In the broadest sense, Asian food refers to any food from Asia. These countries include: China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Russia, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam. Asian cuisine includes many major cuisines: Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and Tibetan. A cuisine is a generalized characteristic style of eating habits and traditions, normally related to a particular country. Over time, the evolution of Asian cuisine has resulted in wide differences among countries in terms of the ingredients used, styles of cooking, spices, sauces, and the types of foods served. There are three broad categories of foods served in restaurants in Asia.
Thai and Chinese cooking is perhaps the most widely recognized variety of asian cuisine, using a variety of chili peppers and ingredients such as mangoes, onions, garlic, ginger, sesame seeds, scallions, glutinous rice, fish, noodles, stir-fried vegetables, and chicken. In Singapore, there are so many Chinese cooking and hawker centers that you can find asian food everywhere. Some of the most popular Chinese dishes include char kway teow, chicken rice (which is very thin), noodles, bah kut aun (ramen), chow mien, and dim sum.
Other popular asian foods include Indian food preparations, which often use spices and herbs and include ingredients like turmeric, red chilies, and coriander. They have an extensive variety of sweets like jalebis and pudinais, and are popular all over the world. Many of these Indian dishes have become popular in the United States, especially in New York, where they have become major influences in the cuisine of that region. Southeast Asian food preparations also have changed significantly over the years, becoming more sophisticated and appealing to Western tastes. You can find Vietnamese pho, Indian biryani, Thai coconut chicken, Indian curries, and Chinese stir-fry.