Or basically all of Europe. Haven't seen $4 lunch bowls (adjusted to local wages) anywhere. Spending "nearly an hour a day cooking" is the norm in most countries here. Eating out is expensive anywhere.

Houston has similar regulations that effectively serve the same purpose to determine land use, which is zoning adjacent.

What’s missing from the writer’s analysis is also the desire from the population to create such businesses. Having lived in Asia for a bit, most of these small businesses are not wildly profitable and not everyone is willing to put in the hard work and effort to running these affordable restaurants.

You are oversimplifying the writer's position. They mention zoning as one reason but also other regulations, health codes (minimum sink counts!) and other things like parking minimums (which houston has had, though they've been removed recently in a lot of cases), reliable and ubiquitous public transit, etc.