Say you want to eat out for lunch or dinner. Within what you would consider to be a close walk, drive, bus ride, etc… what sort of options would you have available and how much variety would you have? Would it be local dishes native to your region, more national dishes that take a wide assortment of popular foods nationwide, foreign cuisines from neighboring countries, cuisines that stem from a little further out from the continent, cuisine that come from colonial origins like North African or Asian cuisine, national or international fast food chains, maybe immigrants from countries with no historical ties to yours stopped by and made a restaurant… Obviously people in more urban areas or places with a lot more immigrants will see such variety, but I’m curious as to just what sort of food might be available.
For example, I used to live in a part of America that was much more focused on Barbecue and Mexican cuisine, though there were a lot of the standard popular staples like Italian and some Japanese and Thai restaurants. When I moved, it was to a place that has a lot more history of Asian immigrants and my selection of barbeque drastically dropped in exchange for a massive increase in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Vietnamese options.
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It is hard to imagine a culinary genre that is not available in my area. Looking at the Just Eat website offering delivery to my address I see 60 different country cuisines with Lebanese and Malaysian being the only ones that only have a single restaurant. Most of these restaurants also offer table service and are within easy travelling distance. There are also restaurants that do not do delivery so the total figure is probably nearer 100.
Out of those, by far the most ubiquitous are Indian, Chinese and Italian (including pizza) with about 20 restaurants each. Slightly less common are Thai, Sushi, Afghan, Mediterranean, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Latin American, Fish & Chips, Burgers, Polish and Persian/Turkish (kebabs).
This is Middlesex, UK.
I sorta live in two places, one urban and one rural. In the rural area most of the restaurants are Bavarian, Italian, Greek or Balkan, a ton of Turkish/Arab kebab shops, but not really real restaurants and then a few Chinese places and like one Indian, one Spaniard, one Japanese.
In the urban area it’s anything really. I feel like the only thing that doesn’t really exist is West and Southern African cuisine (a bunch of North and East Africa restaurants though). Definitely a ton of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, etc, a ton of Arab places (actual restaurants instead of just kebab shop), the European stuff and then also a few Latin American restaurants. And then also just a lot of general places where the food is just kinda food and not specific to either Germany or some other country.
Semi-rural but extremely touristy area. I think we have a good variety; most restaurants offer local food, but with a <15 min drive I can also have (off the top of my head) Andalusian, Galician, Basque, French, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, Moroccan, Indian, Nepalese, Thai, fake Chinese, real Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Colombian, Brazilian and Argentinian.
I live in north-central Dublin, a central and also pretty diverse part of town. Nearby I have barbecue, Mexican, Italian, Malaysian/Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Moroccan, Turkish, Indian, Lebanese, burgers, Brazilian, Russian, Pakistani, Thai… and that is all within 1 kilometer. So quite a few options.
Man, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Within walking distance to me, that I can think of, I’ve got one or multiple of :
Indian, Chinese, Thai, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Filipino, Mexican, Spanish, Italian, French, Greek, (Scandinavian), Turkish, Various North African / Middle eastern, An African place (I’m tempted to say its Nigerian but not sure specifically). And probably a few others I’m forgetting.
Oh, and the English plopped their fish and chip shops everywhere too lol.
I used to live in a suburb of Helsinki, which had a bunch of chain restaurants like Subway, Hesburger close by, as well as some pizza places, and a few places serving lunch primarily (so not open in the evenings). Through a delivery app we would order Chinese, sushi or Indian/Nepalese food from a little further away, or go out to eat before COVID.
Now I live in a more rural place, no delivery apps here. And options are just pizza and kebab, and hamburgers from the grill.
Used to think this was a hugely important thing and it was, when I was younger and eating out more. Now I have family and we only eat out if we are going shopping further away, so the lack of restaurants is not that big a deal.