I currently live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area of Texas. Big cities, lots of suburbs, and plenty of diversity in ethnic cuisine. So it’s kinda hard for me to gauge what’s unusual.
However...
Because of the long, storied history with neighboring Mexico and the realities of the labor market around here, Mexican cuisine has become kind of the “universal solvent” for fusion cuisine and fusion restaurants around the state. Mexican cooks are in kitchens EVERYWHERE, and a lot of them are putting their spin on things.
Besides the ubiquitous Tex-Mex restaurants, I’ve been in a couple of Tex-Chinese and Tex-Indian places. And I’ve seen more than a few dishes that combine Mexican elements on restaurant menus, like flautas, tamales and tacos* on some Chinese buffets.
There was a restaurant I used to frequent** where the Chinese owner and her Mexican cook created barbacoa wontons.
* right next to pepperoni pizza!
** they closed in February for non-pandemic family reasons.
As for proper food:
Matjessill - Pickled filets of herring, served traditionally with boiled fresh potatoes (with butter on it), sourcream and chives. Very popular during the summer. Especially Midsummer. Often also accompanied with hardboiled eggs cut in half, with a bit of mayo on top and then red or black fish roe. At typical midsummer parties you usually get lots of different tupes of pickled herring, and copious amounts of alcohol in the form of Snaps Tradition has that you sing a short song before taking the snaps.. We also often version of pickled herring during Christmas and Easter...
Smörgåstårta - Basically layered pieces of white bread with various fillings inside, then covererd with various types of cold cut meats or shrimp, and fish. Betetr read the Wiki-article on it. It can be very good, but personally I do not want any liver paté in it.
Surströmming - Fermented herring. It smells awful. A former colleague of mine phrased it like "I can understand that you can really fail when maing food, but doing it again, and thinking it is good?"
I love the potential of fusion cuisine. Mom tried something a few years back by combining some leftover biriyani rice from a very good Indian place with my own leftover creole greens because we were out of white rice.
It was killer.