What is it with all the posts mentioning ethnic food? I can't be the only one who finds it crazy. I eat normal grocery store food and barely have use for restaurants at all. Yet there are apparently large numbers of people who decide where to live on the basis of restaurants? It's very strange to me.
It's a cultural thing with a certain segment of US middle class under 35s. Don't try to rationalize it. It's why gentrification comes with "pan-asian fusion" and sushi rather than grocery stores, drugstores, community centers, toy stores, or anything that's not foreign food or American comfort prepared by a chef (or a bar.)
My guess is that all of these people actually plan to return to the suburbs eventually, when their kids are old enough for school, and they decide to buy a house (with surprisingly little consideration to nearby Thai food offerings.) My projection of the mindset: you go to the city for exotic experiences, if you wanted to buy stuff for your house, or groceries, or a backpack, why wouldn't you go to the mall?
Or, you know, people who aren't "a certain segment of US middle class". If you come from a different culture (NOT "weird" as a8da6b0c91d so rudely puts it), it can be a pretty difficult prospect facing burgers and "bread and milk" to survive on.
Some people have grown up eating seafood, different vegetables and a variety of spices in their food and aren't so quick to give them up.
It's generally not that difficult to find seafood, vegetables, and a variety of spices at a grocery store. "Ethnic food" is, in the end, just food. With the right ingredients, a sharp knife, and a hot pan, you can make just about anything. The idea that you have to live within walking distance of $restaurant in order to not have to survive on bread and milk is fallacious.
> "With the right ingredients, a sharp knife, and a hot pan, you can make just about anything."
The first part is a problem in most places. You could, for example, make your own soy sauce. But you won't, because that's thoroughly impractical.
A lot of ingredients are surprisingly hard to come by in a lot of places. Even in places where you can find them, oftentimes they come in very poor quality (see: try to find good miso most places in the US).
I once lived in a heavily suburban town where I couldn't find a decent bottle of soy sauce to save my life. The only thing I could find was a bottle of brown-salt-liquid.
To put it in perspective, imagine moving somewhere where "bread" is just white Wonder Bread. Forget hot dog bugs, forget burger buns, forget whole wheat, forget baguettes, etc etc. Just plain white wonder bread. This is what the state of "ethnic food" looks like across a lot of the country. While you can make some of these things yourself, at some point it reminds you of the "to make an apple pie, first invent the universe" quote.
"Ethnic" ingredients in many parts of the country are either completely unavailable, or only available in a form that's palatable to people who have no substantial knowledge of the cuisine.
It takes actual population diversity to bring about the good ingredients. There are vast parts of the country where quality "ethnic" ingredients are impossible or impractical to procure.
Side note: the word "ethnic food" itself is indicative of something IMO. A system under which Indian food, Chinese food, Korean food, Afghan food, Malaysian food, and Ethiopian food are easily categorized under a single catch-all term suggests a very severe lack of diversity indeed.
That said, you just need to live in pretty much any decent-sized city to have access to good ingredients, and especially if you're comparing a major metro area with a suburb 20 years ago, it's an unfair comparison, as food has become more of an obsession across broad swaths of the culture.
I'm farther from an Indian grocery store today living in a core neighborhood of Brooklyn than when I grew up in Milwaukee or went to school in Pittsburgh. And when I went home to visit Milwaukee, the local food coop had ramps available, just like any hip store in Brooklyn.
Well... it's not all that impressive that Milwaukee has ramps available. Chicago is practically named after them. The region produces them in abundance. But go find good miso in Milwaukee.
Speaking of "exotic experiences" overseas travel is another over-done fixation of the modern yuppie. "What weird place have you been doing something weird?" is apparently how you size up the Joneses these days.
They'll blather on about how some trip expanded their mind and so forth, despite not speaking any of the language or knowing anything of the history and only being there briefly.
Beats staying at home. Certainly learning languages and history are Good Things, but I'll take somebody who has traveled extensively over somebody who's never left their own country any day of the week.
For me, I don't like to cook or cleanup. I'd rather pay 10 USD for a salad then to deal with any of the preparation myself. I'd much rather spend my time coding, reading, working out, etc.
So being near a bunch of different types of food is a must for me.
The time argument makes zero sense. Going out to eat takes much more time than stocking and eating various zero prep foods. You don't have to cook to get complete nutrition. I often go days eating just bread, cheese/milk, OJ, and softboiled eggs, and maybe a carrot.
It's not about nutrition, it's about taste and variety. I can put together a fridge full of zero-prep foods that's nutritionally sufficient, but I'll probably want to shoot myself after 2 weeks.
