Ethnic Goes Exurban

A similar shift has taken place in Maryland, where Rockville's strip malls provide better options than upscale and closer-in Bethesda. College Park and Gaithersburg -- both fairly distant and shabbier-- are its closest rivals for their array of Caribbean, Indian and Latino offerings. But Maryland lags behind Virginia as a host state for new ethnic restaurants. The 2005 Small Business Survival Index, which ranks states according to such measures as income tax rates and health-care regulations, shows why: Virginia stands in 13th place among the 50 states -- making it a more hospitable setting for starting up a small business than Maryland, which comes in 25th.

Within Virginia, ethnic food has been on the move, heading westward toward lower rents and new population centers. As Victor Serrano of Victor's Grill, a Falls Church restaurant serving Latino meats, put it, "We have our restaurants out in the suburbs because the Bolivian and Argentine communities are spread out throughout Arlington, Falls Church, Vienna and Annandale. Our strategy is to make ourselves convenient."

And convenience for ethnic restaurant owners these days often means proximity to suburban places of work. "We wanted to be close to the offices here," says Rani Varma, the owner of Bombay Tandoor in Tysons Corner. "We get a flood of people at lunchtime."

Falls Church has held on to the reputation it established in the 1990s for Asian and especially Vietnamese food. Indeed, the Eden Center on Wilson Boulevard -- the bustling economic reflection of a county where one in every four residents is now foreign-born -- attracts Asian visitors from the entire East Coast. I used to go to this huge mall whenever I wanted; now I worry about whether I can find a parking space.

In the 1980s and early '90s, I could still find excellent ethnic food -- particularly Vietnamese -- in Arlington and Clarendon, but more recently, I've watched well-established suburban eateries march toward the exurbs. Take Madhu Ban, the excellent Indian vegetarian restaurant that used to be in Clarendon: As the area gentrified, rents rose, and the owner, Munshi Ram, moved out. He reopened his restaurant as Punjab Dhaba in Loehmann's Plaza in Falls Church, closer to the Dulles corridor and the high-tech boom that helped double the Indian population in the Washington region from fewer than 40,000 in 1990 to some 78,000 in 2000. A dhaba is typically a roadside cafe, and this one is right next to the Bollywood movie theater. I can tell when the Indian movies start and end by watching the flow of crowds at the restaurant.

Ethnic food continues to shift farther west. Later this September, Rangoli will open as the first Indian restaurant in South Riding in the Market Square strip mall, just off Route 50 in Loudoun County. As recently as 2000, there were fewer than 10,000 Asian residents in Loudoun; by 2005, that number had more than tripled to 28,813. Many of these new residents come from Fairfax and Arlington counties in search of cheaper housing and are eager to bring their favorite foods along.

The strip mall that will house Rangoli already has a Subway and Firkin & Hound -- a chain selling "pub food" -- and is about to get a place called Thai Chili, too. This mall symbolizes the new look of contemporary ethnic dining -- indistinguishable from the surrounding exurban area.

These malls have become more accessible for immigrants as they have gained wealth -- and cars. John Chia, the owner of Kam Po, says he chose Leesburg Pike near Baileys Crossroads for his Chinese-Peruvian eatery because it is convenient for the region's estimated 75,000 Peruvian transplants as well as other Latinos. "Old ethnic neighborhoods, all your restaurants were walking distance," he says. "Now 99 percent of my customers come in cars." (Kam Po is what in Lima would be called a chifa , run by Chinese immigrants to Peru who moved to the D.C. suburbs, bringing their own brand of fusion food with them.)

This new mobility is weakening the whole notion of the ethnic neighborhood. Forget the old Chinatown paradigm: Diffusion is the new model. As a result, ethnic restaurants are more like scattered outposts, drawing from a wide radius. As Serrano points out, "Our competition is not right next door. We compete with . . . restaurants five or 10 miles away."

My eating odyssey has uncovered other surprises and undermined old assumptions. Who would have guessed, for example, that good Peruvian and Bolivian restaurants outnumber Mexican ones in a region that is home to more than 32,000 Latino-owned businesses and where one in 11 residents is Latino? Or that a variety of Mexican tacquerias, soup joints and bakeries are centered in the no-man's land of Bladensburg, on and near Kenilworth Avenue? The surrounding community is largely Hispanic, and it is only a matter of time before Mexican entrepreneurs spread this food to Northern Virginia.

Of course, the march of immigration is a more complex story than that told by the restaurants I find. Filipinos, for example, are the second most numerous Asian group in the United States (some 2 million, compared with 2.7 million Chinese). But outside of Little Manila in Los Angeles and parts of San Francisco, Filipino restaurants are unusual. The Washington area -- where there are some 34,000 people of Filipino heritage -- has Little Quiapo in Arlington and Manila Cafe in Springfield. But few non-Filipino Americans have a love for fish sauce, vinegar marinade and oxtail. And, as my Filipino friend John Nye has told me, many Filipinos prefer a home-cooked meal.

Korean food also remains largely the province of Korean patrons. Most Westerners don't go beyond bul gogi (broiled beef) or perhaps bibim bap (rice bowl with egg and vegetables). The cuisine tastes harsh to the uninitiated, with its abundant garlic and unusual seafood delicacies. This also explains why Korean restaurants remain so tightly clustered near Korean communities (most of the best are in Annandale) and why just about every Korean restaurant is good. Unlike Chinese restaurants, there is little danger of Koreans taking the Americanized beef-with-broccoli route.

Not that beef-with-broccoli is always a recipe for success. In fact, exurban ethnic food typically packs a punch. Bennie Cardozo of Minerva remembers the perils of trying to adapt: "For the first several months, we tried to cook to American tastes. We nearly went out of business. Then we switched to spicy and traditional to target local Indians, and all of a sudden lines were out the door."

Louis Armstrong once said "All music is folk music." Similarly, all cuisine is ethnic cuisine. My quarter-century sampling of dosas and other delicacies has become a case study in the demographics of our rapidly changing area.

tcowen@gmu.edu

Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, writes an ethnic dining guide athttp://tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com.