Verapoi- I asked over 10 people and not one associated herring with a specific non Jewish nation. But each one named Pizza as Italian.
Get the difference? try it yourself!
Most food in the US and especially NY comes from the millions of immigrants that came to the US. There were large Italian (Really Naples and Scicily) , Irish, Asian and Jewish immigrants to NY and they brought their foods and cooking with them.
Many of these immigrants opened restaurants and other food places with their foods. So we are familiar with Italian, Asian and Jewish (Not Hemish stuff like Bagels and Pastrami). Those foods becames the staples of the NY diet
However there are many places that did not have large immigrants to the US and NY like the Dutch (Although NYC was founded by the Dutch very little remains except some place names like Staten Island) and certainly the cooking did not.
So its very obvious that most people know Italian, Asian and jewish cooking but might not know cooking from other places Like the Netherlands