Ethnic Foods: Ethnic Food since the 1960s

The success of the civil rights movement, the loosening of immigration restrictions, and the many cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s set off an ethnic revival that peaked in the 1980s, probably around the time of the 1983 television presentation of Alex Haley’s Roots. For many third-generation white ethnics, the 1980s also saw a revived interest in genealogy, European tourism, and old-country recipes. Home-style ethnic recipes were published in this period as never before. Ethnic foods were also revived in restaurants, and ethnic restaurants sometimes preceded actual immigrants. The Vietnam War was followed by the opening of numerous Thai restaurants serving spicy, vivid, exotic food and typically employing Thai cooks. Some Thai restaurants were owned by East Asian immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, Korea, China, and Malaysia. A wave of interest in spicy Chinese food from Szechwan and Taiwan followed the United States’s formal recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979.