Ha! The New York Times has an article this morning that covers a point I made a bunch of times during the summer: expensive restaurant food is all the same, no matter what the ethnicity -- it all converges. When I made the point, I used Miso-glazed salmon as my example of food that was everywhere this summer. The Times uses Miso black cod. Ha. I'm two months ahead of the New York Times in my cultural observations. :) From the article:

All four of those restaurants opened over the last two years, and all four show that what is sold and heralded as ethnic variety is often just ethnic blending, with a frappéd result that changes little from one restaurant to the next. Behind a comforting illusion of diversity lies an even more comforting reality of sameness. In a city of supposedly inexhaustible options, there seems to be one meal, shaped by tyrannical culinary trends, pervasive nutritional fads and the economics of supply and demand.

"All you need are some different condiments, some different lighting and a different-looking menu, and people think they're having a different meal," said Mitchell Davis, a cookbook writer who teaches in New York University's department of nutrition, food studies and public health. "They're not, because they really want to be eating the same things: steak, cod and tuna tartare."