Because there was a lot of cultural cross-contamination between these countries, there is a huge overlap in ingredients due to climate similarities and trade between neighboring countries.

I group European & American food into their respective groups as well.

> Asia rolls out 4-day weeks, WFH to solve fuel cris...

Makes no sense, same with "I'm in a mood for asian food"

In vulgar American English, "Asia" mostly just refers to the wider Confuciosphere + some parts of Central Asia (though rarely thought about.) Most Americans will look at you funny if you call Pakistan or Jordan Asian, because that's not how we use the word.

> China alone has several distinct cuisines. Why do we act like this is a monolithic concept?

When someone is talking about "Chinese food", they almost certainly are talking about the cuisine established by Chinese immigrants in their country, not food as it exists within China. This isn't unique to China.

More American vulgarism fun facts, "Chinese" wasn't pan-Chinese until somewhat recently. It pretty much exclusively meant Cantonese outside of very specific contexts, like geopolitics. This changed slowly starting in the 1970s, but emphasis on slowly and it still persists in interesting ways today.

Globally, everyone does this.

When someone outside of America thinks of American food, do you think they will think of Cajun gumbo, TexMex, Clam Chowder, or something you'd find on the menu at McDonalds?

Asian can also have different meanings in different places. If you say someone is Asian in Britain it means South Asian, whereas in the US it seems to mean East Asian.

It's similar to how people say "Europe does this or that". Basically the part of their thoughts dedicated to that part of the world is so small that all they can afford is a tiny box, and everything has to go in there, reality be damned.

A lot of the places by me have both a Chinese menu and a Japanese menu. Some even have a Thai menu.

So when you're going out for Asian food, it really is that. No sense in being pedantic here.

Because much of the Asian food the average American will come across isn’t necessarily identifiable to a specific region or country in Asia, or is a blend of various Asian cuisines.

Or they are broadly referring to the various cuisines of Asia as a singular group, because unless you’re very familiar with those cuisines, they may see broadly similar.

Isn't there a concept of regional cuisine like "Mediterranean cuisine"?

Because that is how it's presented to "us". If the cuisine that we could access where we live was more diverse, we would think differently about the entire set (which is not happening for another set of entirely good reasons, but alas.)

The term "Western" is often used in an equally broad sense, referring to Europe/North American culture.

I feel shame because I once thought a restaurant's sign said "Asian Place" when it actually said "A Siam Place"

It's a category that makes sense to people and communicates something clearly..?

When Asians use the term, we usually use it to loosely mean "my home cuisine and other cuisines that share similar characteristics"

When my wife or I say "I feel like eating something Asian today" it usually means spicy-Chinese adjacent, i.e. served hot, vegetables fully cooked, heavy on flavor, paired with either rice or freshly made noodles.

Korean qualifies, Sichuan food qualifies, Thai food qualifies, Indian food maybe sort of borderline qualifies on some days but only if we haven't eaten it recently.

We don't usually mean Japanese food when we say that. That's just our mutual understanding of what we call "Asian food". Yeah, I guess we unapologetically kicked Japan out of culinary Asia :) It doesn't matter. The system works for us. We don't dislike Japanese food, but we'll say "Japanese food" when we feel like having Japanese food.

Another Asian family from a different part of Asia probably uses the term to refer to a different subset of Asian cuisines.

Like just about everything else in Asia, it's a fluid term that means different things to different people. I've only ever seen people in the west be pendantic about terms like this. I also think of it as a very western ideology to want to have a term have a singular global definition.

>" Why do we act like this is a monolithic concept?"

Under "we" you mean white / the westerners? Because the majority of us do not give a flying fuck about other parts of the world. Not important enough. One can easily see how our media reacts to tragedies on one one side comparatively to the other.

As for food. I live in Toronto and can clearly distinguish between quite a few different "Asian" cuisines.

Because some places didn’t get immigration or even access to imported products. Being small town in Lithuania I didn’t even tried pizza until late 90s, chinese 2000s and indian probaly 2010s. There’s still like less than 5 Indian restaurants in country and probably none korean, etc.

Also things like asian fusion can evolve independently.

Wait until you hear someone talk about "begging the question"

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