Note: this post is Part One of several on American Cuisine. Stay tuned for further adventures…

In my so-called real life I work in IT and have worked with a number of firms that had large international employee bases, in both cases this means I’ve had the opportunity to have a lots of discussion with people from all over about my favorite subject, food. Recently, at one of these organizations, a number of us were going to eat lunch and were trying to decide what we wanted to eat and where we could go for it. The group was a veritable United Nations of hungry geeks from all over the world. We were tossing around the various options, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Peruvian etc. when one of the group who is not American said “Let’s have American food, I have X food everyday”. Another member of the group, who isn’t American either, then remarked that “Americans don’t really care about food and don’t really seem to have a cuisine” Naturally, the Americans in the group responded indignantly that there was so an American Cuisine. This led to a discussion that went something like this:

“Ok, so name me some American Cuisine”

We are all silent while we think about this.

“Uh, Pizza!”
“That’s Italian.”
“Oh yeah, Ok, Tacos!”
“Mexican.”

Stumped again.

“I know! Hotdogs!”
“Nope, German.”

Someone blurts out “Spaghetti!”

“SPAGHETTI?”  We all reply as if we haven’t already thought of or offered up something equally foodtardic.

“Oh, yeah, Italian, I was thinking of the things my Mom cooked”
“Your Mom cooked Spaghetti?”
“Well, yeah, she thought we should be American”
“Ok, yeah, my Mom did too…”
“She did put cumin and cinnamon in it though”

Finally, someone offers up hamburgers.

“I’ve got it! HAMBURGERS! Hamburgers are quintessential American food!”
“Actually, I think Hamburgers are German too. You guys just added tomato castup and secret sauce”;

This leads to a discussion of why it’s called “tomato castup” when there is no other castup and how come it’s spelled “catsup” when it’s really spelled “ketchup”. Evidently the castup/ketchup debate sparked someones imagination because someone says, excitedly,

“French Fries!

“Uh, FRENCH fries? Dude, those are like, French.”

Curses, foiled again.

I’ve been giving this some serious thought, I am sure we have a cuisine, but they kind of have a point, is this what people think American food is, fast food, junk food? I mean, even the Americans in the group, who are all much younger than I, don’t really seem to really know or at least can’t articulate it anyway. Finally I say “Corn”.

They all look at me like I just sprouted an ear on the end of my nose.

“Corn?”

“Yeah, corn, corn is American, well North American, er, native to the New World; so are potatoes and tomatoes and we do have a [American] cuisine.”

Everyone looks at me a bit skeptically, even the Americans in the group. I start spouting out all the American food I can think of .

“Corn on the cob, popcorn, cornbread, johnny cakes, hoecakes, grits, flapjacks, maple syrup, potato chips, baked potatoes, barbeque, crabcakes, spiced shrimp, blue crab, hush-puppies, greens with ham hocks, hopping john, chili, fried chicken, mac and cheese, apple pie and cheese, beaten biscuits, wild rice, jerky, gumbo, southern Maryland stuffed ham, Boston baked beans, salmon, pemmican, shad and shad roe, abalone, oysters, ice cream cones, chicken fried steak, lobster rolls, pumpkin pie, roasted turkey, clam chowder, sweet potato casserole, ambrosia, potato salad, egg foo young and chop suey, Lady Baltimore cake, pecan pie…”

I manage to get these all out before I run out of breath. They all just kind of stare at me and then start responding with things like “Those are all American food?”, “We invented potato chips?” and “What’s pemmican?” but I am still pondering this whole American Cuisine thing and then I say, almost to myself, “ American cuisine is like we are, a melting pot, literally.

It’s kind of weird that we, all of us, had to stop and think about what American Cuisine was when we actually have a rich and varied cuisine, which in itself isn’t weird, what’s weird is that we don’t even really seem to know about it, or do we just not think of it as a “cuisine” like we do French, Chinese, Indian etc.

By the time we had hashed all this out, our lunch break was pretty much over and we didn’t have time to go out so we all ended up with whatever we could come up with fast – guess what? hotdogs, cheeseburgers, pizza, maybe that explains a lot…

Stay tuned for Part Two..