As we know USA is country of immigrants and we can see many foods from around the world in USA. Bc it is land of immigrants it is possible to see different cuisine from around the world.
I would like to know which foreign cuisine most popular in your opinion in USA other than cuisine of USA?

35 comments

  1. Mexican, Chinese, and italian are probably the big three, but any medium size town will have Japanese, Indian, Greek, etc and any moderately cosmopolitan city will have Ethiopian, Spanish, afghani, and a bunch of others.

  2. Mexican and Italian are the two biggest candidates in my opinion, though which is more popular will vary regionally.

  5. It depends on the region but would say it’s probably Italian, Mexican and Chinese in the macro sense.

  7. There are some that have been heavily Americanized to the point where you might not even call it foreign at this point. Chinese, Japanese(particularly Sushi), Mexican, and Italian spring to mind. Of course you can still get more authentic versions of them but they’re might be harder to find depending where you are.

    It’ll vary regionally somewhat too. There’s more Latin American in the south and west, more east Asian on the west coast, more Caribbean influence in parts of the southeast, more influence from Europe in the northeast and midwest, because of immigration patterns and histories. Sometimes a city will just have a random specialty because of some wave of immigrants. I hear DC has become a big hub for Ethiopian, Houston apparently has tons of Vietnamese, Chicago has lots of influence from Poland in its history that shows up in the food.

  8. Well, here in Arizona it’s definitely Mexican food. But Italian and Chinese are close. However where I live you can find almost anything, which is nice.

  10. It gets blurry sometimes when something stops becoming foreign and is just our cuisine. If you make the idea of foreign cuisine especially broad, I would say German. People are eating German food all the time, often without even realizing that they have a German dish in their mouth because we renamed it to something less German sounding. For example, Country Fried Steak (or Chicken Fried Steak depending on who you ask) is basically just Schnitzel with a local gravy recipe.

    Personally, I would also count Italian and Mexican as foreign cuisines that have become so internalized to American culture that they have just become a part of our cuisine. The one that I would say still *feels* foreign even if it is all over the place is Chinese. You can find Chinese takeout pretty much everywhere in the US, but it hasn’t made the jump to being a standard thing most people make at home like German, Italian, and Mexican is. I’m sure some people do make it at home, but in my experience, it isn’t common.

    However, there is also the fact that the Chinese food served here bears only a vague resemblance to the food they actually have in China. We started getting large amounts of Chinese immigrants over a hundred years ago and the food they cooked morphed just as much as anyone else who has been here that long. If you instead want to look at recent immigrants, I would say that Vietnamese or Korean is probably on the top. In my experience, most of those populations are much more recent immigrants and serve more along the lines of authentic foreign food rather than a foreign cuisine that has been morphed over time by being soaked in American food culture and ingredient availability.

  11. Chinese and Mexican restaurants are probably the most popular across the country. Different places will have different varieties.

  12. Depends on the part of the country but I’d say Mexican and Chinese food is the most common I’d think. In my state I’d say Japanese food is the most popular since we have tons of seafood ports on the west coast. We have a sushi restaurant around every block pretty much lol

  13. I live in a small city in the South. As mentioned, there’s tons of Italian, Mexican, and Chinese. There is also Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern, Jamaican, Venezuelan, Peruvian, Vietnamese, and Thai.

  15. I would guess that it’s something like a three-way tie between Mexican, Chinese, and Italian. All three of them are now highly popular in their Americanized form. Maybe Mexican food by a small margin #TacoTuesdays

  16. In New England — Italian and Chinese, no doubt (if you don’t count pizza places (which around here are Greek usually).

    Chinese is number one though, for sure. Even small towns have one.

    Every place has a pizza/ sub shop. Next is Chinese.

