A Global Feast in an Unlikely Spot: Lancaster, Pa.

LANCASTER, Pa. — Lancaster Central Market, a patchwork of stalls neatly encased in a Romanesque-style downtown building since 1889, has long been a bustling hub where the area’s large Pennsylvania Dutch population sells the fruit, meat, baked goods and other foods produced on farms outside the city.

These days, though, something different is in the air.

The heady scent of spices from the beef samosas at one stall, Rafiki Taste of Africa, mixes with the tang of onions and pineapple being chopped for salsa at Guacamole Specialist. The low growl of sugar cane being crushed into liquid can be heard at Havana Juice. A Puerto Rican flag hangs near the cash register at Christina’s Criollo, where empanadas and sweet plantains are on offer.

“Malala was here not too long ago,” said Omar Al Saife, 65, the owner of Saife’s Middle Eastern Food, referring to Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight to guarantee girls the right to an education. A framed photo of her and Mr. Al Saife hangs in his stand.

For ages, Lancaster has conjured up images of the horses and buggies, dairy farms and rustic bakeries of its Amish and Mennonite people, who believe in living simply, many of them eschewing modern conveniences like cars and electricity.

And in the last few years, the city has drawn notice for a boomlet of upscale bars, breweries, restaurants and art galleries. In 2016, the New York Post proclaimed Lancaster “the new Brooklyn.” Even in the old Brooklyn, you can spot people sporting T-shirts with the logos of Lancaster businesses.

But both stereotypes miss the real news here: the increasing number of restaurants and food businesses run by immigrants and refugees, and the way they effortlessly mesh with the fancy cocktail bars and old-school bakeries. The seven-square-mile city is now a hive of culinary diversity.

“I grew up with straight-up burgers and hot dogs and casseroles — plain stuff,” said Stephen Clubine, 32, a Lancaster native and manager of the bakery Bakehouse on King. “Now we have a Trinidadian place, some Vietnamese places, some Japanese. You wouldn’t expect that in a small town.”

That inclusiveness has a long history. The Pennsylvania Dutch first settled in the area in 1709, after fleeing persecution in Europe for their adherence to Anabaptism, a Protestant movement. A banner above a busy intersection downtown reads, “A History of Welcome Since 1742,” the year Lancaster was chartered as a borough.

During the 19th century, Lancaster became a stop along the Underground Railroad, as residents provided protection for escaped slaves. Puerto Ricans and other Latinos began arriving as farm laborers in the 1940s, followed in the 1980s by Cubans who had come to the United States in the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration to escape economic hardship and political repression.

National religious organizations like the Mennonite Central Committee, which opened a Lancaster office in 1935, and Church World Service, which followed in 1987, have actively sought to bring refugees to the city. In 2017, Church World Service reported resettling 477 refugees here. That same year the city, whose population is about 60,000, took in 20 times more refugees per capita than any other in the United States, according to the Lancaster City Alliance, an organization devoted to the city’s development.

Today, Nepalese aloo bodi tama — a spicy black-eyed-pea soup with potatoes, turmeric and cumin — is just as easy to find as a molasses-filled shoofly pie, a Pennsylvania Dutch classic.

Sudershan Adhikari, 29, an owner of the Indian and Nepali restaurant Namaste, arrived in Lancaster in 2017 from Vermont, after fleeing the ethnic cleansing of Nepalis in Bhutan in 1990. He trained to be a tractor-trailer driver, but the job bored him, so he took up an occupation that relatives here told him required no training: restaurateur.

The fiery, meat-stuffed momos Mr. Adhikari serves are a far cry from the mashed potatoes and casseroles that figure heavily in Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. But when Namaste opened, he said, locals embraced the food.

The same is true at Issei Noodle. Robert Pham, a Vietnamese refugee, and his wife, Naomi, who grew up in Japan, opened a restaurant in 2008 in Carlisle, about 60 miles to the west. Their son Andre Pham, and his wife, Donna, opened a Lancaster location in 2014.

The menu unites the family’s dual heritage, with pho and ramen sharing equal billing. The restaurant’s bright, unapologetic flavors have proven so popular that last month, the Phams opened a stand in the Central Market.

Bernard Truong, 41, an owner of the restaurants Sprout of Rice & Noodles and Rice & Noodles, never imagined he would stay in Lancaster this long. His family — including his in-laws, Chau and Anh-Thu Cao, who fled Saigon as the Vietnam War was ending in 1975 — came from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and opened a restaurant.

“Then we didn’t leave,” he said. “The welcoming of everybody around here, the importance of family. We saw it in our business growing. It seemed like we were helping to change the food culture.” The customers who now stream into Sprout for dinner seem quite fluent in pho ga and thit nuong.

Several other food businesses have made it a point to hire refugees and immigrants.

Maher Almahasneh, who fled Syria in 2013, just completed a stint as a lead cook at Upohar, a vegetarian restaurant and catering business with a kitchen staff of refugees and others who face barriers to employment, like addiction and homelessness.

