What's your favorite ethnic cuisine

Definitely Indian. I never tasted (or even knew of/about) any Indian food until my mid 30s and I was hooked.

Although, I'm really not a fan of lamb, so I don't get any of those dishes.

Mexican closely followed by Italian.

For some reason, I never really think of Mexican food as "ethnic" because I grew up eating Mexican food both prepared at home as well as having it in restaurants.

I grew up in Southern CA, so maybe that's why.

Asian- Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean, -- then Mexican.

Same R3 though I'm in TX. Mexican cuisine is so common its not exotic at all.

Flyover food it’s fattening

Cuban!

I hate Mexican and middle eastern....sour cream and whatever white sauce they use....reeks to high heaven.

Also whenever I walk by chipotle, lots of rodents outside.

French

Mexican and Vietnamese.

Thai food has a lot of the same flavor profiles - the rice vinegar, hot sauce, fish sauce - it actually is rather repetitive. My friend who lived in Bangkok a few years pointed it out to me my last visit and he was absolutely right.

Italian is always a safe choice and crowd pleaser. Never met anyone who claims to hate Italian food and won't eat it.

Greek. You can't go wrong.

r9 where the hell do you live that has rodents outside the doors of restaurants? Unless you're skulking around in back alleyways.

Japanese and Mediterranean/Middle Eastern.

Thai is repetitive, eh r11?!

Well Tex-Mex is the same 7 ingredients just folded differently!

Moroccan/Middle Eastern, with Thai and Japanese getting the silver and bronze medals.

Chipotle is not real Mexican food.

Recipes clipped out of Readers Digest and the Enquirerer. It's cross ethnic.

Italian or Mexican

Polish.

__Fat Whore.

French

Thai

Northern Italian

Italian because that's home cooking to me.

Skip this part if you're not interested in my opinions on other cuisines. After that, it's tough. I can find something to like in almost all cuisines. So many people love Mexican; I find it a bit dull. A lot of variation of the same 8 ingredients. Sometimes it's great, but that's the exception. At least in my experience eating Mexican in Mexico and Texas. I'm not talking Tex-Mex either (really overrated). I love Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean. Japanese...meh. I love most Middle Eastern, Greek, and Turkish food. Not much experience in North African, except for Moroccan. I have some preserved lemons preserving right now to make a tagine in a few weeks. French is delicious, but a bit overrated. I love Spanish. Some of the best food I've ever had was on our trips to Spain. I don't have much experience eating South American food.

Carry on.

Vietnamese

Greek/ Middle Eastern

Thai

Indian

Mexican, then Greek.

Ass

Eye Italian, especially from Olive Garden!!

Italian, all those hot guys who never show anything on OF in the kitchen!

Polish

I hate Greek food.

Caribbean, Hungarian and Greek.

Soul food

Taco, taco, burrito, burrito

I could eat Thai and Vietnamese food five times a week — so varied, filling and light.

I also like Greek and Indian cuisine.

Thai. There is a lot of variety if you can go to restaurants that serve food from different regions of the country. Or just have really great food. New York has some particularly great places like Chalong, Soothr, and Fish Cheeks.

Mexican

Or Vietnamese

Thai food hands down. Especially in Thailand.

Peruvian!!

Cajun

Favorite ethnic dish: Korean bibimbap with everything, in a sizzling hot stone pot that makes the bottom layer of rice all crispy.

Indian food is underrated as far as I'm concerned. It might be my favorite cuisine. "But I don't like curry" is the main phrase I hear when people dismiss it or are reluctant to try it. I've been a vegetarian most of my life, and due to religious restrictions, most Indian restaurants keep the vegetarian dishes and meat-based dishes strictly divided, so it's always been easy to order something without meat. I love all of the flavor it has. I tend to favor the tomato-based curry, and the vegetable pakora is to die for.

Baja Fresh

[quote] Indian food is underrated as far as I'm concerned. It might be my favorite cuisine. "But I don't like curry"

I love it but yeah, I hear that complaint quite often.

Recently a friend said "all Indian food looks like diarrhea "

Your friend sounds immature, r43.

Does he lift his leg to fart, too?

Italian but I usually have to make it myself. There are very few decent Italian restaurants in my area.

Indian is second place.

Ethiopian and Peruvian are both tasty.

