What American city does your cuisine/your heritage's cuisine the best?

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Charliegirl121@reddit

Chicago and pizza are the best combinations

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I don't think I've ever seen a Norwegian restaurant, or even a Scandinavian one. Even when I lived near Ballard, things like Lutefisk were only found during festivals or through a specialty market. You simply can't find it in most of the country.

Is there a such thing as Canadian food? That wasn't invented recently?

Polish food is done very well in Detroit and most of the Rust Belt cities. So many Poles came to those cities and the foods became endemic. Most communities around Detroit have at least one Polish restaurant and many family restaurants will have items like pierogi on their menu.

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HappyLoveChild27@reddit

Norwegian restaurants in Madison, WI/Deforest, WI!

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TheBimpo@reddit

No kidding? Name 'em, I get to out Wisconsin every few years.

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sadthrow104@reddit

Wonder if it’s cuz of the blandness that Scandinavian and Nordic food never got big here

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TheBimpo@reddit

Americans don't eat a lot of lamb or sheep so things like fårikål or pinnekjøtt aren't going to be appealing, we'd just make a beef stew instead. Not much fish or seafood stew happening away from the coasts either. The Scandinavian diaspora was pretty small anyway, compared to like the Poles or the Germans.

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Penarol1916@reddit

I’ve yet to find Uruguayan restaurants anywhere in the US.

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nemo_sum@reddit

I've only lived in two cities, and of the two, Chicago isn't the best at Midwestern cuisine.

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huazzy@reddit

The easy/most common answer will Los Angeles for Korean food. There is an opinion among some Koreans that the food there is better than Korean itself (due to the high quality of ingredients that can be sourced).

However, I'm in small minority that thinks the Palisades Park/Fort Lee NJ area is better than K-Town LA because the food scene there is directly influenced by the food scene in Korea and I find it to be more authentic.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

I think this is an interesting debate, actually. I'm not Korean but have a lot of Korean friends with different views on this. Some of my friends say that the food in Seoul today became more monolithic and a lot of authentic food is being lost as the food scene in Seoul homogenized a lot in the 2000s/2010s, which is why there's a lot more interest in fine dining in Korea in the last few years that is doing something different.

I think most of them settled on the food in LA being more authentic compared to NYC, but were more mixed on whether or not that is necessarily better.

Personally, I think a lot of the modern takes on Korean food in NYC/New Jersey are more fun, and I did not really enjoy one of the super traditional Korean restaurants in Los Angeles Ktown that my Korean friends loved, but I'm not Korean so I'm glad at least one Korean person shares my opinion haha.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

"authentic" doesn't mean anything, it's just a word people throw around.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

If it makes it any better, the Chinese word has a famous place of origin implied. It doesn't mean that, say, jjajjangmyeon isn't authentic because it is not the same as zhajiangmian. The more literal translation would be "to a location." So in this context, the meaning would be that the food in place x is more similar to place y than place z.

Apologies if that is not what it means in English. I didn't mean to offend you and I'm not a native speaker by any means.

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huazzy@reddit

Weird take to me. So you'd say there's no such thing as authenticity when it comes to (say) Mexican food?

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

I don't think there's any such thing as authenticity ever.

Food is a constantly evolving piece of culture that varies between region, class, and individual preference and access.

Food in Mexico City, San Antonio, and Dubuque will all be different, but I see no reason to make normative statements like "authentic" when we can use more precisely defined words to say what we actually mean.

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huazzy@reddit

Ah. I get what you're saying and kind of agree with that.

But it's a hard concept to put into words.

I thought you were arguing that there is no difference in "authenticity" between the food in a Chipotle chain restaurant and say a restaurant in Oaxaca Mexico.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

Totally fair.

I have a visceral reaction against “Authentic” because I don’t like the way it devalues uniquely immigrant experiences. My local Vietnamese immigrant making smoked brisket pho feels very “authentically” Texan to me in a way that I don’t want to devalue.

When I worked as a food writer, the publication’s rule was “as much detail about time period, region, and influence for people to know what they’re getting”.

It’s a vague standard, but I remember writing descriptors like “classic dishes from across Mexico” “Vietnamese with Texan influence” “Gujarati” and “modern tex-mex” which give a lot more info than something like “authentic Indian”.

I realize this is probably too high a standard for the average consumer, but I do like it as a good rule of thumb.

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huazzy@reddit

Understand now and thanks for clarifying.

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huazzy@reddit

the food in Seoul today became more monolithic and a lot of authentic food is being lost as the food scene in Seoul homogenized.

