Gorgeous hotel/building! My experience with Portuguese food is limited to a trip to the Azores (islands that belong to Portugal). There, every restaurant made their own malagueta (a piquant red pepper sauce) & cheese for the tables, so I'd expect that. My best food memories are the malaguetas, and their soups (kale, beans, etc), alcatra, and boca negra.

Re diversity, I'm in central NY, between two small cities, and experience diversity similar to yours in the larger of the two cites. It's home to a lot of immigrants, so now has Vietnamese, Thai, Bosnian, Indian, and some very new restaurants from places in the Caribbean that I haven't tried yet. I love ethnic cuisines, so all of the above are always my favorite places to eat out. In the other smaller city, however, the ONLY new places that make it are pizza joints. Any other cuisine and they won't even try it. I just don't understand it. :p

Beautiful! I love seeing these old places restored. And congrats on the growing diversity! The more people get to know different people and cultures, the less they regard them as ”other”. I have the whole world within 20 miles of me, and the world's produce along with them. I understand the benefits of ”eat locally”, but there's also a lot to be said for the ability to pick up fresh rambutan at the local big chain grocery.

There are areas in MI also becoming known for their blossoming "local food" economies. Oddly for me, in my rural area local grown food has become LESS available with the closing down of our big vegetable farm and stand and several orchards. Family run and current generation not wanting or able to make a go of it. No new ones starting up. A relatively new U-pick blueberry place closed during the pandemic, not sure why, I don't think it was pandemic related. Local flower barn closing as current generation running it goes to medical school. Both growing and serving food are tough ways to make a living, narrow margins . . . I hope more local stuff will rise out of the pandemic ashes but so far in my community, results are mixed. Folks are largely poor, so markets for most any product are limited. Real problem finding farm labor with border and anti-immigrant issues greatly affecting farmers. That's the reason the flower farm is closing, inability to find enough workers locally. They relied on generations of families that worked one season in Mexico and the other in MI. That channel is drying up. Same with young people with the skills and drive to even want to take the immense economic risk of going into agriculture as a living. Most folks I know working in ag have an alternate main source of income. Can't really run a restaurant that way. I have a friend who grew up working her family restaurant. Everyone in the family worked there. Closed after her parents died, her one brother tried to run it but gave up. She had no interest in the restaurant business.

I think the "local food" trend is very good, and we try to go to farmers' markets here as often as possible, but we usually end up buying too much food.

As for American Chinese food, here is a list of Chinese restaurants near me (and by near, I mean within a 45 minute drive). Chinatown (which is downtown) is closer, but Monterey park has better restaurants. In my neighborhood on the West Side, Japanese restaurants are more common, and I prefer those anyway. There are also a lot of Korean and Thai restaurants near me, but the closest restaurants are Ethiopian and Jamaican - both of which I like. There are also Indonesian, Cambodian, and Nepalese restaurants nearby. My favorite Afghan restaurant is in San Diego, however, and it is a bit difficult to find Algerian food, although I know a chef here from Algeria.

I do not remember ever seeing a shortage in the variety of foods available in California (I first lived in San Francisco), but there was a shortage where I grew up in Texas, although that has been changing for the past 15 years. Houston has always had the most diverse options in Texas, and I moved there when I was 18.

I found Seattle to have very good and diverse options for food when I visited there, as did Vancouver, except that I could not get Mexican ingredients in the 1970s in Canada. That may have changed by now. I grew up eating tortillas, and so I found it strange that they were not in the grocery stores in Vancouver in 1981, except for maybe in the frozen section.

It has been a very dedicated long term planning and focused efforts for food diversity.

" Food diversity " is important consideration for good health, good economy, global warming, good eating, ---------------.

Living in a town 45 minutes drive to NYC, I can get to many diverse cultural food establishments, stores, and restaurants. I am also 45 minutes from rural areas where there are farms for fresh produce and "farm-to-table" restaurants.

