Ethnic Tensions
February 29th, 2008I was trying out a new Indian restaurant the other day with my friend, and at the end of the meal we had an interesting conversation with the owner. He told us that he started the first Indian restaurant in our area in 1993. (This was after he told us about the deadbeat cook he fired after just one day, for grabbing the butt of the female dishwasher. Ironically, that guy was the one to recommend the very restaurant he was fired from.) That really got me thinking about what ethnic cuisines are popular in the U.S. and which aren’t. Having recently written a two-part post on fortune cookies, I’ve definitely had ethnic cuisines in mind.
Obviously Indian food is a more recent arrival, compared to old favorites like Chinese cuisine. Italian food is probably still king; I’ve often said it’s the new national cuisine of the U.S, and it turns out the statistics bear that out somewhat (more on that later). But nothing trumps the almighty hamburger, pizza, and sub shops, unless you exclude fast food outlets. Still, I needed some hard data on the subject.
Finding that kind of data wasn’t as easy as I thought. You have to pay for a lot of industry profiles, and some are quite expensive. (I found one for the bargain-basement price of $5,600. I don’t plan to spend *that* much on this blog. Whoever said information wants to be free must not have worked in the food industry.)
As usual, that means I’m left to rely on public data and the kindness of the internet to get my data. Call me a data scavenger, I don’t mind. Personally, I like the phrase “data vulture” best. (”Data cockroach” didn’t go over so well.) It reminds me of those “vulture funds” that step in to buy assets at firesale prices when businesses go south. I step (swoop?) in to find data where it happens to be freely available.
A few hours of scavenging later (caw, caw), I stumbled on a few great bits of source material. First was the 2002 Economic Census. In their somewhat obscure “Miscellaneous Subjects” section, they answer my very question. (The same data is in summary form here.) As a side note, I’m trying to leave the prices out of this discussion in favor of a more neutral measure, so I mostly use the number of outlets as my basis for comparison.
The census only covers Italian, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants, as it turns out. The remaining ethnic cuisines are lumped into “other”, unfortunately. (”Let’s go for ‘Other’ tonight, kids!”) Nevertheless, there’s some good figures there. First, you can see about as many people eat at sit-down restaurants as they do at fast food joints. And fast food places are far less ethnically adventurous, as you’d expect. Even though only there are only slightly more sit-down restaurants (which also cost more, so people probably eat at them less), the eating fare is far more varied. About twice as many people eat ethnic cuisines at sit-down restaurants. By contrast, from what I read elsewhere, people are more likely to go to fast food joints for “convenience food” and “comfort food”, which means stuff like burgers, pizza, and subs instead of, say, curry. (Taco Bell notwithstanding.)
In fact, hamburger places easily trump every other category of food, even if you combine sit-down and fast food locations. And the number of both pizza and sub shops is equal to or greater than the number of Italian, Chinese, or Mexican restaurants. Still, the census reveals that about 1/4 of all food locations are places that specifically serve ethnic cuisine. This doesn’t count the litany of other sit-down restaurants that have at least some Italian, Chinese, and Mexican food on their menu. For example, I read on another site that 87% percent of ‘tweens (those aged 10 to 13) eat quesadillas as “an everyday food”. (!) I had no idea that quesadillas were the “Mac and Cheese” of the next generation, but there you have it. I think I’ve eaten maybe 3 quesadillas in my life, which makes me feel a little old. (Can you have an mid-life crisis eating Mexican food? Or would you call it an early-life crisis, in my case? It’s all so confusing.)
Anyway, if you combine fast food and sit-down restaurants, Mexican food is the king of ethnic food (shocker, I know), followed closely by Chinese. Italian comes in third overall. However, if you just consider sit-down locations, Italian is first. (Which was kind of what I meant when I said Italian was our new national cuisine.)
Other cuisines pale in comparison to the “big three”. People eat as much of all other cuisines combined as they do any of the big three, and almost all of that is at sit-down restaurants. Still, that’s not very specific. I wasn’t content to leave it at that. A couple hours of searching later, I stumbled across a survey called “Ethnic Cuisines II” which was conducted in 1999. It was a follow up to “Ethnic Cuisines I”, which was conducted in 1994. This report was a much more reasonable $90. However, the data was a little out-of-date, and I’m not above linking to someone summarizing the findings. (What self-respecting data vulture would do otherwise?)
