When I discuss foodways in my geography courses, I
  have to START with the assumption that most of my
  students have no experience other than the
  widespread availability of foreign cuisines.  In my
  lecture on the subject, I show a clip from the "Andy
  Griffith Show" (after they jumped the shark and went
  to color) in which a Chinese place opened up in
  Mayberry and nobody would try it until it got the
  "official" OK from the Sherrif.  There was a Chinese
  take-out (Ding How) in Springfield as far back as I
  can remember (at least the late '60s).  We started
  seeing Vietnamese restaurants by the late '70s
  because of the influx of South Vietnamese refugees;
  I suspect the same holds true for parts of the Gulf
  Coast.  Not counting chains, the last time I
  checked, Springfield had six different Asian
  cuisines represented in the phone book.  In the
  1980s Springfield's first "Mexican" restaurant was
  Chi-Chi's - if you can call that Mexican.  There
  were six Mexican places (including Taco Bell, sigh)
  in Springfield a couple of years ago.  Farmville has
  had Chinese for as long as I've been here (16 years)
  and now has three.  We once had a Chinese/Afghan
  restaurant!  We geographers work on these kinds of
  topics and it would be a nice master's thesis or
  dissertation topic to investigate the diffusion of
  say Chinese restaurants.  The spread is a mix of
  processes, including relocation and expansion
  diffusion.  Most of the new ones look very
  cookie-cutterish to me:  same menus, same pictures
  of food above the counter, and the same art work on
  the walls.  Either these are franchise operations or
  there's only one supplier of Chinese restaurant
  supplies in the Mid-Atlantic!

________________________________

Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Longwood University
Farmville, Virginia 23909
Phone: (434) 395-2581
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

********************
"For as Geography without History
seemeth a carkasse without motion,
so History without Geography
wandreth as a Vagrant without a
certaine habitation."
John Smith, 1627