Really, the complaints about Mexican always being the same ingredients with a slightly different flourish could just as easily apply to Italian.

Thai, but Indian a close second

[quote]Really, the complaints about Mexican always being the same ingredients with a slightly different flourish could just as easily apply to Italian.

Nonsense. Only if you think Italian food is all pasta dishes.

[quote] Favorite ethnic dish: Korean bibimbap with everything, in a sizzling hot stone pot that makes the bottom layer of rice all crispy.

R40 Dolsot Bibimbap!!! The most wonderful dish on the planet. My absolute favorite.

Honestly, Indian, if I had to pick one. But really Chinese - real Chinese , is a second

I grew up in Northern New Jersey, so I don’t think of Italian as “ethnic.” My father made Italian dishes since I was born, and probably earlier. It’s my favorite way to cook, too.

I guess Mexican is my favorite ethnic cuisine. I learned to use chilis in my cooking around 1986, and I frequently go out for Mexican.

I also like Thai, Chinese, and sushi 🍣

Of course not r49. There is also meat, cheese and tomato sauce.

Obviously every cuisine is "ethnic" in a relative sense... I'm like R52 with Italian food as simply.. food.

Polish food is fucking awful...

Anything with seafood.

Friends of mine who travel for business between Vienna and Budapest quickly get tired of Austrian food but not Hungarian (spicier; more variety). That's restaurant dining; maybe the home cooking in those countries is different.

R15 - you need to go to other places than Taco Bell or Chipotle. Mexican food is extremely varied - it's not just the fast-food burritos and tacos that are ubiquitous.

Hard to say what's "ethnic" beyond what was unusual tommy experience until university or almost.

I grew up in the U.S. in a backwater with parents of very non-ethnic tastes. Fried chicken, roast beef, potatoes, corn, peas, green beans, pies and cakes...I barely knew anything else except from TV and film and books. I left early for university and barely had any of those things (or those things with the same flavors) since.

Indian food

Italian food

Spanish (Spain) food

Moroccan food

Arab and Arab-influenced food

Greek food

Thai food

Vietnamese food

Portuguese food

Turkish food

Malaysian food

Japanese food

Chinese (American version) food

French food

Mexican food

Except for crispy fried, highly seasoned fried chicken and American style donuts and pancakes, American food is a hard sell for me.

Odd r59. I love all the foods you ate as a kid. Nothing wrong with a good roast or chicken and potatoes on the side and it's not particularly "american" as Europeans eat that as well. Maybe your mother was a lousy cook or didn't season it well.

Persian food is beautiful.

i hate cheese so mexican and italian is no go for me. and those smelly sauces from middle eastern and korean (kimchi) also no go...Chinese food can be very greasy and oily so and they eat all kinds of shit, so not a favourite for me. Although I do like Chicken friend rice. Indian food can be very heavy and greasy as well and try getting a fucking curry stain out from your shirt! I think overall Japanese is one of my fav

sushi and hibachi

R59 - to be fair, it depends on how old you are. The restaurant scene in the US exploded in the 90s and 2000s with more and more people eating out and trying new cuisines.

There were always some ethnic restaurants in big cities - but nothing like today. What you described for home meals isn't too far off from what people ate in the 70s and 80s. It was bland.

If we could all go back in time and revisit grocery stores in the 1970s, 80s or even early 90s - I think most of us would be horrified.

Actual Mexicans would know more but I believe what we in the US think of as "regular Mexican food" is working-class food from the Northern and inland parts of Mexico. It is not regarded by Mexicans themselves as the best Mexico has to offer. Further south and along the coast, Mexico's food is a lot more interesting and flavorful and along the coast there's plentiful seafood options.

This should have been a pole!

[Quote] i hate cheese so mexican and italian is no go for me. and those smelly sauces from middle eastern and korean (kimchi) also no go...Chinese food can be very greasy and oily so and they eat all kinds of shit, so not a favourite for me. Although I do like Chicken friend rice. Indian food can be very heavy and greasy as well and try getting a fucking curry stain out from your shirt! I think overall Japanese is one of my fav

You don’t mind the rank, VAGINAL stink of raw fish? Ew.

I don't disagree with people's take on Chinese - if you go to Chinatown or a real Chinese restaurant, it's very good. But then you have a million Chinese take-out places that are so oily and greasy.