“People in my country told me in America everyone has a gun, a lot of problems,” said Mr. Almahasneh, 39. “What I experience here is different. I love Lancaster.”

The Upohar menu changes depending on who is behind the pass. It has included akara, or black-eyed pea fritters, from Nigeria; an Iraqi lemonade with orange blossom called sharab al-leymoun; and a black-bean stew from Cuba.

Mr. Almahasneh served dishes he grew up eating, like crispy rice intermingled with slinky, chopped-up bits of vermicelli, and greens stewed with onions and sumac. He hopes eventually to open a bakery and shop selling Syrian and Iraqi sweets.

For Najah Al Dakhil, 43, a Syrian refugee who is the main cook at the Grape Leaf Cafe, it felt natural to go into the restaurant business. (The cafe is associated with the Grape Leaf Empowerment Center, which provides refugees with resources like mental health services and help with job applications.)

Ms. Al Dakhil was used to cooking on a large scale, for her 14 siblings, and is known around town for her stuffed grape leaves and hummus. “I am happy cooking,” she said. “It makes me think of my family.”

C Street Market, on the rooftop of the bar Tellus360, features stalls owned by refugees and immigrants. One, Xulbo by Bridge, serves beef suqaar chapati, a Somali dish of diced bits of beef wrapped in a thick bread.

Jennie and Jonathan Groff, a couple who own the Stroopie Co., which bakes Dutch stroopwafels — thick wafers stuffed with caramel — not only employ refugees but also host English classes in their bakery, Lancaster Sweet Shoppe.

Ms. Groff, 42, grew up just outside the city, in a Mennonite family that regularly helped to resettle refugees. “To love your neighbor is a really big, foundational part of what we believe,” she said. “It is what people once did for us, so it’s seeped into the cores of who we are as a community.”

Mr. Pham said several of his regulars at Issei Noodle were Mennonites. “We have a very loyal family of 30 people who will always call ahead and take up, like, half of the dining room,” he said. “They seem really open to this food.”

Kristen Whitebread-Wood, 37, a nurse originally from Philadelphia, said her children equally adore the glazed doughnuts and the empanadas at the Central Market.

That willingness to try new flavors may have been helped along by the food businesses that have fueled comparisons to Brooklyn.

The Horse Inn, a Prohibition-era speakeasy that was reopened in 2014, serves Tips ‘n Toast, a beefy bread pudding from the bar’s early days, updated with a veal demi-glace and locally baked bread. At the Pressroom, a newspaper-themed bar, the cocktails incorporate barrel-aged Madeira and mole. Coffee shops like Square One and Passenger serve espresso as good as any in the country.

If there is any discomfort with this culinary diversity, it seems to come mainly from unfamiliarity.

“I’m used to this kind of eating,” Faye Hess, 68, a clerk at Shady Maple bakery in Lancaster Central Market, said one recent afternoon, pointing at a Whoopie Pie. “I don’t eat Vietnamese or Thai food. I don’t even know what they taste like.”

A few aisles down, an Amish bakery owner (who asked not to be identified because he didn’t want his name on the internet) glanced around the space and sighed. “I miss the way things used to be,” he said, pointing out all the new stalls in the market, and the nearby Lancaster County Convention Center, which opened in 2009.

Lancaster faces the same problems as any fast-growing city. Christina Maldonado, 43, and Srirupa Dasgupta, 53, opened Upohar on the city’s outskirts because the downtown area had become prohibitively expensive. Since Whole Foods Market and Wegmans Food Markets opened stores last year — both offering competitive pay and health benefits — Mr. Pham said he has struggled to recruit talented cooks at Issei Noodle.

The dining scene is suddenly crowded. When Mr. Truong arrived in town, there wasn’t much Vietnamese food in Lancaster; now there are several restaurants, and it’s much harder for his two places to stand out.

But he also finds the abundance, and the competition, exciting.

“If you can make it here,” he said, beaming with optimism, “you can make it anywhere.”

A Lancaster Sampler

Bakehouse on King 16 West King Street, bakehouseonking.com

C Street Market 24 East King Street, tellus360.com

Grape Leaf Cafe 30 West James Street, grapeleafcenter.com

The Horse Inn 540 East Fulton Street, horseinnlancaster.com

Issei Noodle 44 North Queen Street, isseinoodlelancaster.com

Lancaster Central Market 23 North Market Street, centralmarketlancaster.com

Lancaster Sweet Shoppe 141 North Duke Street, lancastersweetshoppe.com

Namaste 2101 Columbia Avenue, namastelncrestaurant.com

Passenger 315 East Marion Street, passengercoffee.com

Rice & Noodles 1238 Lititz Pike, riceandnoodlesrestaurant.com

Sprout of Rice & Noodles 58 North Prince Street, riceandnoodlesrestaurant.com

Square One Coffee 145 North Duke Street, squareonecoffee.com/lancaster

The Pressroom 26-28 West King Street, pressroomrestaurant.com

Upohar 798 New Holland Avenue, upoharvegetarianrestaurant.com