Part 2: One Strong Argument for Columbus as a Food City? Its Diversity
We took a tally of how many international cuisines are represented in Central Ohio.
Quick story: As an intern at a Downtown consulting firm in the mid-90’s, one of my tasks was to pick up arriving clients from the airport and return them to our office. Coming back on I-670, my passengers and I inevitably passed the Wonderbread billboard.
Not once, not twice, but three times, the passengers noticed the sign and voiced some variation on the theme of: “Guess that tells you everything you need to know about Columbus, huh?” The implication was clear, and it was hard to argue with at the time.
It’s not hard to argue with now. According to the Columbus Region, “over the past decade (2010-2020), 92 percent of population growth has come from non-white groups. Thirty-seven percent is made up of immigrants from around the world.” Ninety-five languages from 104 countries are now spoken in Columbus City Schools, according to the school district.
The city as a whole grew by 15.1 percent during the same period, marking the largest population increase in its history. And, of course, additional immigration occurred both prior to and after the time period from 2010-2020.
Though elements of the current political climate may question the value of this, the very idea that Central Ohio could accept and integrate so many newcomers with such remarkable ease strikes me as a great, and largely unacknowledged, American story.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a story that’s being told through food.
Over the years, Bethia and I have kept an ongoing tally of the origins of food providers serving dishes from their native background; for most of that period it hovered somewhere in the area of 35-40 cuisines from distinct nationalities. Our effort lapsed over the pandemic, and when we revisited the tally last week we found it had ballooned to over 70.
FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS» View our list of 72 international cuisines represented by Central Ohio restaurants
That’s … a lot! And when you drill down further, you’ll find a rich variety of regional cuisines from countries like China, India and Mexico.
To the question of how much culinary variety is necessary for Columbus to be considered a “good food city,” once again we argue that there’s more here than any one person could reasonably exhaust.
A few takeaways:
- While Europe looks well covered on the map, the breadth and depth of European cuisines are not particularly well represented in Columbus.
- If you focus on cuisines that specifically cater to people from a given cuisine’s background, no country is better represented than Mexico, with over 100 taco trucks on top of myriad brick-and-mortar restaurants serving by-Mexican, for-Mexican food.
- It’s almost impossible to disambiguate Chinese from Chinese-American food (many restaurants serve both), but it could be argued that Chinese representation might exceed Mexican.
- After Mexican and Chinese cuisines, Indian, Somali and Nepali rank highly for total numbers of restaurants, with Nepali growing significantly over the past few years.
- We’ve seen significant growth in representation from Africa and South America.
- You can observe a loose degree of cultural enclaving based on where restaurants pop up in various parts of town. We’ve seen significant concentrations of Indian fare in Polaris, Nepali in Reynoldsburg, Mexican on the West Side (Georgesville/Sullivant/Broad), Ethiopian on Hamilton Road, Somali around the Morse Road/161/Cleveland Avenue area, and a significant uptick in various Middle Eastern cuisines in Hilliard.
Click here to read our first story in this series, “Is Columbus a Good Food City?”
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
On Mondays you’ll find a new Korean pop-up called Jinjja operating out of Harvest Pizzeria in Clintonville. (“Jinjja” means “really” in Korean.) It’s owned by John Franke, formerly of Jobu Ramen and, more recently, Mashita Noodles. The menu includes bowls of Korean ramen (aka ramyun) and kalguksu with hand-cut noodles, plus sandwiches and street foods like sotteok sotteok and hotteok. On March 4, Jinjja is adding a Tuesday pop-up at Station in Granville.
Noble Cut Distillery has opened its first cocktail bar at 750 Cross Pointe Drive next to its production facility in Gahanna. The local distillery’s new bar replaces Homestead Beer Co., which was recently acquired by Outerbelt Brewing. Columbus Business First has more here.
Goodfellas Pizzeria is moving into the Short North at 608 N. High St. The pizzeria-meets-bourbon bar concept, which is headquartered in Lexington, currently has 10 locations in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio.