"Ethnic" food

[Pan]

I usually use the term Regional US Cuisine to describe specific types of cooking ascribed to a particular part of the US.  Multi Cultural is leaning a little to close to PC for my comfort.  Would find it hard to decide which countries cuisine to choose with "It's a Small World After All" going around in the back of my head... 

Just a thought: "Alternative cuisine"? Too "far out, man," I imagine.

[201]

Considering how many of the cooks in New York restaurants of all sorts of descriptions are Mexicans...

Let's not forget about all the cooks from Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Cuba, etc... Not everyone who speaks Spanish and works in a restaurant is Mexican.

Personally I've never found myself thinking, "I'd like to get some ethnic food tonight". I tend to think in terms of "I'm in a Thai mood tonight" or "I had Vietnamese for lunch, so maybe Mexican for dinner". And if the Mexican dinner happens to cost $150, that doesn't make it any less Mexican, just more expensive.

I guess for me the term "ethnic food" is simply too broad to be of any practical value. Every food is ethnic food. Everything can be tied historically to one group or another. Go ahead and destroy it if you like, since it doesn't really do much for any of us.

[Stone]

I tend to think in terms of "I'm in a Thai mood tonight" or "I had Vietnamese for lunch, so maybe Mexican for dinner".

This should probably be the subject of another thread, but does anyone think it's weird that people will say, "I don't want Chinese food tonight, I just had Chinese food last night;" But people usually don't think twice about having a steak the night after having roast chicken, i.e., "I don't want to have American food tonight, I just had American food last night." When people tell me "I just had Chinese food," I usually respond, "o.k., well if you had a Chinese chicken dish last night, we can order a Chinese seafood dish tonight." It doesn't work, but I say it.

[201]

I tend to think in terms of "I'm in a Thai mood tonight" or "I had Vietnamese for lunch, so maybe Mexican for dinner".

This should probably be the subject of another thread, but does anyone think it's weird that people will say, "I don't want Chinese food tonight, I just had Chinese food last night;" But people usually don't think twice about having a steak the night after having roast chicken, i.e., "I don't want to have American food tonight, I just had American food last night." When people tell me "I just had Chinese food," I usually respond, "o.k., well if you had a Chinese chicken dish last night, we can order a Chinese seafood dish tonight." It doesn't work, but I say it.

I definitely agree with you, it's certainly weird, but I guess it's because those people are subtasters who can only detect one flavor in each cuisine!

Personally, I get a lot of different cravings so I'm usually all over the place trying to satisfy them all. However, I've got no problems with eating Thai food (for example) five nights a week, other than the fact that I'll start reading a thread about bulgolgi and the craving monster rears his ugly head again.

Has anyone else gotten to the point where you feel like you're spreading yourself too thin between all your favorite cuisines???

[fifi]

Whew... This thread may be excellent evidence that we are separated by a common language. All I know is that my local mega-grocery has an aisle labeled with a big sign "Ethnic Foods". This is where I find all of the "good stuff", including LaChoy brand, Pace Picante sauce and Matzo balls. I am about to take it that is anything other than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

[tommy]

Considering how many of the cooks in New York restaurants of all sorts of descriptions are Mexicans, I don't think that the ethnic identity of the people in the back of the house (who are unknown to most customers or potential customers of restaurants) is the thing that causes people to call the restaurants "ethnic" or not to call them "ethnic" (as "non-ethnic" wouldn't normally be used for the unmarked category).

ah. just as i suspected.

[Pan]

Considering that the phrase "ethnic restaurant" seems to be widely used on these boards without much controversy (see these site-wide search results for threads with "ethnic" in the title), I thought that I would resurrect this thread and link to an active discussion of "Ethnic Dining" on Chowhound, in which it has emerged both that those who use the term disagree on what it means and what it encompasses or/and excludes, and that there is a much greater degree of exception taken to the expression among Chowhounds than among eGulleters. I'm guessing that's because Chowhounds tend to focus more on low- and medium-end dining and less on high-end dining than eGullet members, as well as because Chowhound has traditionally pushed an ethos of celebrating deliciousness regardless of location, price, and surroundings, rather than celebrating elite dining in any other sense of the expression (e.g., expensive luxurious dining 'a la russe). Because when 90% of what you eat is encompassed by what most folks here seem to mean when they use the term "ethnic," you don't use that word and instead refer to Chinese (or, indeed, Sichuan, Shanghainese, etc.) restaurants, Malaysian restaurants, South Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, Thai restaurants, etc., etc. I still find the word "ethnic" both useless and misleading when used in a restrictive sense where only SOME foods or cuisines are "ethnic" and others ostensibly are not. Everything is ethnic, everything is cultural, everything is human. But many of you obviously still find the term "ethnic restaurant" useful for your purposes.