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I'm curious what people think about "ethnic" foods becoming mainstream. My mom says that in the late 50s-60s, Italian food was considered exotic. Now, I think most everyone is familiar with it, most like it, and even if they don't like it, they don't see it as strange or foreign. I think Chinese is the same way. Mexican, too. What about sushi? Thai? Indian? Greek? All are extremely popular around me, but I know there are lots of people who think these are strange and refuse to try it.
"Ethnic" is a changing definition - I think Italian would have been considered this at one point, but not anymore. And the Italian food we eat isn't the same as in Italy, Chinese here is usually quite different than in China, etc.
It's probably regional, too. In a big city or an area with a large population of a certain culture, different foods are more readily available, so seem normal.
In Britain Ethnic food is in large parts Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi foods but Thai , Japanese and Mexican are also popular though not as prevalent in smaller towns.
Chinese food is of course also very popular . But until the 1980s most things with any flavour seemed quite exotic to most British people ( garlic, herbs, wine, cream etc..) which I always found odd.
French and Italian cuisines used to be considered exotic which to me is utterly bizarre.
Of course people now travel a lot more and thus tastes have been expanded and widened and nobody thinks anything funny of having Pasticchio or Thai Green Curry.
We all use herbs, spices and "exotic" ingredients in our daily cooking and even older people now seem used to a bit more taste ....
The exotic food I would like to see more in the UK is Moroccan and Japanese, still mostly seen in bigger cities and mostly not terribly faithful representations of the real thing.
Although we have a few Korean restaurants here, I wouldn't say it's gone mainstream yet. I'm fond of Ethiopian food, but it's still relatively low profile.
Definitely Chinese, Mexican, and Italian have become mainstream. The next big things that seem to be making headway now are Thai and certain types of Japanese foods.
I think a lot of Americanized ethnic foods have become popular, but often the cuisine as a whole rarely become populat.
Eg, Thai is hugely popular, but is often sweetened, lacking the fish sauce, etc...what's
Or say, Italian food in the US vs what's in Italy
In addition, in many countries there are large regional differences, so to say something like "Chinese food" or "Mexican food" entails a huge array of sub-cuisines.
I think all the foods in the US began as an ethnic food of some sort or another, after all this is the "melting-pot" of the world.
Italian, Mexican (originally Spanish), Irish, German, French, British, Chinese, Japanese is getting a strong foothold recently and so too is Indian gaining ground!
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