In my opinion, a food desert refers to a place that lacks food culture, has low catering standards, and has a single type of restaurants, unable to provide a wide variety of food choices.

At the same time, it may also be that there are many restaurants in a city, but all restaurants have the same taste and quality, lacking innovation and breakthroughs, making people feel boring.

In my country, China, there are many cities that can be called food deserts, the most prominent of which is a city I know well - Harbin.

Harbin is a large city in northern China with rich history and cultural heritage, but its food culture has not been well developed.

First of all, the level of catering in Harbin is low. Some so-called high-end restaurants only provide some ordinary dishes with single taste and lack of innovation and breakthrough.

Although Harbin is a cold city, it has not developed cuisine that adapts to the seasons, such as providing hot hot pot or mutton skewers in winter.

Instead, its restaurant industry relies on crowds brought by events such as the Ice Sculpture Festival, using quirky decorations and services to attract visitors rather than serving delicious food.

Secondly, the types of restaurants in Harbin are very single, mainly focusing on Northeastern cuisine and lacking specialties from other places.

Although Northeastern cuisine has its own status and style, it cannot meet the diverse needs of modern people.

In other cities, you can find many excellent restaurants for specialties such as Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Hunan cuisine, etc., but you can rarely find such restaurants in Harbin.

Finally, Harbin’s food culture has not been well inherited and promoted, and some traditional food is disappearing.

For example, Harbin's cut intestines (a snack made of pig intestines filled with glutinous rice, soybean flour, etc.) used to be a very famous delicacy, but now it can only be found in a few places.

Some local young people don’t know much about these traditional delicacies and prefer to eat fast food and Western-style restaurants.

In general, Harbin can be called a food desert because its catering level is low, its restaurant types are single, it lacks innovation and breakthroughs, and it has not been well inherited and promoted.

This is a place that needs improvement and development. I hope that more innovative restaurants and food culture will emerge in the future, making Harbin a real food city.