Introducing National Cuisine

[SobaAddict70]

Ok, so imagine that you've just met someone who's never experienced American (or other types of) food first hand. (For purposes of this discussion, I'm using "American", but feel free to substitute other culinary genres). This person has only experienced American food from afar, perhaps in his or her native country or filtered through the eyes and mouths of friends and neighbors or the media in his or her home country, or even the Internet.

How would you introduce the cuisine of your country to this person? How could you best represent this cuisine to someone who's never experienced it first hand? What would be the first misperceptions that you'd like to correct? What would be the first things you'd serve to this person? When you think of American cuisine, name the first three things that pop into your head that you associate with it. (No cheating. And no googling either.) I'd be interested to hear ESPECIALLY from people who post from countries other than the U.S., on hearing what their impressions are.

Soba

Edited October 31, 2003 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[tryska]

who doesn't like mac and cheese?

[bilrus]

The first three things I think of are hamburgers, fried chicken and then the concept of cooking from all over the world coming together here.

[Mabelline]

New England Clam Chowder, a first class prime dry-aged Angus Porterhouse, and a bowl of the most tear-jerking cry your eyes out CHILI ! Not all at the same sitting maybe, but I can't think of anyone who wouldn't like one of them.

[SobaAddict70]

So, would those be your first choices to serve to someone who's never had those items before?

And by mac and cheese, I'm assuming made from scratch, not Kraft's Cheese and Macaroni?

Soba

[bilrus]

I think I would go with a hamburger first, but only a good one and only because it is my guess that that would be the first thing someone from another country would know about American cooking. Show them that it is not necessarily just what you get from McDonald's.

[tryska]

So, would those be your first choices to serve to someone who's never had those items before?

And by mac and cheese, I'm assuming made from scratch, not Kraft's Cheese and Macaroni? 

Soba

absolutely made from scratch.

oh oh and good barbecue!

[Mabelline]

I think I'd still stick with my choices for the reasons that they could pretty much represent what we have been fortunate to have been able to eat for nearly as long as we've been a country, they are acceptable to nearly everyone's diet, and I can't get away from soups now. (Just one condition~the chile has to have cornbread with it).

[SobaAddict70]

then the concept of cooking from all over the world coming together here.

All right. Would it be fair to describe "fusion food" as inherently American in concept?

Issues of perception (especially philosophy-related issues) are particularly interesting to me, which is really what the basis of this thread is all about. How people from various countries, various cultures and parts of society perceive what we or anyone else from anywhere else takes for granted. Reading Shiewie's foodblog the other day made me think of a) how the diversity and variety of food is a shared quality between what's available in KL and here in the U.S., but it also highlighted interesting differences between what a person in the American Midwest might think qualified as "diverse and normal" versus for example, what a Malaysian person might think.

I don't know about hamburgers qualifying as "American", probably because of the association I have of hamburger with something like steak tartare.

Soba

Edited October 31, 2003 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[tryska]

buffalo wings!

[Mabelline]

I hesitate to say fusion is a U.S. concept because I feel fusion goes back as far as two different bunches of people being exposed to one another's cuisine by migration, war, slavery, whatever. But I think the world being at everyone's fingertips has opened a veritable treasure chest of EATING.!

[SobaAddict70]

I meant "fusion food" as currently executed.

Asia de Cuba and Patria are two restaurants that come immediately to mind that serve "fusion" concepted food.

Soba

[Fat Guy]

Steak tartare tends to have a pretty elaborate and specific set of garnishes like an egg, shallots, and parsley, whereas a hamburger tends to be 100% beef served on a bun with a totally different set of standard garnishes. Not to mention the raw versus cooked thing. I think if we're not willing to acknowledge the hamburger as American, we're not going to get very far in the conversation. Most everything comes from somewhere else at some point in its evolution. The hamburger has been an important American food for more than 100 years, which is probably longer than some classic dishes from France and Italy have been around, and it's not as though there's a significant hamburger culture emanating from any nation other than the USA.

I would certainly say that the list of iconic American foods includes hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, and apple pie. I'd also include the grilled cheese sandwich and the BLT. And then there's the whole arena of steaks and chops, served in the steakhouse mode. Those are all what I'd classify as national foods. Then there are also all sorts of regional foods like barbecue and chowder and deli, but I wouldn't call them parts of our national cuisine in the same way I wouldn't call a specific regional French dish like choucroute garni part of French national cuisine.

