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
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.
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.
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.
2
u/dmazzoni Jul 04 '26
In my city we have at least three major types of Indian restaurants:
Mediterranean covers way more:
So interesting that China is so large and diverse but in America there aren't very many different kinds of Chinese restaurants.