It may not be unique to the Tri-Cities area, but you can travel the world here with your taste buds in mind.

Many small to mid-sized towns likely have an array of restaurant choices that offer cuisine that is considered “worldly.”

If that’s true, maybe we don’t need to travel across the country or the world to enjoy the culinary delights of other regions or nations.

However, there is a significant learning curve in discovering how food from other countries tastes and what makes it stand out for some.

I know Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and Thai dishes, but they represent the only ethnic food choices that are familiar to me.

Seeking a little education on food that is not always common to many Americans, my mission this week was to help others who are curious about certain types of foods that they may never have tried. The following five items will address restaurants that provide a holistic view of your plate as you try different cuisines.

Owners Juliana Cancelo, left, and Silvia Sanchez at Bocaditos Café in Batavia. Their restaurant serves Argentinian cuisine.
– Brian Hill | Personal photographer

That Argentinian flavor

Argentinian food lovers can thank Fermilab researchers for the circumstances that ultimately, albeit indirectly, brought the Bocaditos restaurant to Batavia.

Owner Juliana Cancelo was born in Batavia in the late 1980s at a time when her father was invited to work at Fermilab and brought the family here from Argentina. Then the family returned to Argentina for several years, then to Batavia and Fermilab in 1996.

“They kept extending my father’s contract so that two years turned into 25 years,” Cancelo said.

Eventually, it helped her use a skill with Argentine cuisine and bring it to Batavia. She’s traveled Bocaditos through three moves to the city, the last of which resulted in the restaurant opening last November in the Newton House building at 11 N. Batavia Ave.

This means that the influence of Spanish settlers and Italian immigrants in Argentina is now available to local diners, especially through empanadas, this country’s most iconic food.

“It’s a very big meat culture, and every culture has something wrapped in dough,” Cancelo said. “For an empanada, we have a piece of dough in the shape of a circle, and we fill it with the different fillings we offer, because we wanted to keep the cuisine as culturally traditional as possible.”

A big misconception is that Argentinian food is very spicy, she says. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Cancelo added. “The flavors are very similar to oregano, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper and things found in Italian cuisine.”

To “copy the flavor of home,” everything made in Bocaditos is done by hand, Cancelo noted.

Bocaditos Café in Batavia serves Argentinian cuisine.
– Brian Hill | Personal photographer

Cancelo knew residents wouldn’t be familiar with Argentine cuisine and that “our food comes with a lesson in what it is, what we do and why we do what we do,” she said.

“We’ve always said we open a heart and a mind with an empanada and then go from there,” Cancelo added. “It takes a lot of courage to try something new, but there are a lot of interesting conversations and discoveries that come out of it.”

On the way to the Mediterranean

Eden Restaurant and Events (formerly Eden on the River) in St. Charles offers us “Mediterranean style” cuisine.

And that largely means you’ll come across different types of spices and a range of new flavors.

“We have a lot of fresh hummus here,” said event coordinator Sophia Salese. “The food is tastier in the sense that there is more spice, but not too spicy, as we incorporate lots of lemons, olive oil, sumac, turmeric and such.”

Eden Restaurant & Events, which serves Mediterranean-style cuisine, overlooks the Fox River in St. Charles.
-Paul Valade | Personal photographer

Owner Omar Alfunsfi and his family are originally from Syria and they brought many of their hummus recipes to the restaurant at 1 Illinois St. along the Fox River.

Hummus is a paste of mashed chickpeas mixed with various oils for those unfamiliar.

The restaurant offers regular and peppercorn hummus and a dip with red peppers, breadcrumbs and pomegranate molasses.

The Mediterranean diet is considered healthier cuisine in many ways. Salese said Eden was looking for a “more modern Mediterranean” style with flatbreads, popular kebabs and seared salmon and lamb.

“People often notice that they see Greek dishes on our menu, but the dishes are prepared a little differently in each country, and our owner is from Syria, so that’s kind of our take on some dishes too. .”

The Taste of the Himalayas restaurant in St. Charles offers Nepalese cuisine.
-Paul Valade | Personal photographer

Along the Himalayas

How does food taste along the Himalayan mountain range between India and Tibet?

Area residents have a pretty good idea of ​​the answer to that question if they’ve tried the Taste of the Himalayas restaurant in St. Charles in the past 14 years at 110 N. Third St.

“Basically, my food comes from northern Nepal,” said restaurant owner Jack Bhandari, meaning his menu leans a bit more towards a mix of Chinese and Indian dishes.

“The food in Nepal is different from that in India in that the condiments and the way of cooking and mixing the spices are different,” Bhandari said.

This works for those trying these different spices on goat, chicken, lamb or shrimp, as well as vegetables from the Himalayan region.

“We don’t use beef or pork,” Bhandari noted, sticking to some of the meat-eating habits of that region. As with any restaurant offering cuisine from distant lands, some who walk through the door aren’t sure exactly what they’re about to order.

“A lot of people who come here will say they have no idea what to order and ask what we would recommend,” Bhandari noted.

“So I’m going to help them, and they end up enjoying it, and they’re going to tell their friends,” he added. “And that’s how we’ve done it here for the past 14 years.”

Mark Weaver, owner of Inglenook Pantry, prepares Pennsylvania Dutch-style meals for his Geneva catering business.
-Paul Valade | Personal photographer

What the Dutch like

Blend a few recipes and cooking styles from Germany and Switzerland, and somewhere in between you get the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine that Inglenook Pantry has been bringing to locals for over 50 years.

“People often use the term ‘homestyle’ or ‘homemade’ or ‘comfort food’ – and you could use those terms to describe our food,” said Mark Weaver, owner of Inglenook Pantry, which now operates as a catering company from 415, rue Stevens in Geneva.

“But it’s mostly a German-Swiss style of cooking from our late father, who grew up in Pennsylvania,” Weaver added. “We still use these same techniques and recipes in the kitchen today.”

Having eaten the creations of Weaver and his brother John and sister Rebecca many times over the years, the word that comes to mind is that this food is a bit “heavier”.

“It’s richer food,” Weaver acknowledged. “We use more cream and eggs and such.”

It is a cooking technique that works on various dishes of chicken, fish, pork or beef, vegetables, potatoes, bread and sweets. Swedish meatballs and baked breaded prawns are also standard.

Currently, Inglenook hosts events while working at markets and providing food service to retirement communities.

Japan and its sushi

I tried calling several Japanese restaurants in the area to get feedback from the owners on what differentiates their cuisine from Chinese cuisine, but I couldn’t identify one before the deadline.

It was partly my fault, I postponed my calls until Monday and forgot it was Valentine’s Day. Most people I came in contact with said they were too busy to talk, so that was good to hear.

But don’t forget to try Japanese cuisine when you travel to the area. I know the Japanese tend to emphasize sushi and rice as their main course, specializing in soups.

Another interesting note I’ve come across is that the Japanese tend to serve each portion of a meal on its own dish, as they don’t particularly like to blend flavors by bringing foods too close together.

These people would have cringed during meals if they had seen a guy who lived in my dorm years ago in college. He took it all on his plate, mixed it up, and ate it – pretty much every meal.

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