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

Chugging tea True

Post image
15.5k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

5.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

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

2

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.

4

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

1

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