"We owe a debt to our immigrants" is not just an empty phrase from some mayoral campaign speech. For without them, New York City would have exactly two culinary strata: on the top, restaurants to match, or at least compete with any in the world; on the bottom, fast-food and chain restaurants, which, in the last 15 years, have increasingly crowded out the more authentic traditional staples of New York dining, such as the diner and the European ethnic (Jewish, German, Italian, etc.) restaurant. Some examples of the Chino/Latino, Polish/Ukrainian, "Red Sauce" Italian restaurants and so forth that thrived between 1945-85 still exist, but are endangered.
New York dining, excepting the famous old steakhouses and a few other establishments, has in fact almost always been synonymous with ethnic dining. As the cuisine brought over by the immigration of 1880-1930 became part of mainstream city life, the changes brought to it by the passing of generations and exposure to other influences imparted a unique flavor (if you will) to the food that made certain ethnic cuisines inseparable from New York's identity.
Now, however, if one were put at random into one of the thousands of eating establishments of present-day New York, and then were served an order, also at random, one would be likely receive a plate occupied half by French fries, with the other half containing either a hamburger or some variation on the chicken breast. The cost of the meal would not be exorbitant, but still would seem a bit too much given the quality of what was served.
In recent years some restaurants have opened which, while still being too expensive for most people to go to often, are within the budget of a middle-class couple, and have superb offerings conceived and prepared by some of the finest young chefs in the country. Some grocery stores and food purveyors catering to the patrons of such restaurants have also appeared on the scene. However, the best affordable food is coming from recent immigrants. Brooklyn's Chinatown, the Pakistani enclave on Brooklyn's Coney Island Avenue -- for that matter, any neighborhood where there has been a recent influx of immigration -- are the places to go if one wants a very good dinner for $30 or less.
Still, much of the food of New York is, in my opinion, not worthy of the "world-class" city we are always claiming to be. It is too easy here to spend $70 on a meal that afterward just makes one regret not having cooked at home. Ten percent of the food available in the city is brilliant (from the Salvadoran food trucks, to the farmers markets, to Vinegar Hill House Restaurant), 30 percent is dreadful, and the rest merely edible.
