Different ubiquitous ethnic restaurants in the US

You just live in a bad place black angel. Where I come from there's pretty much every ethnic restaurant under the sun.

you live in an urban area, there are enough people to keep those restaurants open, I was remarking that even in really rural areas you can find Chinese restaurants run by people from China.
 

NothingNow

Banned
My grandmother ate chitlings, possums and dumplings while growing up in Mississippi and she doesn't like them. I dont think 'being used to it' necessarily makes one more open to putting it in your mouth ;)
That's because Chitlings are evil, and your great-grandparents couldn't cook things like that decently. (Not that I blame them, everyone sucks at cooking something, like how my mother can't make Corn Cassarole without burning it, or a Hungarian soup without it almost killing someone, or how I can't make a decent roux to save my life.)
Still, that's not what I'm getting at. Most Americans aren't used to the Heat of Indian food, nor the concept of putting Cinnamon on anything that isn't a red-hot, or has sugar added as well.
 
if Salad bars can stay open...

Maybe an Amerindian entrepreneur capitalizes on the diet crazes and creates a chain of restaurants with relatively healthy and native-inspired foods. Of course, they'll have to take some liberties and perhaps straight make stuff up and give it a native-sounding name (a la Taco bell). That's not hard to believe. The franchise gets so popular, suddenly it's a 'thing'. Imitators spring up. Now every town that has weight conscious people (so, every single town) has an Amerindian restaurant.

And if it starts up over 50 years ago, it'll come with all kinds of racially-motivated advertisement. Big points from the "Hollywood Indians" and all their stereotypes. It could even spread abroad, giving Europeans and Asians a whole new depth of understanding of American history (albeit, twisted and sensationalized). By the time it's popular, the food sold will have little in common with actual Amerindian cuisine, it'll just be different enough from the typical American diet that it's something special.
 
Maybe an Amerindian entrepreneur capitalizes on the diet crazes and creates a chain of restaurants with relatively healthy and native-inspired foods...

This is a fascinating idea and very creative, but what would the actual dishes and food items be? :/

This thread is making me hungry. Let's talk actual cuisine.
 
On indian food, Warsie, the cliché that it is all fieryness isn't true.

In India, cooks will remind you spicy=/=hotness. A lot of spices bring flavors but no heat per see. And you have mellow things in indian cuisines a lot, like korma curry by example, and the famous traditional sweets.

I love indian food now, myself.
 
This is a fascinating idea and very creative, but what would the actual dishes and food items be? :/

This thread is making me hungry. Let's talk actual cuisine.

Let's see. For meat, definitely a lot of turkey and fish (stuff like small mammals and snake probably wouldn't fly for Americans, as would more grainy meat, like chitlin), and likely some moose, venison and/or buffalo, or faux buffalo (read: beef) in dishes that downplay the "healthy" shtick. Jerky, especially made from fish are pretty authentic. Tons of corn-centric dishes, like cornbread and cornmush, plus there are lots of delicious ways to make cheap, sweet food out of corn and basic ingredients (Mexico is famous for this, though it rarely shows up in American-Mexican restaurants). Probably dishes cooked in corn husks get big, in the fashion of tamales. With this, empanada-type creations with either sweet or savory fillings could be cooked in a husk, to give it that extra "amerindian" edge. Other breads, like acorn breads and fry breads are straightforward enough (maybe incorporated into a sandwich or something).

Lots of concoctions with berries are a go (definitely a common element of any food created). Fish would be another big thing (health and such), especially salmon, which even today carries native vibes (if that makes sense). As far as spices go, it'd be a big emphasis to downplay the similarities to mexican food, so I can see a lot of flavors being added derivative of ginger and sassafras, rather than chilis and peppers and the likes. Salads made from grasses and herbs, excluding lettuce, could make it too, if done right. This could be one of those sell-out things, where you could go to an Amerindian restaurant just for a good salad made with lettuce and tomatoes, despite the fact that the natives had neither.

Anyways. For desert type things, try this. For beverages, probably a lot of teas, iced and hot, berry juices, and such. When I lived in SD, we occasionally had a drink that was essentially a hot, watered-down berry paste, with lots of spices (ginger and other stuff I have no idea) and raw cream, and like, some kind of leaves of top top make it look pretty. It was kinda thick and creamy, but still definitely a beverage. Good for a cold day. Quite delicious, though it took some getting used to. They could also probably get away with pirating cocoa drinks from the Aztecs. Maple syrup was originally made by Amerindians after all, so that'd play well in sweeter foods. I can imagine a fry bread, almost funnel cake-like dish becoming popular, incorporating a sweet meet and stuffing it with yoghurt and berries and spices and syrup. Its not a far cry from a burger. It's not really healthy either.

My stomach is doing all my thinking right now, sorry. Brings me back to my old days living in Pine Ridge with my Lakota brothers. In any case, abuse of corn and sweet spices will likely be an approach to set aside the cuisine from Mexican and contemporary American food. The biggest challenge with the OP's question is, unlike Chinese food, which is more or less standardized, Amerindian food doesn't have the, say, infrastructure to branch out in the same way. If that makes sense. Maybe if Indian reservations were more interconnected and not impoverished, their natives could develop a more modern, presentable cuisine to the world, a la the Chinese.
 
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Warsie

Banned
That's gotta be a hell of a lot a culture shock there.

Hell yeah. VISITING a bumfuck rural zone is one thing, but LIVING there XD

On indian food, Warsie, the cliché that it is all fieryness isn't true.

In India, cooks will remind you spicy=/=hotness. A lot of spices bring flavors but no heat per see. And you have mellow things in indian cuisines a lot, like korma curry by example, and the famous traditional sweets.

I love indian food now, myself.

Yeah that is true. I didnt mean that spices were bad. I used the term 'spicy' instead of 'full of spice flavors' or w/e.

That's because Chitlings are evil, and your great-grandparents couldn't cook things like that decently.
(Not that I blame them, everyone sucks at cooking something, like how my mother can't make Corn Cassarole without burning it, or a Hungarian soup without it almost killing someone, or how I can't make a decent roux to save my life.)

Well the small of preparing chitlings is shitty, pun intended ;)

Still, that's not what I'm getting at. Most Americans aren't used to the Heat of Indian food, nor the concept of putting Cinnamon on anything that isn't a red-hot, or has sugar added as well.

lol
 
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