I agree with this 100% but the quality/variety of foods you find in Seoul far exceed (obviously) whatever you find in L.A or the U.S in general. It'd be like claiming that Mexican food in L.A is better than that of Mexico City. There might be some merit to it, but it's nonsense for a wide variety of reasons.

I guess you're talking about the fine dining Korean places in NYC? I'm talking more about the restaurants serving traditional foods when it comes to New Jersey. Places that exclusively serve items like "Soondae Guk" (blood sausage soup), that non-Koreans wouldn't necessarily seek out.

Korean BBQ is becoming ubiquitous to the point that I no longer consider it a measure of what Korean food is. Same could be said about tacos for Mexican food or pizza for Italian.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

Oh, my friends definitely don't think the food in LA is better than Seoul. They just thought it was authentic to what they grew up eating in Korea, which is something I don't have a reference for personally because I have never even been to Korea until I was an adult.

Sundae is very popular in LA, I don't think it's that controversial of a dish here. Lots of sundaeguk restaurants even outside of Ktown in LA/OC. Even fast food shops and tteokbokki places serve sundae here, so I think that's one dish that's actually done a really good job of piercing the mainstream.

I wasn't really thinking about KBBQ either. When I think of Korean food in Ktown, I feel like my mind goes to kalguksu/naengmyeon/gejang/sulungtang/soondubu first. I just tried searching up Korean food on Yelp and didn't get to a KBBQ place until the fourth page. I guess soondubu could fall under the same cateogry as KBBQ though

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huazzy@reddit

Well that makes sense in the context of immigrants. I'm Korean only through my Korean parents who immigrated to S. America in the 70's. But I married an actual Korean. As in she was born in Korea and has a Korean passport etc.

She constantly remarks that immigrant Koreans (specially Korean American)s are stuck in the time period when they immigrated. We speak using Korean from the 70's/80's in terms of word usage and slang. As well as celebrate traditions/customs that Koreans no longer do. So I'm not surprised that cuisine and one's tastes are also "stuck" (if you will) to that time period.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

I can see that with Taiwanese immigrants too, sort of. I moved to USA in late 2022 and thought it was surprising with food trends here in Taiwanese food. A lot of it is very similar to food and culture from the 90s which is back when we barely left the KMT's dictatorship.

With Japanese food too, there is a Japanese yakiniku restaurant here that sees a lot of division between older and newer immigrants. A lot of locals and Japanese-Americans here thought it was inauthentic and made for Americans, while those of us that moved more recently thought it was probably the closest yakiniku place to what we would find in modern Japan.

Being a new foreigner myself, most of the people I know are other more recent immigrants, so it's interesting to hear a Korean-American perspective too from someone who grew up here. I appreciate a lot for your sharing your point of view. I think it's hard sometimes to make friends with older immigrants because established social circles are hard to break into haha. I actually have more Korean, Chinese, and Indian friends than I have Taiwanese-American and Chinese-American friends

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huazzy@reddit

I have a unique perspective because I was born/raised in S. America and immigrated to the U.S in my teens. So there's still some cultural differences between myself and Korean-Americans.

But it's a great aspect of American culture and one that I embrace/cherish.

Going back to the topic of food, would you say this is the case with Hot Pot?

I had hot pot served to me by my Chinese friends/family growing up many times. Though "good" it was very very different from what you get at restaurants (which I adore).

I think Korean cuisine is similar in that sense. Specially Korean BBQ. It's becoming something completely "different" because it's constantly evolving to cater to trends and people's preferences.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

I think with hotpot it can be very different based on region. The two styles that are very popular right now in USA is Sichuan hotpot and malatang, and to a lesser extent, a style of Taiwanese personal pot that became more popular in the 2000s. What you get served by friends and family is probably just the style that is more popular with their region, and if you are in East Coast USA I would guess that would be a lot of Taishan and Fuzhou style hotpot, which is very different from Sichuan style, and typically much more mild in terms of flavour.

There are also styles like this which is cooked in a large iron pot and often is based around creating a stew out of a particular animal https://www.yelp.com/biz/happy-valley-village-hacienda-heights

I think the issue with hotpot is just that there are so many styles out there and China is such a huge country, where even a village 50km away might do things quite differently than a nearby place. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the traditional version of hot pot from my mother's region, and my personal favourite is a Taiwanese rendition of malatang made with spicy bone broth that wasn't popular until the 2010s.

