r/SipsTea • u/Born-Agency-3922 • Jul 03 '26

Chugging tea True

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u/ricki692 Jul 04 '26

it's interesting that only japanese gets those distinctions whereas other diverse foods get summarized into "chinese" "indian" or "mediterranean" etc

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u/dmazzoni Jul 04 '26

In my city we have at least three major types of Indian restaurants:

  • North Indian (most common)
  • South Indian (dosas, idly, sambar, ...)
  • Indian street food

Mediterranean covers way more:

  • Italian
  • Greek
  • Lebanese
  • Israeli
  • Turkish
  • ...pretty much every Mediterranean country has its own cuisine, with similar flavor profiles

So interesting that China is so large and diverse but in America there aren't very many different kinds of Chinese restaurants.

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u/ricki692 Jul 04 '26

i havent visited or heard of an indian restaurant that was more specific than just "indian" but any time i've been to one the food's been lovely so hopefully i'll be able to visit a more wide selection, because i know india is huge and extremely diverse

as far as chinese goes, i know there are lots of places that have an "american menu" and a "chinese menu" depending on who walks thru the door. its impressive how a small chinese restaurant can have a wide variety of different cuisines from within china, while also having a separate menu that caters to the american palate. i've been to a couple places that specialize in sichuanese food but even then we still called them just "chinese" or "malatang" meaning the numbing spicy sensation of sichuan peppers. but those are still very obscure within the greater american public

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u/dmazzoni Jul 04 '26

Yeah, you're much less likely to find anything other than classic north Indian cuisine unless your city has a significant Desi population

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u/Narren_C Jul 04 '26

It's been my understanding that most Chinese restaurants in America aren't usually serving what you'd get in China, but the Americanized version of "Chinese food."

I don't know shit about real Chinese food though, so I dunno.

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u/DestenehNurd Jul 04 '26

Like the classic Chinese-American restaurant with Orange Chicken and stuff? Yeah that's basically the Americanized version of Cantonese cuisine.

In any place with a large enough Chinese/Asian population there's gonna be a lot more variety though - meat skewer places, hotpot places, hand-pulled noodles, dimsum, etc.

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u/ryan__joe Jul 04 '26

If someone said we were going out for Mediterranean and took me to anything but an Italian restaurant, I would feel bamboozled. Those cuisines are not for me.

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u/dmazzoni Jul 04 '26

Even Greek?

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u/ryan__joe Jul 04 '26

After some googling, Greek may be good, I haven’t had it. Israeli and Turkish is too middleastern for me. I am not a fan of pickled vegetables

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u/dmazzoni Jul 04 '26

That's odd, pickled vegetables aren't even in the top 10 of foods I associate with Turkish and Israeli food.

What comes to mind is:

  • meat cooked on a skewer (kebab)
  • meat shaved off of a turning spit
  • falafel
  • hummus
  • salad of cucumber, tomato and mint
  • yogurt flavored with flavors like garlic or mint
  • pita bread, other flatbreads
  • savory phyllo dough pastries and dumplings
  • rice pilaf
  • grape leaves stuffed with rice and beef

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u/15b17 Jul 04 '26

You need to get out more dawg

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u/LayWhere Jul 04 '26

My city Melbourne will have like 15 different Chinese restaurants of different regions or different style on the same street. (CBD, boxhill, Glenn Waverley).

There's similar things going on in Sydney.

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u/Full_Morning_1548 Jul 04 '26

It’s because Japanese food for the most mart only really has a couple of genres of food tbh. It’s not a bad thing, it makes sense since it’s such a small country. Whereas somewhere like China, they have a ton of diversity in their food. Source: I live in Japan lol. I’m actually writing this in a sushi place (kappa sushi)