To deal with climate change, energy costs inflation, food purity, etc. I now have installed an operational solar system and 500 gallon rain water collection system. The solar system can provide free power to drive my 1,500 watt LED grow lights to start seeds early spring and grow veggies in the winter. 1,500 watts of course at the same time = 5,000 BTU free heating for the house.

My DIY solar system

dcarch

I don't know how it escaped me to mention the Lebanese restaurants in this area -- one of them is on my list of favorite places to eat! We don't have authentic Chinese places around here.... they all offer the same choices. A foodie friend of mine said it's due to the Chinese mafia in NYC which supplies all their food.

My memory is being jogged of all the short-lived ethic restaurants here over the years that had excellent food, but insufficient customers or some other problem that forced them to close. There were the fabulous Brazilian Saltena shops -- but the owners were deported, two different little Japanese places, the German restaurants (omg, one even made her own liverwurst!), a little Jamaican place, ... note that authentic Mexican food is only imaginary here. :) There were once some really good Italian restaurants, but like lpink said, the old family owners and cooks have retired or died and the young family members either can't or won't replicate the old way of cooking.

A restaurant is one of the easiest ways for immigrants to get a toehold in the American Dream. Hard work, of course, but limited language skills, knowledge of American culture, and education are required. But restaurants, altogether, often fail within the first year or three, generally at a higher rate than other small businesses. There's a lot of help available to learn the business side of it, but the owners are already stretched thin, and perhaps not used to looking for community and government help, Where there's a strong ethnic community, there's often a born entrepreneur who has it figured out, and helps the next people from the homeland establish similar businesses, but not usually restaurants.

If a great new place with good food opens in a challenging market where you live, you can make a point of talking them up, taking your friends there, blogging about it, etc. Even tell the owners about resources if you know about Chamber of Commerce, SBA, and other resources that can be useful, Help them to succeed.

Plllog, like i said, only pizza joints make it in one of the cities near me. These are people who are completely closed off to trying a new cuisine. eg, it took years but I eventually convinced 2 of my friends to go to a favorite Indian restaurant with me. I chose their buffet night so that they’d be able to sample many things…. one of them only took a green salad. :p

and I need to correct: the saltena shops here were Bolivian, not Brazilian!

@party_music50 Where in NY state? I have family in and around Utica. My cousin had a partner who has a pizzeria in Hamilton. He came to a family gathering once and took over the baking at my Wood Fire Pizza oven for an evening. It was great! He also made a giant vat of pizza sauce - I think every cousin went home with a several quarts of sauce.

My family tends to be somewhat adventurous eaters. We were the weird family eating artichokes when the local grocery stores maxed out at cabbage, carrots, onions and potatoes. I do have picky family and friends.

It takes a minute for a new food to become accepted. I am happy that Thai food has been accepted. Hopeful for Indian pizza.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2023/01/20/news/central-maine/indian-pizza-is-coming-to-skowhegan-joam40zk0w/

Yeah, pizza pizza. Utica is a rarity in CNY and has some real food diversity. Hamilton looks to be well south of that in the boonies of ”antiques” country. Pizza pizza. lol.

I had a lot of local food connections when I lived in the Lehigh Valley. One must be near enough to reach a large enough market to pay for the "local" stuff. It's ironic that folks in very rural areas are not into this trend. If it's going to be "local" they have to grow their own. Our farm market is pathetic and can't survive once the "lake folks" leave, so only stays open until the first week of September. Closes right as the main crops are coming on full force. You have to peruse the fb ads and drive right out to the Amish farms to get anything in quantities worth canning. Folks lament that we can't keep a bakery going either . . . There are a couple of food trucks and pop ups that are hanging on . . .

i suppose Indian is challenging for people unused to it, but most will have a mixed grill or something else very recognizable. Not even trying when given an opportunity to take just a tablespoonful is astonishing! Of course, I'm more used to people like the ones in CF who, if they don't live near interesting food, try to make it themselves.