[Mabelline]

A hamburger, fries and a Coke!

[SobaAddict70]

more than 100 years? wow.

Interesting to see that no one's mentioned pizza and ice cream sundaes yet.

People in the U.S. think of "sushi" as Japanese and I'm pretty sure if you asked a random sample of people on the street to name three national Japanese foods, that "sushi and sashimi" would come up at least 80% of the time. Now, go to Japan and I'd be willing to bet that most people over there would answer with something completely different.

Soba

Edited October 31, 2003 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[alacarte]

my first thoughts were pizza, burgers, and fries (I jotted them down BEFORE scrolling thru the thread!)

[bilrus]

All right.  Would it be fair to describe "fusion food" as inherently American in concept?

I wasn't necessarily thinking about fusion in its current state - I was thinking more about the fact that because the US is so new (relatively) and so diverse and essentially comprised of recent immigrants from every other culture, our cuisine is mostly adapted from other places. There are some distinctly American items but for the most part I think our cuisine is defined by its diversity.

But that is looking at things from a 'Foodie-centric' point of view. We here on eGullet are aware of all the variety that is out there. But there are a lot of people (and not just from the midwest, we don't need to go there) whose concept of American food (and food in general) is not very broad. The "meat and Potatoes, shrimp on a special occasion" crowd.

[Ling]

The first three food items I thought of were:

-hamburgers

-mashed potatoes

-apple pie

[Pan]

Alright, Soba, and having looked at only the first three posts, these were the first three things that came to mind:

(1) Pancakes - particularly if you use maple syrup (sure, this is both American and Canadian)

(2) Eggs and bacon

(3) Steak

Sorry, I can't limit it to three.

(4) Roast beef

(5) Fried chicken (also, barbecued/baked chicken)

(6) Eggs over easy

(7) Potatoes - French fried, baked, mashed

(8) Hamburgers, hotdogs.

(9) Corn on the cob

Then, I'd get into regional and well-established "ethnic" foods (in no particular order):

(1) Chili

(2) Jambalaya

(3) Burritos

(4) Pastrami

(5) Chowder

(6) Blackeyed peas and rice

(7) Dirty rice

(8) Shrimp creole

(9) Pizza

Etc., etc.

I think the misconceptions I'd most want to correct are that American cuisine (a) is monolithic, (b) is all bland and tasteless, © is just white people's food.

I think that how one should introduce American cuisine to someone unfamiliar with it depends a lot on what that person's tastes are. If it's someone who likes his/her food spicy and tasty, s/he might like some nice hot chili or a Cajun meal of jambalaya and crawfish etoufee'. If it's someone who doesn't like a lot of spice, a brunch of buttermilk pancakes with real maple syrup topped with some fresh fruit in season and perhaps accompanied by bacon or some eggs and toast might go over well. And then there's the possibility of some soul food - fried chicken with collard greens and candied yams, for example.

[Fat Guy]

more than 100 years?  wow.

Interesting to see that no one's mentioned pizza and ice cream sundaes yet.

Did you see Jason's post on Louis Lunch? They've been there since 1895, and have been serving hamburgers since 1900. By comparison, according to Alan Davidson, there is no record of the croissant before the early 20th Century. Montagne and Escoffier are 20th Century figures, and much of what we recognize as French haute cuisine today didn't exist before Guerard, Chapel, et al. invented it in the 1950s. France has a long culinary tradition, of course, and dishes like cassoulet probably date back to the middle ages. But I think people just assume that every kind of food from Europe has hundreds of years of history, when in fact much of European reastaurant food (which is how most people experience foreign foods) is a 20th Century invention.

American steakhouse culture is even older. The Old Homestead, for example, has been in business since 1868. I really don't think it's accurate to say, as many people do, that America has no culinary history. America was discovered in fucking 1492 -- sure, plenty of European countries go way back farther than that, but how relevant is 15th Century history to the Europe of today? Certainly, there's almost no relevant culinary history dating much past then -- the gristle-on-a-stick era, as it were. New York City goes back to 1625, when it was New Amsterdam; Fraunces Tavern dates to 1762; and we have had an active restaurant culture since the 19th Century -- which is about as long as anybody has had an active restaurant culture, since restaurants don't really appear in France until the post-revolutionary era and they don't appear in Italy until well into the 20th Century.

