Reply to Why is there so much premium on western/european food?

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Reply to "Why is there so much premium on western/european food?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The answer is, in a completely apolitical way, that the US’s heritage is primarily Western European, so “fine dining” historically meant European. The US is still majority European-descended. If you go to areas that are not, you will find plenty of restaurants of different fine dining traditions  - head out to Annandale for Korean for example. On the flip side, we don’t have strong immigrant French or Italian communities anymore that create a base for affordable small restaurants with the national cuisine. So those cuisines are slotted into general American fare. But where we do have strong immigrant communities (like Ethiopian in DC, Vietnamese in Falls Church) they form the economic basis for affordable restaurants.

Now American Chinese restaurants (the neighborhood type with the long menus) are an entirely different economic phenomena with a fascinating history. [/quote]

thats true- you can still find super cheap and good Italian food in Italian enclaves all over American cities- Philly, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland.  Places that still have the remnants of Italian enclaves have amazing cheap italian food and wood fired pizzas.  French food was the  food of the English (Norman) aristocracy and so deemed fancy in the whole of the anglo-world. I fond that funny since the genius of French cooking  is the ability to take humble ingredients and through technique transform them into something absolutely amazing.  And you can find very upscale Chinese places. As these communities grow in wealth and establish themselves- there will be super bougie Korean and Thai places as well.  What surprises me is the lack of upscale Greek food here since fine dining in Greece itself is amazing.[/quote]

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