Nowadays, when some people hear “American food,” they automatically think of hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, fries, and generally, fast foods. This is essentially due to the media and how they represent American food. I remember when I visited some of the main cities in Vietnam the previous summer, there were many fast food chains like McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Burger King that had advertisements of “American food.” Although this is part of what American food is, it does not completely represent it. In “Food Fights and American Values,” Donna Gabaccia notes how America has never really had a distinct cuisine because it is widely represented. America is a melting pot of various cultures, so American food is composed of different cultural cuisines like Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Indian, etc.
Gabaccia mentions how in the early 1900s, some American reformers wanted to change America’s cuisine by preventing foreign influence in order to preserve their values and cultures. However, “with immigrants, Americans, and ethnic foods regularly crossing over ethnic boundaries by the turn of the twentieth century, the confrontation of values represented by America’s many cultures of eating seemed inevitable.” In addition, during World War II, because there were much food shortages, America was more welcoming to foreign foods. This brings us to the present where different foods catered in America have their own cultural backgrounds; pizza is from Italy, fries are from Belgium, pad thai is from Thailand, and tacos are from Mexico. This idea brings to light on one of the things Gabaccia mentions: “The United States had become an independent nation without creating a national cuisine that matched its sense of uniqueness.” This demonstrates how creating a national cuisine would “[violate] [the] enthusiasm for the local.” All in all, American food is a mixture of cuisines borrowed from various countries around the world, in addition to fast food.
America has developed into a diverse population with regions having distinct food cultures. For example, in New York City, there is Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Odessa, Little Australia, and Koreatown. These neighborhoods used to be places where immigrants from the same cultures could live together and be as connected to their home country as possible. However, as time passed, these regions have changed into places where entrepreneurs could gain profit by capitalizing these cultural foods. For example, I have noticed that there are many Vietnamese restaurants that have strayed from the original recipes of staple Vietnamese foods like banh mi (a sandwich) and pho (a noodle soup). People have added eggs and kimchi into banh mi, and some have even altered pho into a “phoritto,” which is pho but in burrito form. It is devastating to see how immigrants have brought over food from their heritage, but to have the ingredients change – they are no longer deemed “authentic.”