True to form, I’m going to do just that here. That’s a percentage breakdown of all ethnic cuisines, courtesy of “Ethnic Cuisines II”. Having rearranged the order a bit, they put Italian above Mexican, with Chinese at the top. (This suggests that people visit the fewer Italian restaurants more often.) Shockingly enough, Japanese is number 4 on the list, which from what I read probably means sushi and “hibachi grill” fare. (”Hibachi grill” is where the chef cooks your food at your table and puts on a show, with lots of flames and oil and onion “volcanoes”. Some people call them “Japanese steakhouses”.) Plus, this was over 8 years ago. I’m guessing Japanese food is even more popular now, just based on my own experience.
Soul food is fifth, though apparently, like French, German, and Scandinavian cuisine, it’s declining in popularity. (What is Scandinavian cuisine, anyway? Fondue?) Rounding out the list are Cajun, Latin American (I’m guessing mostly Brazillian, especially those all-you-can-eat meat places), Mediterranean (not sure what kind of food this entails, maybe falafel), Greek, German, Thai, Indian, and the disturbingly vague “Pan Asian”, respectively. After that are relatively minor cuisines in the U.S., like Middle Eastern, French, and Caribbean.
Though I already mentioned what cuisines are in decline in the U.S., some cuisines are also on the rise. According to that link, Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Thai, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern cuisines have been experiencing a boom in popularity. Given how much more I eat all those personally (except Caribbean, especially now that I’m vegetarian), that’s no surprise to me. I’m surprised Indian isn’t growing faster, but I guess that’s a more recent trend.
In general, people are flocking to more spicy foods. For my part, I took this to an extreme when I purchased a bottle of “Blair’s Mega Death Hot Sauce”, which at 500,000 scoville is 300 times hotter than a jalepeno and thousands of times hotter than Tabasco. The sauce comes out in a thick, congealed mass and has an especially pungent smell. Blair recommends ominously “not to use it without dilution”. I put 6 drops in a large Wendy’s chili (back when I ate meat) and it was the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Thankfully I grew out of that phase. Now at Chipotle I order the mild salsa, thanks. (It could be worse, though. You could try Blair’s “16 Million Reserve”, like the man himself did. Blair comments that the pain was “exquisite”.)
It’s not just about food, of course. People often say that ethnic cuisines act as cultural ambassadors. This article describes “Global Thai”, a plan sponsored by Thailand’s government to get more people to eat Thai food around the world. In that vein, given the U.S.’s current currency fight with China, why not rely on a different sort of diplomacy? Since Chinese food is the most popular ethnic cuisine here, and McDonald’s is growing fast in China, why not let the food do the talking? A potato or a wanton could protect us more than a missile defense system ever could. Unless they figure out how to make potato guns…
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February 29th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Interesting stuff. As you might guess, here in Chicago you can get a lot of interesting ethnic cuisines. Falafels are quite popular. There are also lots of latin american restaurants which are not Mexican. Within 5 minutes drive of my apartment I can get costa rican, puerto rican, honduran, bolivian, peruvian, and brazilian food. We often go up to Devon Ave. where there is an entire street of Indian and Pakistani restaurants. I also understand Ethiopian cuisine is becoming more popular. I tried some west African dishes at the last taste of Chicago and discovered plantains are great if prepared well.
Oh, as for quesadillas, I can understand that. When I was a kid my parents always made me grilled cheese sandwiches because they were easy, and quesadillas are basically the same thing except on tortillas.
I bet your “little India” is great. The one in New York was awesome. I have not historically been a plantain fan but like you say maybe it’s the preparation. Interesting take on quesadillas. I guess they do kind of seem like an updated grilled cheese sandwich.
- Dave
February 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I thought Matt was going to preempt me but he didn’t. What I’ve found most interesting since moving to this part of Chicago is the proliferation of “hot dog restaurants.” (Anywhere else they’d be burger restaurants because they do sell burgers but in Chicago, you know hot dogs are king.) These are little hole-in-the-wall places, about one or two per block in the lower-middle class neighborhoods, with a counter by the window or sometimes a couple of tables. Most people get takeout. What’s really crazy about them is in Chicago (which I’ve never seen before), besides hot dogs, burgers, and fried chicken, they usually advertise “Polish,” “Gyros,” “Tacos,” “Fried rice,” “Falafels,” and once even “Samosas.” I know there are others I’ve forgotten, too. (A lot of times these ethnic offerings are not spelled correctly.) I guess this is striking to me because you expect a kind of multicultural cosmopolitan attitude towards food among the rich, but you don’t always expect to find it among the poor. But for people living in these neighborhoods, falafels are just another fast food offering!
That’s funny about the hot dogs. I wish I lived near such culinary diversity, I’m jealous!
- Dave
March 14th, 2008 at 1:39 am
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