I was talking with my old boss, who always spent a lot of time in NYC and is now living in the area. He said one effect there is that the kitchens of e.g. Thai and Vietnamese restaurants where previously everyone was Thai or Vietnamese are now staffed by Central Americans, and the food has changed accordingly.
Just curious, but what does this mean? The statement could be taken in a number of directions–taste profile shifts, what’s on the menu, etc–so just want to know how the food itself is changed by the people cooking it.
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Not so much like eating in Thailand, or at a Thai place with lots of Thai customers in LA. More like an average American Thai place.
Much of the kitchen staff of many restaurants in NYC of varied cuisines (e.g. French, Italian, American) are Central Americans, often Mexican. Has been the case for a long time. Not sure why Thai/Vietnamese would be impacted in this regard by Covid. On the flip side, I’ve observed for a while that almost every new neighborhood Japanese restaurant that has opened in NYC in the past 15 years has no Japanese DNA. Mostly run by thai/vietnamese/filipino people. Once a neighbor of mine who’s son married a Japanese woman told me a new Japanese restaurant had opened and it was owned by Japanese people. He followed up by saying “imagine that.”
My opinion is that the primary long term impact of Covid on restaurants will be higher prices.
The guy I was talking with had no theory, he just noticed the change. People might have moved back home, or found jobs with less risk of catching Covid.