There doesn't seem to be a middle ground. Most Chinese food in the US is gross on average. Hell, the updated Panda Express tastes better than a lot of Chinese places.

[quote] Thai food has a lot of the same flavor profiles - the rice vinegar, hot sauce, fish sauce - it actually is rather repetitive. My friend who lived in Bangkok a few years pointed it out to me my last visit and he was absolutely right.

In East Asia, I feel like food becomes fresher the more south you go. Vietnamese and Thai are so much fresher than even some of the fancier Chinese or Japanese I've had. I like Vietnamese even more than Thai food (but both are great). I don't like Thai curries, maybe because I'm South Asian and Thai curries just don't measure up in my opinion. Regardless of the Vietnamese place I've been too, all the food has always included lots of fresh tasting vegetables.

If someone's homecooking is bland, they're just not good cooks.

A poll would be really great for this thread

Ethiopian, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Italian - it is impossible to choose.

I do find French food incredibly overrated. The exception being French patisserie and baking in general. SO divine!

R72, same. They also tend to eat things I don't eat like offal as do many other countries but Americans just aren't big on organ meats.

R62 is another one who thinks that Italian cuisine automatically has cheese. Has no one ventured beyond Italian-American pizza?

My favorite Italian is the stuff without all the tomato and cheese. I prefer the butter/wine sauces. I'm not a huge fan of heavy lasagna. I hate ziti and the really thick pastas.

R60 and R64. I grew up in a small town of no consequence and even less connection to the rest of the world, in the 1960s and early 1970s. My parents were as resistant to new foods as you new ideas or big cities. I didn't have pizza until I was a teenager. I didn't have anything cooked with garlic until I was a teenager (my parents regarded it with the affection of vampires.)

I like a roasted chicken just fine. I eat potatoes, just not the boiled and mashed sorts I had a kid. A classic roast chicken with some seasoning beyond salt and pepper, and with roast potatoes is quite nice. The food I grew up with was not bad because it was simple, it was bad because my mother was a mediocre cook averse to seasoning. It wasn't that unusual st the time, but she certainly didn't set a high bar for others to improve upon.

R75, you'd probably like Northern Italian food.

The worst Chinese food I ever ate was in China. Go figure.

The only specific cuisine I ever actually crave sometimes is Japanese, so I’ll go with that.

Italian followed closely by Mexican

"In East Asia, I feel like food becomes fresher the more south you go."

This is true in India also. Most Indian restaurants in the US are Northern Indian cuisine. Northern is a lot more curries and dairy dishes and naan. Southern uses less dairy/bread and more lentils, fresh vegetables, more aromatic spices, seafood.. plus the dosas which can be fun to eat.

[quote]The worst Chinese food I ever ate was in China. Go figure.

Chinese food is very specific to place. I like many of the sometimes kitschy, inauthentic American Chinese restaurant dishes. I'm less excited to have a plate full of authentic chicken feet set in front of me and set to work sucking the gristly tendons and muscle from inside the scaly bits.

Chinese restaurant food in the UK is quite different from than that from the US, from Ireland, from Spain, from Italy, from Germany... Even when dishes have more or less the same translated name, they can be wildly different. Order General Tso's Chicken in the.US and there's some general expectation of the textures and tastes, in another country the dish that you think.is the same is not remotely like what you were expecting.

I prefer Indian dishes.

R80, I'm South Asian and I can confirm that is true. North Indian food is just kind of bland to me (for the most part) by comparison the South. Dosa by itself trumps anything from North India (many would disagree with me on that).

Central Asian/Persian: kebabs and pilaf.

Also Indian. Been experimenting cooking makhani dal.

Complicated. The adapted version of the Vietnamese kitchen where I live. The massive amounts of seafood deter me from the original cuisine. (I won't eat things that are boiled alive.) Second is probably Korean. R82 Can you recommend a dish to make me a fan of Indian cousine? What I tasted so far is okay but not convincing. (Some spices are interesting.)

I used to think I hated Indian food, but it turns out I just had the misfortune of trying it at a couple of bad restaurants right off the bat. When a GOOD Indian restaurant opened in my city almost every dish was great and it became one of my favorite cuisines.

I think the same is probably true of my one foray into Persian/Iraqi food. It was godawful, but I've had the same dishes (fesenjoon and lamb shish kebab) at various other Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurants where they were delicious, so the one restaurant I happened across is probably just a substandard outlier.

