Asian food, particularly Filipino food, has been experiencing a surge of popularity recently that is on par with Vietnamese and Thai cuisine a few years ago. But does how you feel about a certain ethnic group determine how much people are willing to pay for that group's cuisine?
There is an inverse relationship between the migration of poor people and our respect for their culture and cuisine. So if you take price as an indicator of prestige, then it is obvious that there are cuisines we are willing to pay for and those we're not willing to pay for. For example, while Chinese and Mexican are popular, it's difficult for restaurants to charge more than $20 for a dish. The same is true for Vietnamese and Indian. But then take a look at French food. The opposite is true.
In this episode of the podcast, Eliza Romero discusses how bias effects the price of ethnic food with Food Nomad’s Leandro Lagera and Stephanie Hsu of The Chinatown Collective and the Charm City Night Market. We define what people mean when they say “ethnic food,” how immigration trends affect how we view a particular group of people, and the future of Asian cuisine in America.
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