Also, one of the "things" about NYC is that going out to eat doesn't take much more time. Having food prepared for you is not an event, and you don't need to drive a few miles to get to a restaurant. From my apartment I can be ass-in-seat at 4-5 different eateries in the amount of time it'd take for you to start the car and pull out of the driveway. There's a reason so many of us complain about our small apartments but wouldn't trade them in for anything.
NYC has nearly perfected the craft of preparing food for you cheaply, quickly, and tastily. You can eat cuisines from the world over, a new one each day, without breaking the bank and without traveling more than 10 minutes from your home.
The sheer density of restaurants also helps quality. The are so many restaurants offering similar cuisines in any given area that they compete fiercely on price and quality. The result is that you can get an amazing quality of food at sub-suburban prices.
Even if you prepare your own food, in NYC the grocery is so close by you can buy in small volume and wide variety. You can practice an incredibly varied menu in your own kitchen because you don't have to buy in anything resembling bulk. You can buy just enough of some ingredient for one meal, and switch to something entirely different the next day, with little logistical impact. Swinging by the bakery for a fresh loaf of bread is a matter of course - you don't have to pull into a parking lot, park the car, or anything - it's just on your way from wherever you were going.
The "sell" for NYC food is a combination of variety, quality, and price.
It's so nice for you to have your varied tastes catered to every meal, that you don't have to fix anything yourself because you don't "like to cook or cleanup", and would never live anywhere besides SF or NYC, so you don't have to shoot yourself, but seriously get some perspective.
It is not really just about the restaurants. For example, there is this grocery store in midtown NYC. There are spices there that you cannot fucking literally find in Austin or even San Francisco. Ground fucking mango powder? Boom. Moroccan meat rub? Yes, certainly. That Afghan syrup that you put in water and you grew up drinking? Easy. I have lived in three continents for 3/4th of my life and I have not seen such an amazing place. This is the Istanbul Grand Bazaar compacted in one tiny store in Manhattan. This is the New York Experience.
Some people really like food. You want to live elsewhere? More power to you. Just don't fucking trivialize the reason why other people want to live their own life the way they want to.
I didn't have a problem with the OP living life the way they wanted to; it was the tone that was really irritating and implying that anyone else not making the same choices was doing so out of personal preference, rather than out of necessity.
It's nice that you're able to buy exotic spices where you live, but i'm fine with how you said it because you didn't say something like: you couldn't live anywhere else besides where you are or you'd shoot yourself. Or that you use exotic spices in your cooking because you enjoy variety in your life. Don't we all!
Just to be puckish: you can get amchoor ("ground fucking mango powder") at pretty much any Indian grocery. If you search for ["amchoor" "san francisco"] (not "ground mango powder"), you'll find Yelp'ers and Chowhounder'ers comparing SF stores on price for it. :)
That Afghan syrup you put in water and you grew up drinking, you may have me there.
which can usually be found by poking around the shelves of Indian stores in bigger cities. Certainly Austin and SF would have it, it might take some phone calls to locate though.
That has nothing to do with why i objected to your post. A lot of people would make the same choices as you if they could, but there are hard limits in their lives that keep them from doing that (income, family, disability). Just please be aware of how good you have it, and that being able to live the way you do is awesome; most of the time people don't get a lot of choice about certain constraints in their lives; if it was a choice they'd choose much the same as you.
I live in an urban neighborhood and don't have a car. I still prefer to simply take high quality produce out of the fridge over getting who-really-knows-for-sure from some fly-by-night hawker. That stuff is all loaded with cheap oils.
If I'm going to eat out, it's a rare treat and I'm going to drop a couple hundred at a highly reputable place. To consider restaurants and food stands as part of your day to day life style is crazy to me. Just my opinion.
I guess if I was just sitting there doing nothing waiting on my food to be cooked, sure. But I often read, sketch out ideas for my current project, figure out what my next goal in working out will be, etc. And given where I live right now, I can be to a restaurant and seated in about 5 or 10 minute walk.
And bread, cheese/milk, egg and carrot - wow. How boring. Just because I don't want to cook doesn't mean I don't want my food to be good, flavorful, and exciting. I like food. I like hot, prepared food.
Obviously, different people get different amounts of pleasure from eating, and specifically eating a wide variety of flavors and types of food. It's not that hard to imagine someone who derives a lot of pleasure from eating "exotic" food wanting to live somewhere where they could easily do that, is it?
Do you have the skills and access to proper ingredients to cook: Mexican, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Polish...?
That's a pretty typical (and healthy!) diet in a large city. I myself have recently relocated to a middle US city from NY and definitely miss the cuisine. I find myself feeling much less healthy and craving my old dietary variety.