R85, I love Chicken Tandoori, but specifically from Dusmesh in Cincinnati.

Indian food is amazing and in my top three.

R67, Blue cheese smells like uncut.

Peccorino as well.

Hard to choose just one. Indian, Peruvian, Vietnamese, Japanese. Is Japanese considered ethnic? What about Spanish? And Mexican -- Rick Bayless Mexican.

R86, I had a similar first few not-so-good experiences with sushi in my early 20s. Love it so much now. My elderly mom still sneers and calls it overpriced cat food, but then she's paying for Omega-3 supplements in pill form instead, so.

Not crazy about sushi. Love the nice sauces.

I won't eat raw fish unless it's from a really good Japanese restaurant. The seas are too polluted.

Indian food is very heavy...the curries. Even their "fried rice" is quite oily...

Italian Food puts me to sleep...too much carbs. You guys tried whole wheat pasta? Or those other "healthy" types like chickpea pasta etc? Do you like those?

Cambodian There used to be a wonderful sit-on-the-floor-cushions Cambodian restaurant in Cow Hollow, San Francisco.

[quote]I won't eat raw fish unless it's from a really good Japanese restaurant. The seas are too polluted.

So ... where exactly do the Japanese get their fish? Or do they run it through the dishwasher first?

I’m an anorexic and I don’t like ethnic shit.

someone give r57 a puppy sandwich. or roasted state senator.

Burmese food is very tasty. I don't know how else to describe other than a cross between Thai and Indian. They do make the world's best salads (thokes), IMO.

Someone give R98 some reading glasses

R99, you read my mind. Tea Tree Leaf Salad is the best salad I have ever eaten, beating even Papaya Salad (second place). Southeast Asia is my choice for best food region on earth.

ALL sushi is flash-frozen to kill parasites. Pollution? Have you seen cow and pig farms? Let alone chicken ranches?

The only real danger from sushi is eating too much can potentially give you mercury poisoning. Mercury is naturally occurring but it can also come from pollution.

As long as you don't eat it several times a week you'll be fine.

Yeah if you eat a lot of sushi, you definitely need to limit the tuna. Same with people who get mercury poisoning because they're eating High Protein and choosing entire cans of tuna as a daily dietary staple, 7 days a week.

I'm just speculating, but r59 who didn't like plain old meat, and veggies. I wonder if the veggies were from a can? I also wonder what it was like when store bought canned goods became a thing?

Like, if everybody else was eating food right out of the field, was eating from a can considered privileged? Or was fixing it from a can a sign that mom had her work life too so it was somewhat cosmopolitan? It was it just cheaper and easier because canned veggies are not tasty to me

I am not Vegetarian or Vegan but I find it easier to avoid all animal protein to keep my weight down.

R101, yes! Burmese make delicious 'salads' out of anything. Tea leaf salad, ginger salad, pennywort salad, etc. That might be the ethnic cuisine which would push me into vegetarianism.

Another vote for soul food, except chitlins.

Spaghetti is not fucking ethnic people.

But Soylent Green is, r108.

WTF is Polish food? Keilbasa and sourkraut?

R106, I have never tried those other salads but they sound really good. When you think about it, there is no reason for something called "Tea Leaf Salad" to taste good. But they make it work, somehow.

R104 - it was more about convenience, ability to get produce out of season, and long-term storage. There was a whole convenience trend in the 60s and 70s and food tasted like shit.

I don't know how everyone went from fresh vegetables to canned and frozen ones so quickly - but they did, and not just in the US. I'm sure TV commercials helped a lot to spread these ideas. They did in UK and other countries as well. The boil in a bag meal, frozen dinners - all sorts of convenience, lower prep time meals became popular, somewhat tied to more women entering the workforce.

I'm sure a lot of women welcomed having to spend less time in the kitchen.

Thankfully that all started to roll back in the 90s or shifted to healthier pre-made options. But it was a strange time.

Soul food and Southern cuisine.

[quote]I had a similar first few not-so-good experiences with sushi in my early 20s. Love it so much now. My elderly mom still sneers and calls it overpriced cat food, but then she's paying for Omega-3 supplements in pill form instead, so.

Fortunately an in-law's family introduced me to good sushi in my 20s—it was love at first bite. My stomach is eternally grateful to them even as my wallet curses their names.