It's not that it was significant but it was so much unlike anything you knew in a country where uniqueness was hard to come by. The Martians were selling the crappiest possible food found in their universe but you had no way of knowing because you were not familiar with their food and it wasn't like anything you ever tasted before. There is a value in uniqueness that is shared universally. When we lived in Tokyo there was only one Krispy Kream shop. The line in front of it never reduced to less than 45 minutes of waiting. I could never understand why the Japanese felt compelled to wait for 45 minutes to get a box of doughnuts and a coffee, but they did.