Raw seafood is pretty popular in coastal areas of Shandong and Liaoning. Cold seas and pretty easy to identify as fresh or not.
Raw veg in the Northeast in general is fine depending on what it is. Spinach should be cooked because of the way its grown (nightsoil not uncommon) but peppers/radishes OK raw (hanging fruit).
Simply pragmatic food culture responses to how food is sourced, and habits of what's OK or not. A Guangzhou person is unlikely to be OK with raw crawling shrimp in a salad in Panjin, and a Panjin person complains about how seafood in Guangdong is tasteless as the sea is too hot so the seafood grows too fast (despite these conditions making it plentiful).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radish#Seed_pod_varieties
> The seeds of radishes grow in siliques (widely referred to as "pods"), following flowering that happens when left to grow past their normal harvesting period. The seeds are edible, and are sometimes used as a crunchy, sharp addition to salads.[13] Some varieties are grown specifically for their seeds or seed pods, rather than their roots. The rat-tailed radish, an old European variety thought to have come from East Asia centuries ago, has long, thin, curly pods which can exceed 20 cm (8 in) in length. In the 17th century, the pods were often pickled and served with meat.[13] The 'München Bier' variety supplies seed pods that are sometimes served raw as an accompaniment to beer in Germany.[22]
(I hadn't heard of this until I looked. I firmly think of radishes as root vegetables.)
See this article for one datapoint: http://www.worldfishing.net/news101/Comment/analysis/norway-...
- http://www.flavorandfortune.com/dataaccess/article.php?ID=40...
Sushi is very popular in New York, much more popular than the Japanese population alone would support. There are sushi restaurants in neighborhoods where the residents enjoy sushi. The absence of them in Chinatown is an indicator that the residents there (> 90% Chinese immigrants) don't like sushi.
There are plenty of sushi restaurants in Chinatown: https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=sushi&start=0&l=p:NY:N...
There are also traditional - and popular - Chinese dishes that involve raw fish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng
You have to understand that Chinese people are huge gluttons (I say this without any judgement). They love to eat.. there are even idioms about it!
1) http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/they...
Did you check the results of your yelp search? that's 2 restaurants that are actually in Chinatown and actually serve sushi. An unusually small number for a neighborhood with one of the highest density of restaurants in the city.
Did you read the wiki article you linked? this sentence is in the summary: "While versions of it are thought to have existed in China, the contemporary version was created and popularised[citation needed] in the 1960s amongst the ethnic Chinese community and its consumption has been associated with Chinese New Year festivities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore." It's modern, and is a holiday feast meal served primarily by the Cantonese diaspora population. This isn't popular everyday eating, and is basically unknown on the mainland.
Even contemporary sushi/sashimi was not popularized in Japanese cuisine until relatively recently during the Edo period (1700s-late 1800s). Pre-edo times, "raw" fish was mostly preserved fish.
In regards to Chinatown, it's worth noting that many Chinese (and Korean) seafood restaurants also serve raw seafood (sashimi, poke, oysters, raw clams, etc.)
Perhaps Yelp is being too liberal with what they define as "Chinatown", but a quick pass on Yelp with the "Chinatown" area checked, returned the following:
Japanese restaurants:
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/alin-sushi-new-york-4
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/mika-japanese-cuisine-and-bar-new-y...
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/gohan-new-york
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/aplus-sushi-new-york-2
Chinese restaurants:
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/pings-seafood-new-york?
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/oriental-garden-restaurant-new-york
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/chinese-tuxedo-new-york-2
Fusion:
* https://www.yelp.com/biz/cutting-board-new-york
> Place of origin: Singapore
Generally, when we say Chinese, we refer to mainland China and Taiwan, not the Chinese Diaspora. This would be like saying Indian people love chicken tikka masala.
That's true everywhere in the US. It's very hard to find an authentic Japanese restaurant, and even harder to find one run by actual Japanese people. Usually, "Japanese" restaurants are run by Koreans.
In my town, the authentic Japanese restaurant was next to the Subaru and Mitsubishi/Toyota car dealerships, and was pretty much there just so the auto executives had a reliably Japanese place to eat while visiting. It went out of business.
Japanese people may be the best at making a restaurant authentically Japanese, but Han are (anecdotally) much better at making a Japanese-themed restaurant authentically profitable.
Sometimes the clues are really blatant that it's not an authentic Japanese restaurant. There used to be a Sushi place a few miles down the road where the hirigana on the sign spelled out Arikato.
Said dozens of times by my Chinese-born girlfriend in SF Chinatown: "I have no idea what this is." "This is weird."
Immigration from the mainland started picking up after the Cultural Revolution in the late 70s / early 80s through now.
"Chinese" food in the US is mostly Cantonese food. Only fairly recently have you seen an uptick of non-canton style food. The latest trend is Sichuan / Chongqing style of cuisine (spicy!).
My favorite Chinese regional cuisine is Xinjiang cai (food of the uighurs, China's muslim minority group). Very tasty - lots of bbq meats, delicious noodles, and spicy. Also bonus that its halal/kosher.
at least, much more similar to cantonese food than it is to northern chinese food, which in my (cantonese heritage) opinion look more like korean, given its extreme use of sour preserved vegetables and grains.
Which Chinese people? There are approximately zero sushi restaurants in Manhattan Chinatown. There are a whole bunch of sushi restaurants in adjacent SoHo, which is filled with non-Chinese yuppies.
anecdotal: took my Chinese co-worker to The Pokespot takeout for lunch and he immediately turned around and went somewhere else when he saw that the menu contained only raw fish.