  18. In the midlands in order

    Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Mediterranean (Greek, North Africa)

  20. Yeah, I would agree with most of the comments. Over here it’s probably, in order, Italian, Chinese, Mexican (though that depends what town you’re in). Japanese and Indian are pretty close; if you assume the Greek specialties tucked into the diner menu, they move up quite a bit from every so often to all over the place; Thai has become bigger lately, and I’ve seen Vietnamese pop up. Probably after that around here would be Caribbian, mostly in the form of Jamaican with their tasty meat pies. In my hometown, you’ve got Polish, though Eastern European food is mostly just in areas where you have a lot of Eastern European immigrants, or in the Lehigh Valley area of PA where there is a hot dog chain founded by a Greek man that sells deep fried pierogi. There are enclaves where you can get almost anything, though, depending on where you are in the country.

    Huh. Now that I think about it, French cuisine isn’t very popular, and they were kind of the people who invented cuisine!

  21. You can find a Chinese restaurant anywhere in the US. Even tiny little, rural, villages have a fair chance of having one.

  22. Mexican, Italian, and Chinese.

    Giving an honorable mention to Japanese as well because I’ve rarely met someone who doesn’t like sushi!

  23. The Thai government has a state funded program to help Thai cuisine entrepreneur around the globe. There’s a ton of Thai on the west coast now.

    But yeah what others have said.

    In a 0.50 mile radius from my house I have:

    Taco truck

    Mexican restaurant

    Columbian restaurant

    Thai restaurant

    Pizza place

    Pizza and Italian food

    Teriyaki place with sushi

    Jewish delicatessen

    American pub

    Ethiopian Cafe

    Ethiopian restaurant

    I live in a residential neighborhood of a big city. My area has been a resettlement location for north African refugees.

  24. There’s some “foreign” food that I don’t really even consider “foreign” because what is served has evolved into something that has become American.

    Any pizza place that isn’t specializing in Neapolitan style pizzas is American food.

    Any place that specializes in sushi rolls with a ton of stuff on the inside and stacked on top is American food.

    Any place that does big Mission style burritos or SoCal style burritos is American food.

    Those are a few examples off the top of my head.

  25. Northern Mexican if it has to be authentic.

    Italian if Americanized versions count. I would personally consider that part of American cuisine, but Italian food is arguably the strongest influence on America’s cuisine (being Northeastern skews this though.)

  26. Nationwide, I’d say Mexican, Italian and Chinese are the most popular.

    Even in small towns you can almost always find a Chinese, Mexican, and Italian restaurant.

  27. It varies regionally, but I’d say Mexican, Chinese-American, Italian, Indian in that order.

    It partly depends on how you define Italian. If you consider like generic pasta dishes to be Italian by nature, then Italian goes to the top of the list. But pasta is such a global staple that I don’t really consider it to be Italian food unless it’s a specific dish.

    Or Americanized pizza. If you consider it to be Italian cuisine because it’s pizza, it puts Italian at the top of the list two.

    A lot of the foods Americans eat without necessarily considering them foreign cuisine are based on German and Italian cuisine.

  28. It’s hard to say because we’ve adjusted foreign cuisines to suit our tastes. Our Mexican food is Tex-Mex and is not recognizable to Mexicans aside from perhaps a very small region in northern Mexico. That said, I think Americans’ familiarity with Tex-Mex would make them inclined to enjoy authentic Mexican, since the flavor profile is still pretty similar.

    German, French, or English would be other good answers, since a lot of our culinary traditions are derived from there. I mean, bratwurst, cabbage/sauerkraut, and potatoes is pretty classic American food. When I ate in Germany at authentic restaurants, it was like eating home cooking in the Midwest.

    I’d dispute Chinese, since Americanized Chinese food no more than faintly resembles what you’d find in China. Authentic Chinese would be pretty exotic for a lot of Americans.

  31. Probably Mexican food, though some of what people consider Mexican food in the US also originates from the southwestern parts of the US.

  32. Mexican on the west coast, Italian on the east coast. Italian, Mexican and Chinese (not in any specific order) are probably the three most popular foreign cuisines in any given region of the country

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