaurant classics.

I'd say that the step-ladder of spiced Indian dishes are more associated with takeaways and cheaper restaurants. High quality Indian restaurants in the UK will tend to feature a specific region and only have a handful of dishes.

Same with higher end restaurants in the US for Chinese and Indian food. Depending on where you are the cheaper restaurants in immigrant communities will be similar.

You get the regional food the chef's mother made. Occasionally, there are local substitutions (different mangos, peppers, meat cuts).

Higher end chinese or indian restaurants are pretty rare in the US. Both cuisines have been relegated to the fast, cheap delivery/takeout space and places doing higher-end (and higher priced) dishes find it difficult to get customers.

not in New Jersey and New York City. There are many high end variante of both

A bit like writing a fantasy novel. You aren’t paying any Tolkien Estate licensing fees, but people expect the established elves, trolls, dwarves, goblins, dragons, etc.

A more historical example of the same phenomenon may be commedia dell'arte.

BTW this happens all around the world. There are some staple dishes found at every Chinese restaurant in Korea, which are only tangentially related to Chinese food sold anywhere else.

Korean-Chinese cuisine is its own thing. Many of its staples like tangsuyuk and jjajangmian are based on Dongbei cuisine (Northeast China, next to Korea) and Shandong cuisine (across the Yellow Sea from Korea), which are both fairly uncommon outside China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Chinese_cuisine

Indian Chinese and Japanese Chinese are even more divorced from their Chinese origins.

I recently spoke with someone who traveled to Thailand. She didn’t like the Pad Thai in Thailand and instead preferred the one in NYC with yellow color on the noodles.

Like, there is no such thing called ‘Alfredo sauce’ in Italy - and it would not go on pasta anyway.

I understand the larger point you're making but it was literally created in Rome.

Plus lots of salad and olive oil. I believe the use of "Mediterranean" is to avoid strange expectations about Middle Eastern food, which many people seem to erroneously expect to be more like Indian.

I always assumed it was due to a lot of Americans thinking "middle eastern" has a negative connotation.

Yeah, back in Europe, I used to associate "Mediterranean Cuisine" with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and possibly Portuguese (geographical reality aside).

Agreed, I am wondering if you could extract food truck data from the various licensing databases. That question arises because in some places food trucks have replaced the statistically improbable 'hole-in-the-wall' restaurant for some of the same reasons those restaurants existed, relatively low cost of entry.

To me, this is less about how Americans incorrectly categorize food (not that they don't do that) and more about how lazy algorithms do so.

People lack nuance. Nuanced views are computationally expensive.

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