One thing I can point out with Chinese hotpot is haidilao, as something that has evolved to please the masses. It is a chain from Sichuan, now with tons of locations across the world, but a lot of people criticise it for being "made for people in Beijing/Shanghai" instead of being true Sichuan hotpot. Not surprisingly, this is the style that has become most successful, and this is probably the closest parallel to Korean BBQ/Sundae/Sundubu that has achieved a lot of mainstream success outside the Korean community.

In East Coast USA, there are a lot of authentic Sichuan/Chongqing style hotpot restaurants, and I'm guessing that is what you are enjoying when you go out to restaurants. But immigration from Chongqing to USA didn't really ramp up until more recent years, with a lot of adult tech workers moving over, so that could be why you haven't really had that style at your friends' homes

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jurassicbond@reddit

Lots of good authentic Korean places near me NE of Atlanta, but I don't know how they compare to either of the two places you mentioned.

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huazzy@reddit

I lived in that area for a few years. Food in the Duluth/Lawrenceville area is legit. I'd say it's up there in the top.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

I learned after living in Seoul that I significantly prefer California Korean to Korean Korean.

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huazzy@reddit

I've heard that opinion with a lot of cuisines.

Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, etc

I reckon it has more to do with familiarity and California catering to a more accessible profile.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

For Korean for me, it’s the sugar.

I don’t really like sugar in my Asian food so Korean from Korea, Suzhounese, and Americanized Chinese usually don’t hit for me.

Korean in Califnoria tends to be saltier and more Chinese influenced.

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huazzy@reddit

It's all relative to me. I now live in Switzerland and I find food in America (whether American or ethnic) in general extremely salty.

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Vachic09@reddit

I would have thought that it would be DC suburbs due to the high Korean population there.

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OhThrowed@reddit

My friend, I recommend you skip my heritage's cuisine.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

My wife is Norwegian, and while there are some dishes I do like, I'm sure whatever your cuisine is can't be much worse.

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OhThrowed@reddit

It's British. Widely famed as the blandest cuisine on the planet.

I will say that if you're seeking out some dope food, I don't think you can go wrong with Atlanta.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

I actually think British food is better than Norwegian food haha. Tons of amazing fusion there, and tikka masala is my guilty pleasure.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

British food that tastes good was invented after almost all British immigration to the US had already happened.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Now that I think of it, all of my favourite places in London have a lot of post-colonialization elements.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

I've visited Norway a few times. Let's just say, the reason was definitely not the food.

I've never had a bad meal in the UK.

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JOLT_YT@reddit

Idk... I mean it beats out the countries that have no cuisines, but it certainly has some diamonds in the rough, Fried Chicken is also first noted in a Scottish cook book, so take of that what you will, although it's far from anything officiating the origins as fried foods have existed for many many centuries with origins in multiple places.

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Upstairs-Storm1006@reddit

Milwaukee has surprisingly good German food

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benjpolacek@reddit

Being I'm Czech and German, I pretty much am destined to be in the midwest. Mostly German here and lots of Czechs and Poles in the larger cities.

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BrainFartTheFirst@reddit

I'm mostly German so probably somewhere in Wisconsin.

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CrashZ07@reddit

NYC for Italian food.

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TheLastRulerofMerv@reddit

My ancestry is part French Canadian so I"d like to think that Cajun food is in some very distant roundabout way connected to my heritage - because I absolutely love all cajun food. Gumbo is my favorite.

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Curmudgy@reddit

NYC obviously has the most Jewish delis.

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RiverRedhead@reddit

I live in Alabama. This means that I get bagels overnight shipped to me from Brooklyn on occasion.

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Sinrus@reddit

Fwiw a place in Cambridge recently won the top award at a Bagel festival held in NYC.

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huazzy@reddit

Can't overstate how much I miss bagels (now that I live in Switzerland).

Europeans like to brag about their breads, but they can't make a decent bagel for their lives.

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BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy@reddit

I can't understand yalls obsession with bagels. And yes I've had them. They're just bagels.

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rawbface@reddit

I can't even find a good bagel place since I moved out of Princeton. Where did you get them? Everything near me tastes like Thomas' bagels from the grocery aisle.

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BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy@reddit

You're asking the wrong person. I'm not a bagel guy.

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Curmudgy@reddit

That’s ok. I can’t understand the obsessions with grits, biscuits with gravy, or even barbecue (by southern definition).

Actually, I can’t understand most of the obsessions with food.

