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I grew up in the '60s in the South of course and "foreign food" wasn't a thing.  I probably missed noticing some because we never ate there.  Cafeterias were a thing, and some were pretty good, some not.  That is a something that has almost disappeared.  I guess we have food bars now.

I started getting into French food in grad school because I was dating a French major, and there was one place in CH that was French(ish).  By then I was familiar with Greek (liked it), German (didn't), Italian (loved it), Mexican(ish) (not so much of what was available).  I ate a lot of eastern Carolina BBQ and fried seafood and chicken.

Red Lobster had all you can eat shrimp one day a week and we'd splurge and go there sometimes.  I was super skinny and could eat like crazy.

It is fun to think back about how much I've evolved.

We frequent a local Japanese place called Silverlake Ramen, and the four workers behind the counter prepping are all Hispanic, and super nice.  Once, after we ate, a lady there asked if we liked beans, and she made us part of her lunch, a kind of omelet with black beans, it was delicious.  We had already eaten lunch really.

It is of course very common here to see an Asian restaurant where the cooks are Hispanics.  The NE part of the city is a combination of Asians and Hispanics, you can get some really good food out there, it's famous for it, some shopping centers strip malls have signs in Vietnamese or Chinese with English subtitles, or Spanish.  We used to go our there to a Chinese food market that has ultra cheap stuff, mostly, you see mostly Asians and Hispanics shopping there.  Now I'm hungry.

There is an Malaysian place that is fairly famous, they opened another one near us, called Food Terminal.

weird name.

Food Terminal

At age 15, Amy began her culinary path selling street-style noodles from a kiosk in Malaysia. Together with Howie, the duo came to the United States to pursue the American dream as entrepreneurs. Howie and Amy spent decades exploring culinary achievements, creating brands such as Top Spice and Sweet Hut. Even after years of business accomplishments, the real satisfaction for them is not the success of the restaurants and bakeries, but the appreciation people express after tasting their food.

Inspired by the chefs’ personal cultural background, Food Terminal’s concept reflects Malaysia’s diverse culinary cuisine. Malaysian food draws influence from India, Guang Zhou, Hokkien, Teochew, and Hakka provinces due to the early 1900’s migration for tin and railroad labor demand. As such, Food Terminal’s menu features a high variety of Asian street foods with heavy emphasis on Malaysian cuisine. Food Terminal’s mission is to bring the most authentic Asian-style street taste and experience to Buford Highway.

In 2016 my buddy got married at Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, KY. My wife [then girlfriend] and I hit a couple spots on the bourbon trail the day before the wedding, and managed to find a rural Kentucky Mexican restaurant--had to pull in just to see it... 

It was an experience. The menu literally had a pronunciation guide on the back in case people didn't know how to pronounce complicated words like tacos... "tah-kos" lol...

The food was as terrible as the menu. I could almost see the shame in the Mexican waiter's eyes when he brought us our meal. Like the old environmental commercial where the Native American sheds a tear over litter or something--this man knew it was a completely bastardized version of his heritage. It was like Hamburger Helper with lettuce and cheddar cheese grated on the top of it. 

I've had better representations of Mexican food at Taco Bell. 

 Hamburger Helper with lettuce and cheddar cheese grated on the top of it.

I don't see the problem.

if it's hamburger helper, I have a problem

I wouldn't even eat that in college

if it's hamburger helper, I have a problem

I wouldn't even eat that in college

No, it's not okay to pay like $12 at a restaurant for HH, but it's perfectly fine at home for $3.  We must have had vastly different culinary experiences in college.  I was eating ramen and gas station hotdogs while learning.

One of the nice things here is that we have so many cultural options for food... To get REALLY good Chinese food I'd probably need to go to Irvine at the least, and to get REALLY good South Asian food it's a little farther up to maybe Westminster (Little Saigon) and Garden Grove. But neither of those are all that far--Irvine is only about 10-15 minutes.

The problem is that we nearly never eat restaurant food. We cook 6-7 nights a week at home [even before COVID]. If we're eating at a restaurant, it's much more likely it's lunch on a weekend than dinner anytime.