Voltaire’s famous observation that the English have 42 religions, but only two sauces, could easily be transferred to America. For not just the lower classes, but the middle class as well, dinner was the stewpot, the mulligan, the goulash, the ragout, the salmagundi.įor many years, Americans only ate three vegetables - and two of them were cabbage. The rest of us ate pretty much whatever we could get our hands on. The rich indulged their culinary taste however they wanted, living a fine life of pheasant and grouse, river salmon and trout, wines of distinction and desserts of decadence. Indeed, prior to the last decade or so, the way things worked food-wise were pretty simple. There are touches of the Great Plains, Midwest, South and East - all blending into some of the best chow found on any plates, anywhere. Here in California, aside from Old California/Mexican cooking, American cuisine is best represented by some wonderful old places which serve an amalgam of the foods brought West by the settlers of the past 200 years - and by a new breed of born-again Americana. All you’ll see are miles and miles of standard-issue fast-food stands, which can exist just as well in Minnesota as in Texas. You can drive for hours across Texas without finding a really great place for chili or Texas-style barbecue. Even in the parts of the country where local cooking is supposed to prosper, one has to know pretty much where to go. The saddest thing about the contest was that it reminded me of what a vanishing breed regional American cuisine has become. The contest offered trips to some of the best eating places in the land - New Orleans for crayfish, gumbo and jambalaya San Francisco for sourdough bread and Dungeness crab Maine for lobster Charlottesville for she-crab soup Kansas City for strip steak and ribs Baltimore for soft-shell crabs Buffalo for beef-on-weck and chicken wings and Florida for key lime pie and barbecued shrimp. I have long come to believe that one of the best-kept culinary secrets of the world is that American food is really great stuff, and here that secret was, laid bare for all to see. The advertisement consisted of a map of the United States, and a banner headline about winning a gourmet tour of America. Some time back, flipping through a copy of one of the weekly news magazines, my eye was caught by a double-page advertisement for a contest sponsored by one of the cigarette companies.
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