[Clewza313]

Having visited the Phils quite a few times, the food is notably spice-deficient compared to nearly all its neighbors: a typical Filipino dish is flavored with exactly one thing, usually garlic. Also, some of the ingredients used to make up for this blandness are unpalatable/weird to Westerners. Exhibit A is kare-kare, which is peanut butter and oxtail stew served with fermented shrimp paste (bagoong alamang), where the tiny shrimp are still visible, eyeballs and all.

There are "good even if you didn't grow up with it" dishes like lechon (suckling pig), pork & chicken adobo and halo-halo, and some of the modern/upscale/fusiony places in Manila are amazing, but it would still be hard to have a Filipino place that's authentic and appealing to non-Filipino palates at the same time.

[contriban]

I disagree, Vietnamese and Japanese dishes aren’t known for their spices and are bland when compared to Thai food. I’d say some Filipino dishes if anything are too aggressive since many of them are sour due to vinegar or tamarind.

Also every mentioned country commonly used fermented fish/shrimp paste. The smelly “pla ra” is part of som tam but restaurants in the west probably don’t offer it at all.

Phở is famous but bulalo (oxtail bone marrow soup) is not, yet the two are comparable. The latter has a large piece of oxtail that would make it a delicacy on its own, and it’s good-looking too.

With a set of base dishes that taste good and look good for westerners, I’m not sure the taste is what’s keeping Filipino cuisine a secret.

Ethiopian food is “common” in Los Angeles, but I wouldn’t say it’s particularly varied or spiced.

[hdhjebebeb]

Ethiopian food is very spiced in my experience - mitmita and berebere are the two distinctive spice mixes that come to mind. The local place makes doro wat so spicy that my partner can't even eat it!