There are some exotic foods we tend to take for granted exist. Almost every city for example has a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and maybe an Outback Steakhouse. But this isn’t universal for some reason. Someone asked me if I wanted to go to an Egyptian restaurant and I was like “wait, they have restaurants?”

A question for all those who would say they consider themselves ethnically fluent. What are all the cultural categories of food you’ve had?

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOP
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    3 months ago

    How would you rather it be phrased or suggest it be phrased?

    I’m of mixed race by the way if anyone was wondering, part Scottish and part Pacific Islander, and don’t even speak English as my first language (so much for doing that without people complaining of assuming subtext). In terms of food, I favor the food of the latter and have tried Maori/Kiwi, Nauruan, Indian, Australian, Filipino, Indonesian, Malagasy, Icelandic, North Korean (yes, there are places for that), Chinese, and Japanese food and would rank them in that order.

    • Primer - Zip@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Not who you replied to, but I think some people would prefer asking with “What are all the different kinds of food you’ve ever eaten?” and then elaborate by saying stuff like “My area has many types of food, but I’ve never seen any Egyptian restaurants/places around before.” or something like that.

    • OccamsTeapot@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I think you could just ask something like “what are some of your favourite world cuisines excluding the obvious ones?” and then explain what you mean.

      Apologies though, I guess this is just because it’s not your first language, what you said makes sense it’s more the connotations of the phrase. I think someone also posted a gif making a similar joke. Probably the best straight up alternative without the connotations would be “world food/cuisine.”

      North Korean! Would love to try it but I guess similar to South Korean food?

      • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOP
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        3 months ago

        I thought, going by history, something like the end of that question (“excluding the obvious ones”) or the fact that I was trying to speak of food generally (as opposed to implying the dishes were separate) would’ve thrown people off.

        One thing worth noting about North Korean food, it gets very carnivorous and improvised. As in there are dishes that are still alive when you eat them, food not made to be cooked, etc. Fortunately an issue you can swerve around though.

        • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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          3 months ago

          There is (or was) a North Korean Restaurant in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. The staff were apparntly North Korean, so not sure how that worked and I was going to go but never go there back in the day.

          The worst dishes (for me) I’ve had were in Malaysia , o coild nit find sonethbg Ibloeod, i started oit disliking the food in Myamar (before the recent civil war) not did start to find food I liked and the most suprisingly good food was Nepalese, at a little place owned by a Nepalese family. Not a fan of tomato based dishes so…