The problem with pizza is that it's impossible to escape the Italian connection, even though American pizza history is, like burger history, around 100 years old, and even though American pizza is unique. Still, I don't think you can get a newcomer to buy into pizza as an American food. The hot dog, on the other hand, even though it's clearly a German sausage, seems to be entirely accepted by everybody in the world as American. You go to Russia, they think the hot dog is American. They think pizza is Italian. That seems to be the universal worldview and I can't see any way to fight it even though it makes no sense. I think part of the issue is that even in America pizza has always been marketed as Italian (even the pizzerias owned by Greeks are decorated in Italian-flag colors), whereas hot dogs have always been marketed as American (baseball, Chevrolet, etc.).

Desserts are probably their own category. There are a lot of them: in addition to sundaes, you've got brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cheesecake, pecan pie, etc. I'd also segregate breakfast food, because that's also its own thing.

Again, I'd draw a distinction between national American cuisine and regional American cuisine. Although you can get almost any American regional cuisine in a pretty good rendition in New York or any of several other large cities, that doesn't really make those things part of our national cuisine. So I would not use something like Cajun food or barbecue to introduce someone to American national cuisine at the general-category level. At the same time, you can't really grasp American cuisine -- or, rather, the American culinary landscape -- until you run through not only the regional cuisines but also several key adopted ethnic cuisines.

Not that I've ever taken it upon myself to introduce anybody to American cuisine. In my capacity as culinary ambassador to various visitors who want to have a massive culinary infusion all at once, I tend to do more of a grand tour of New York cuisine, which includes a lot of ethnic and classic stuff that you can barely find in edible form in most of America.

One person who has made a careful study of New York cuisine from a chef's standpoint is Henry Meer, whose restaurant City Hall is all about identifying, cultivating, and refining the traditional foods of New York, from steaks and chops to oyster pan roasts, and from liver-and-onions to Cobb salad (although, of course, the Cobb salad comes from California -- but it is now fully a traditional New York food).

Somebody contact Leslie Brenner and ask her to chime in here. She's already written the book on this, literally.

[bilrus]

I really don't think it's accurate to say, as many people do, that America has no culinary history. America was discovered in fucking 1492 .

What are the lingering food influences from the 1492 - 1868 era that are still relevant to American cooking today?

[Fat Guy]

Lots of American regional cuisine dates to pre-Civil-War days. Most of it has evolved, of course, but it's the evolution that in part gives it historical stature. The various staple dishes of New England coastal cuisine -- clam bake, boiled dinner, etc. -- date back to the Pilgrims. The Thanksgiving meal -- the most American of our festive meals -- goes back to around that time as well. You can trace Cajun and Creole cuisine back to the early 1700s. A lot of the core ingredients of many of the world's cuisines date, of course, to the Columbian era: corn, tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate, coffee, etc.

I wouldn't argue that America is as old a nation as those in Europe (though it is older in its modern form than the modern forms of many European nations -- our revolution occurred before the French revolution, etc.). Nor would I argue that we have ever invested as much cultural effort in food as France and Italy. But I think it's important to note that American cuisines go back a lot farther than most people assume, and that French and Italian cuisines changed so radically in the 20th Century that most of what we see today is a lot more modern than most people assume.

[gsquared]

I did a quick straw poll amongs 10 less well-travelled friends and family members - "I name a country and you give me the first food item that comes to mind." Here is the result:

America - hamburger

Italy - pizza

Greek - feta cheese

France - snails (80%), cheese (20%)

Germany - sausages (60%), sauerkraut (40%)

Holland - cheese

Brasil - steak (70%), don't know (30%)

England - fish and chips (75%), peas (25%)

Whence these stereotypes? Movies? Magazines? Passed down from parents?

[Pan]

I hope you don't think I'm being pedantic, Fat Guy, but America was discovered thousands of years ago. More importantly, there are crucial parts of today's American cuisine that show Native American influence, starting with potatoes, corn and corn meal, turkey, and of course tomatoes. Undoubtedly, someone will point to more specifics.

[Fat Guy]

You are correct, sir.