The beauty of the restaurant metaphor for how we become who we are is that it has some built-in biases.

Every culture, every geography, comes with it’s own sort of restaurant. There’s the ubiquitous Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Thai and Indian restaurants, to name only a few. There are even American restaurants, with their various shades of American ranging from steakhouses to Vegan spots. You’re unlikely to find avocado toast in a steakhouse, but it’s possible.

Go anywhere on the planet, the food is different. Why? Well, there are different ingredients, different seasonings, and differing people.

Tourism of the palate isn’t for everyone, though. We gravitate to the restaurants we like, and we avoid those we don’t.

What it doesn’t cover – what isn’t covered – are the increasing number of people who don’t fit. Sushi tacos are (hopefully) not a thing. You’d be hard pressed to find a pork biryani in the Middle East. You’d probably be hard pressed to find a beef biryani in India. That’s just ingredients, not their balance and how they are prepared.

There are fusion restaurants – I’m not sure if they’re still trendy or not – and there are changes that happen to foods in different countries.

You might hear about the best ‘Chinese food’ in an area, but is it really Chinese? Probably not. The same holds true of every type of restaurant, and this is an important thing to consider when we reverse that metaphor back to people.