Restaurants

The Other Cultures, Other Ways posting got me thinking about "ethnic" restaurants in Midland. I don't remember any from my time there, though there is a faint memory of a "Chinese" restaurant that could equally well be wrong.

All I do remember is that for some special dinner my family went to Howard Johnson's, another time another restaurant on Saginaw Road next to a hotel that featured a sculpture that always comes to mind when I think of Rodin's "Fallen Caryatid," of which I learned through Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (from the Central Intermediate library), though this hotel's statue had an intertwined couple with ruined heads. (Someone said the sculpture had been damaged in transit and badly repaired -- I have no idea.) I am betting it's long since gone.

In any event, a quick look online reveals the presence of many restaurants now. The Golden Arches on Saginaw are no longer the only fast-food outlet. And I see various Chinese and Indian restaurants, not to mention some chains I've only recently discovered as my travels begin to take me to the Midwest.

I wonder about the Indian: are they catering to the local Indian population, the way some Indian restaurants in Redmond do? Or are they modified to American tastes the way nearly all Chinese restaurants are? (I got a big lesson in "localization" last year when, due to the scarcity of restaurants in Helsinki, I ate at a couple of "American" restaurants and learned about the Finnish take on American food.)