Food Quote by John Corry

New York sells itself on difference: a city where you can eat your way across continents in a single subway ride. Corry’s line flatters that myth and then punctures it with a cheap, greasy punchline. The “glory” is ethnic food as civic virtue: variety as proof of sophistication, immigration as a buffet of pleasures. But the second clause snaps the reader into the less romantic truth of urban life: the one cuisine that truly “unites” New Yorkers is mass-produced fast food, engineered to taste the same in Queens as it does in Kansas.

The verb “equalize” is doing a lot of work. It sounds democratic, almost noble, until you notice what’s being equalized: not opportunity, not dignity, just appetite flattened into corporate sameness. That’s the joke, and it’s also the critique. New York’s celebrated cosmopolitanism can be real, but it’s also consumable - a city that congratulates itself for being worldly while still relying on the same franchises as everywhere else.

There’s a quiet class angle, too. Ethnic restaurants often signal curiosity and cultural capital; McDonald’s and Burger King are the fallback, the late-night option, the affordable constant. Corry’s subtext is that pluralism isn’t just a parade of flavors; it’s a negotiation with homogenizing forces that thrive precisely because they’re frictionless. The line lands because it captures New York’s double identity: proudly specific, constantly standardized.