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BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy@reddit

I don't think people obsess over grits but yeah I don't care for biscuits and gravy. I love barbecue. (Theres no other definition)

Probably why you like bagels so much lmao.

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firerosearien@reddit

Also one of the few places you can find true appetizing stores

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

Name a Midwest city and I am basically getting home cooking

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Sirhc978@reddit

I'm like neon white (Irish, English, Nordic). If you visit New England, I guess I'll have to give the stereotypical answer of try some lobster or just sea food in general.

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Drew707@reddit

Mexican and Spanish are probably cheating, so I'd say either Italian or French.

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tsukiii@reddit

For which city, though? That’s what the post is asking for.

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Drew707@reddit

Oh, I misread the question. I thought it was what cultural cuisine was done the best in the area.

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No-Conversation1940@reddit

Ozarks cuisine is loosely formed as a concept. There are such things as Ozarks foods but the reputation of the people ensures that they will never get serious attention on a national or international scale.

I guess my answer is Springfield, MO.

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wugthepug@reddit

Jamaican, either New York or Miami. For Guyana definitely New York, maybe New Jersey.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

Not one city, but most towns outside of army bases have at least one good German restaurant.

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sighnwaves@reddit

Savannah for Low Country, New Orleans For Cajun, No Tree Texas for Mesquite BBQ.

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BIue_Ooze@reddit

New Jersey has the best Indian food, and pizza.

Oregon has fantastic food but maybe not the best of anything, unless you know where to go for it.

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PacSan300@reddit

I’ve had some great Indian food in Jersey City, so can definitely vouch for that. I hear it is even better in Edison, although I never went there, so cannot confirm that one.

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machagogo@reddit

Pretty much anywhere in Midlesex County as the Indian immigrant population is so high, but Edison is definitely the hot spot.

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Maquina_en_Londres@reddit

My family is Tejano (San Antonio and the RGV), Mexican (not willing to start the debate. LA, Houston, and Chicago would be my choices), English (who cares), German (who cares) and Norwegian (nobody cares).

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Classic-Two-200@reddit

I’m Vietnamese and the only places I trust to have good Viet food are San Jose, Orange County (mainly Santa Ana/Westminster), Houston, NOLA, Vegas, Philly, and a few Midwest cities. Even major metropolitan cities like NYC and SF, where you expect to have good ethnic food, have really bad Viet food in my opinion.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

I really loved Oc & Lau in Westminster and Pho 79 and Banh Cuon Lu Luyen in Garden Grove. I spend a lot of my weekends in Orange County to visit family.

As a foreigner it's hard for me to remember the names sometimes, and I was really disappointed when we went to Pho 88 with some friends because I thought it was going to be Pho 79

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Classic-Two-200@reddit

Ốc & Lẩu is actually one of the restaurants we make sure to make a stop at every time we’re in the area. San Jose is just starting to catch up on Viet seafood and street food restaurants, but they’re hit and miss in terms of quality.

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PacSan300@reddit

Ốc & Lẩu is actually one of the restaurants we make sure to make a stop at every time we’re in the area.

Same here. One of my favorite Vietnamese places in Orange County.

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PacSan300@reddit

I am mixed Chinese (specifically Cantonese) and Vietnamese.

For Cantonese, and Chinese in general, it is definitely San Francisco, parts of New York, and parts of LA.

For Vietnamese, I would go with San Jose, Orange County (especially Westminster), and Houston, and Seattle comes close. In many instances, the Vietnamese food in these places can be as good as what you get in Vietnam, and occasionally even better.

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Ana_Na_Moose@reddit

Pennsylvania Dutch, so Lancaster, Pennsylvania probably is the best in that cuisine

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atlasisgold@reddit

I’m Norwegian descent. Our culture has turned the Midwest into a culinary wasteland. Shockingly Norway actually had good food.

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tsukiii@reddit

Go to Gardena for Japanese food. That’s where the old school Japanese Americans are at.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

Ichimiann, Inaba and Otafuku are some of my favourites. I grew up in Japan and definitely agree.

Also, Toshi-san's place is not the best sushi in the world, but he is such a nice and funny guy and makes me feel like I'm back in Japan. Especially when you start talking about baseball

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tsukiii@reddit

They’ve also got 2 good mochi shops in the same block, Chikara and Sakuraya. I live in San Diego nowadays, but I always stop by to get mochi if I’m in the South Bay/north OC area.

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captainpro93@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the recs. I actually haven't tried either of them.

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BrooklynCancer17@reddit

Caribbean food is done the best in nyc and south FL.