I had the opposite thing happen to me. I was raised in the PNW, I vaguely knew that we had more teryaki restaurants in the Sea-TAC metro area than the rest of the nation combined, but when I went to Indiana for a summer I discovered that the people there had largely never even heard of teryaki before.
Now, I didn’t travel up to Indianapolis. I probably could have found a Japanese steakhouse that had $30 teryaki chicken and gyoza, but the rural areas… only the people who had served in the military had ever eaten other culture’s food beyond Mexican (but solely the TeX-Mex variety) and family style Chinese.
This was 2010ish, 30 minutes or so from a college campus. I hope things have changed.
There was a strip mall in Indianapolis a couple miles from my house that had the best cheap Russian restaurant, Ethiopian restaurant, and a Thai restaurant run by my friends uncle. Just down the street from that there is a make your own spring roll option at a Vietnamese salad bar.
Really there’s tons of great ethnic food all over the place but if you are in a tiny town in the Midwest you’ll Just have fewer options.
I had the opposite thing happen to me. I was raised in the PNW, I vaguely knew that we had more teryaki restaurants in the Sea-TAC metro area than the rest of the nation combined, but when I went to Indiana for a summer I discovered that the people there had largely never even heard of teryaki before.
Now, I didn’t travel up to Indianapolis. I probably could have found a Japanese steakhouse that had $30 teryaki chicken and gyoza, but the rural areas… only the people who had served in the military had ever eaten other culture’s food beyond Mexican (but solely the TeX-Mex variety) and family style Chinese.
This was 2010ish, 30 minutes or so from a college campus. I hope things have changed.
There was a strip mall in Indianapolis a couple miles from my house that had the best cheap Russian restaurant, Ethiopian restaurant, and a Thai restaurant run by my friends uncle. Just down the street from that there is a make your own spring roll option at a Vietnamese salad bar.
Really there’s tons of great ethnic food all over the place but if you are in a tiny town in the Midwest you’ll Just have fewer options.
I was on the Kentucky border. I have no doubt that Indianapolis has culture.
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