Recently, I participated in a discussion about what sort of cuisines that were needed in Rochester. My position was that Rochester just isn't a food city and that we lacked several different types of cuisines. I was then challenged to name some cuisines that we lacked. I suspect that the person doing the challenging didn't think that Rochester was lacking in that many. And to be sure, we do have a good number of different cuisine choices here in Rochester. Among what you'll find here include American, Chinese, Asian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Mongolian, Mexican, Greek/Mediterranean, Italian, African, Middle Eastern, and now even Ethiopian. And there are a couple of places in town where you can find Thai food even though we don't have a specific Thai restaurant. For a small city of 100,000 in the northern part of the Midwest, perhaps that isn't too bad.
But despite having what may be described as "not bad" as far as ethnic variety, the fact remains that we are lacking in so many different cuisines. If you compare the types of cuisines that Rochester has compared to the Twin Cities, the list of what we don't have is quite large (on sites such as Yelp or Urbanspoon). Perhaps having a smaller population is part of that reason. After all, the Twin Cities has 396 Chinese restaurants, compared to Rochester's 19; 2 places in Rochester categorized as African food compared to 21 in the Twin Cities.
When Rochester starts getting more cuisines readily available to us, maybe I will then reassess whether Rochester is indeed a food city. Cuisines such as British or Australian, Caribbean, Cuban, Peruvian/Salvadoran (or any Latin American cuisine other than Mexican), Cajun/Creole, Brazilian, Spanish other than tapas,or Hawaiian.
My point is that there is still so much out there in the world of food that Rochester has yet to experience. While our selection of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/African food has been increasing lately, I know of no place other than the Blue Nile food truck (and is it still even operating?) to get my shwarma fix. And what about fusion? While I would love to see a place like Chino Bandido from Arizona (Chinese Mexican fusion) open in Rochester, that isn't likely to happen. Nor am I holding my breath for a Japanese crepe place to open.
