Taste of home in the Cornfield

The Golden Harbor restaurant, which has more than 1,000 items on the menu, in Champaign, Illinois. - Anjali Pinto/The New York Times

JULIA Sun, a law student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who spent her childhood in Shanghai, was browsing an Asian grocery near campus last year when something in the snack aisle made her stop short.

“They had this waffle-biscuit thing I ate in second grade,” Sun said.