Have people demand fresh and quality food. Our standards for food quality are low compared to Japan or Europe. What people find as acceptable here would not fly in other places.
The US government also subsidizes corn, soybeans and wheat over fruits and vegetables, making it far cheaper to produce meats, carbs and sugars, and thus easily undercuts any other food types. It can be more expensive to buy a head of lettuce than it is to buy a hot dog.
I think it depends a lot on culture - US seems to have inherited a rather pragmatic, utility focused approach to food from Germans and Brits. Going from East Germany westwards towards France makes you realize such differences. Japanese are at the far end of that spectrum.
I guess the best you can do is steal the best ideas from everyone - Japanese at least have zero issues with doing just that, going right back to first western contact with the Portuguese that brought them Tenpura and a bunch of cakes.
I think it's because immigrants who came to the US could not find equivalent ingredients to their traditional recipes as easily. Also distribution of fresh food is hard as you go west. So people had to settle with low quality recipes and food. This resulted in there not being as much of a food culture in the general population. So now nobody (as in the average person doesn't) cares about how food tastes like in the US.
I would imagine if it meets the following criteria: is it in a form that I can eat while driving a car[1], can it be served in the same time as other fast food, and is it priced within the fast food spectrum.
I still think the greatest fast food I've ever had was a Greek place that did amazing kabobs.
1) regardless of your safety beliefs, this is done a lot
Bento really isn't designed to be eaten while driving (or even moving around). Eating while standing would be possible but probably less than ideal. Most bentos are designed to be eaten with chopsticks.
The primary on-the-go food would be onigiri, with "festival booth" foods second (mostly stuff on a stick e.g. karaage, dango, yakitori, takoyaki, ikayaki).
I think the intention with mentioning a car is the fact that the US is so commute-heavy that the majority of our fast food is intended for car consumption.
This post was also discussing lunch where, presumably, eating while driving is less of a big deal. (Though, yes, some Americans eat in the car a fair bit which makes sandwiches and the like more suitable.)
It's not as ubiquitous as McDs, BK, etc., but pizza and Chinese are among the most common fast food alternatives to the primarily sandwich chains. (Fried chicken is the other.) And neither Chinese nor pizzas are very amenable to eating while driving.
I guess I'm conditioned to think of fast food in terms of drive-through. Even KFC has a lot of stuff on the menu that can be easily eaten in a car. Taco joints are the same way. Heck, the Greek place I mentioned was a drive-through.
When I think pizza, I tend to think of it as its own thing given the whole delivery culture.
Yeah. I was responding to the I wonder what it would take to get similar offerings to compete with American fast food? part. Onigiri looks like it would work if it holds together in your hand (don't know, never had it). Bento wouldn't.
It has amazed me that there isn't a USA chain that has taken some food from Japan or China and it put it in a form that would be a good burger substitute. I would imagine some wrap? I could really go for a spring roll when I'm driving instead of a burger.
It's not as delicious looking as what's in the article, but gas stations like Cumberland Farms often have surprisingly decent grab-and-go prepackaged lunch items. Or if you can pop into a supermarket, there's often a salad bar, hot food, deli sandwich, sushi section that's nothing to sneeze at. Oftentimes that's faster, cheaper, and definitely better than your fast food McDonalds/DunkinDonuts/whatever chain.
Alas my go-to is still the classic New England general store steamer full of red hot dogs...
100% agree with both points here. I live near an organic grocery store (PCC) here in Seattle which has a very reasonably-priced salad/hot-food bar, all things considered- and they also have a rotating selection of little take-out bento boxes for about $5-8 which make for an excellent light-lunch or dinner. I've been trying to lose a bit of weight recently, and they've been great for helping me with portion control. Not to mention, the larger selection of fresh food makes it a lot easier to commit to eating a bit healthier. I wish this sort of thing was more common in other places as well.
On the flip side, I'm originally from the South, where there's a huge number of gas stations which also include a diner (or even just a hot bar) which is often some of the best Southern food you can find, including "real" restaurants. There's actually an entire regional chain of gas station/convenience store/fast-food friend chicken places called Dodge's which I really miss. That being said, I used to drive between Mobile and North Mississippi pretty often, and there was a little place halfway along the way called the Buckatunna Grocery which I swear has some of the best fried chicken I've ever had.
There's a few legitimate ramen shops along my way home. Okonomiyaki, tonkutsu ramen, karaage chicken, takoyaki balls, and even cold soba are things I can get here. Service is fast, foods good, cost is on the lower end, etc. I eat ramen like once a week, some of the shops in my town actually make their own ramen by hand too instead of buying premade.
I'm not so sure that's the answer. I imagine I could start myself at a random block in Manhattan and I'd possibly need to go at least some moderate distance to find a Japanese restaurant. And I'm sure that would be the case even in relatively large dense heartland cities.
How far are you going to have to go in Tokyo if you're craving Mexican? And is there even a decent Mexican restaurant in Tokyo? (I'm guessing the answer might be yes but not many.)
On the other hand, I understand KFC is very popular in Japan which happens to be one of my favorite US fast foods if I really need to choose.
Some types of fast food appeal to me more than others. I'm actually not much of a cold bento box fan in general; I usually end up picking at them at conferences. But I like a lot of Japanese food generally.
There is a lot of foreign food in Tokyo, and it tends to be very good. Italian food that's as good as anything I've had in New York, croissants as good as anything I've had in Paris, etc. I've never looked for Mexican specifically, but I had great Latin food at a completely random place I happened to duck into.
I don't think it's just a matter of density. Folks in Tokyo, like folks in New York but perhaps even more so, are willing to try a variety of foods and care about doing them authentically.
The problem with Manhattan in particular is that by and large the Japanese-American population is not on the east coast.
To have decent restaurants from a certain ethnicity, you do need some significant population of that ethnicity, and at least some of those people who are lower or lower-middle-class. Having moved to Seattle from New York, the Chinese food here is much worse; Seattle has a large population of Chinese people, but the vast majority of those are college-educated and working at tech companies, and are not a likely demographic for opening or running restaurants.
Edit: Oh and I forgot Korean, but only because it’s so ingrained I wouldn’t consider it exotic, so Chinese was maybe a bit odd on that list because the same holds.
How big of an umbrella is "Chinese food" in Japan? In China, you'd identify a restaurant by the province that its food is characteristic of -- Xinjiang food, Hunan food, Hong Kong food, etc. Those are all very different from each other. (There are more generic options too, of course.)
I really like some Xinjiang and Hunan dishes, but they're next to impossible to find in the US despite "Chinese" food ostensibly being common.
Not as granular for sure, but there‘s a somewhat nice selection of dumpling places, diners, Chinese style Ramen, Szechuan food either in authentic form (rare) or in Japan-adapted (mostly Mapo-Dofu, Chili Shrimp). Then you get the expensive „imperial“ Chinese places and Fire-Pots. Never been to China but I can’t imagine a better selection outside of its home.
Been to many restaurants in China over the years, I really find it hit or miss there honestly. The best Chinese food I've ever had has always been in the states, Hong Kong, and taiwan. Partially because the latter 2 have a larger and longer standing foreign influence, meaning you have a unique spin off of Chinese food.
>How far are you going to have to go in Tokyo if you're craving Mexican? And is there even a decent Mexican restaurant in Tokyo? (I'm guessing the answer might be yes but not many.)
Not that surprising although I'd reserve the "decent" adjective until I tried them given that I find few enough on the US East Coast better than passable.
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