I lived for four years in Iowa City, IA, a city with a population of a little over 60,000 people. I was expecting Lincoln - a city nearly 4 to 5 times larger a population - to have a wider choice in restaurants. Ironically, the opposite is true! And when compared to other neary smaller towns, say Boulder, we can't hold up a candle when it comes to choice in restaurants. In Lincoln, there are more restaurants of course, but the selection overall is more limited. Lincoln tends to have a lot of fast food places, a lot of chain places, and that's about it. There are a few Indian restaurants, and then your slew of Chinese-American places. What's the matter with Lincolnites? Is it a law to only eat burgers and chicken wings? Since I've been here, many locals have expressed a desire that more choice in restaurants be available, and I have certainly met a number of Lincolnites who have previously lived in big cities, in foreign countries, and so on, whom you would think would bring their taste buds back with them. Why such few choice here?
What kind of restaurant would you like to see in Lincoln? Personally, I would like to see a creperie or a Malaysian restaurant in town. I wouldn't mind more Mexican places, as long as it was good Mexican food and not the chains. And what about an Ethopian restaurant? Doesn't this sound good?
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See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
Some quick stabs at reasons why we lack restaurant diversity:
* We value quantity over quality. “Exotic” or niche restaurants have a hard time delivering quantity because of price concerns.
* We like bland foods.
* We’re scared of weird spice names. What the hell is anise?
* We value inertia. We like meatloaf, so why should we order anything else?
Look, Lincolnites eat at Cracker Barrel by choice. BY CHOICE. Normal people eat at Cracker Barrel because it’s the only non-fast food restaurant on the side of the Interstate. My parents drive 25 minutes across town to eat at Cracker Barrel.
Here’s a good question for you: A huge proportion of Nebraskans are of German ancestry. Why aren’t there any German restaurants in Lincoln? (Runza doesn’t count, for two reasons: (1) it’s German-Russian, which is distinct from German; and (2) only one item on the whole menu is even remotely German. One item does not a German restaurant make.)
Anyway, you asked what kind of restaurant I would like to see here. I would like:
* A New Mexican (or Southwestern) restaurant, heavy on the green chile.
* A good Tex-Mex place, like the old Julio’s.
* A place heavy on the “non-traditional” meats, like bison, ostrich, venison, pheasant, and so on.
* And generally, more creative, signature restaurants like Lazlo’s. Fireworks is a good example, but it’s by the same owners so the feel is nearly identical.
The Runza thing is a good question. I can think of a few likely explanations.
1) People just don’t like traditional German food as much as other types. It is considered bland and too heavy. Sort of like how many other descendants of Western Europeans who came to this country no longer eat, say, Norwegian food en masse.
2) Contrary to the above explanation, one could say that in fact, people DO eat German food, and all the time…its just become americanized. Like sauerkraut, hot dog weiners, sausage, etc.. Doesn’t everyone in this country eat that stuff to some extent now? And couldn’t you consider it German? Same how, as a general population, we eat things like roast beef and baked chicken all the time, which is originally French but no one really calls it “French food.” Know what I mean?
3) Not having anything to do with culinary aspects, you could say that the modern history of this country has had some relevance as well. In particular the fact that 2 world wars were fought against Germany and that domestically anything “German” was demonized. In fact, I am doing some research now on first amendment items, and recently learned that following WWI, the teaching of German was banned in Nebraska by the legislature, including in private schools. A few of the earliest first amendment cases in Nebraska were related in fact to this anti-German.
Anyway, my point is that, well, in such an environment it might be hard to open up and succesfully market an outwardly German restaurant, and it just never caught on…
Good points.
I don’t disagree that we eat German food without calling it German. The same goes for many other nationalities’ dishes. Why then, I wonder, do we continue to refer to some extremely bastardized dishes by their nationality? Let’s be honest: Valentino’s pizza is to Italian food as Ballpark Franks are to German food. And daVinci’s an “Italian Sidewalk Cafe?” Give me a break. What’s the difference, I wonder?
I’ll take a fresh seafood place…
nevermind, we’re landlocked.
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