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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Using "America" to mean the US annoys me too, but blame the Americans for that one.

There are definitely some unique food cultures within the US (cajun/creole comes immediately to mind, as does Chicago pizza), but are there really American food cultures - flavours or preparations that are eaten both throughout the US and not elsewhere? All of the obvious candidates like hamburgers are popular in many countries and cultures; whenever I've gone to an "American restaurant" (as distinct from a "New York deli" or a "New Orleans grill" or what have you) they've seemed to be serving much the same stuff as a generic restaurant.

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The requirement that the food be eaten conventionally throughout the country is a really weird definition of what counts as "American food" that would to my first- and secondhand knowledge at the very least exclude Mexican and Italian cuisine from being distinct. Neither one really exists as a coherent cuisine in the way you seem to imagine, and if you talk to a native of those countries they'll very quickly tell you that the foods you think of as "Mexican" or "Italian" are actually from specific regions of those countries.

Your second requirement—that it be not eaten elsewhere—would likewise exclude every major exported food culture. Do the Italians no longer get to claim spaghetti because an American mom makes it as a quick dish at home for her kids?

> would to my first- and secondhand knowledge at the very least exclude Mexican and Italian cuisine from being distinct. Neither one really exists as a coherent cuisine in the way you seem to imagine, and if you talk to a native of those countries they'll very quickly tell you that the foods you think of as "Mexican" or "Italian" are actually from specific regions of those countries.

I don't know Mexico well enough to comment, but yeah there absolutely isn't a unified "Italian" culture (perhaps there is the beginnings of one) and it's a mistake to think of one (not just in food but in other matters as well). Just as there is no "Chinese" food, there are several distinct Chinese food cultures.

> Your second requirement—that it be not eaten elsewhere—would likewise exclude every major exported food culture. Do the Italians no longer get to claim spaghetti because an American mom makes it as a quick dish at home for her kids?

At some point it just becomes generic food yeah, just like trademarks. I'm sure for the first people to bake bread it was a unique cultural food, but it would be madness to call that Mesopotamian food now, it's just food.

I guess you at least have a consistent definition you're working from! My initial pattern matching on your first sentence told me (apparently mistakenly) that this was another anti-US rant that was holding the US to a different standard than the rest of the world.

There are universal, non-regional American dishes, eaten consistently everywhere in the country. Caesar salad, apple pie, fried chicken, chili (though: regional variations), beef stew, a BLT. And then of course there's Americanized ethnic food: pizza, burritos, General Tso's chicken. That's before you dip your toe into fast food.

> There are universal, non-regional American dishes, eaten consistently everywhere in the country. Caesar salad, apple pie, fried chicken, chili (though: regional variations), beef stew, a BLT.

Right, but those are mostly global (or at least broadly western) - I'm interested in the question of whether there's an American food culture. BLT is an interesting thought though, I think America does have a distinct "bacon" culture involving different, more heavily cured meat than you find in Europe.

Those are only universal because they were so successful. The things that are most universal in the US are also the ones that have been the most exported. Hamburgers and fried chicken weren't common in Europe before the US was involved in European wars and reconstruction. Honestly, even finding high-quality hamburgers in Europe outside of the Anglophone countries is something that happened in the last 10-15 years.

There are a lot of things like that -- you find chili in Europe, but you don't ever find good chili. Same with, say, pies. BBQ even less. And zero gumbo. Or fried okra. And so on.

Ooh, here's a fun one! Craft beer. It's pretty interesting watching American beer styles migrate over to Europe.

(I've spent about equal parts of my life in the US and Europe, and am a pretty avid cook.)

Well, you could make the case that the craft beer movement in the US came from European beers: India pale ale is a British invention after all. The "original" American beers (Budweiser & co) haven't made much of a dent on the world.

IPA was significantly revived by west coast US brewers and basically wasn't drunk in the UK at the time it caught on in the US. The modern "craft" (under that name) and explosion of styles and experimentation was very much an American cultural export. Europeans have brewed a lot of styles in regional breweries since forever, but the creative explosion of the last few decades happened in the US.

Comment significantly changed since I replied, so adding:

Actually the original American beers did have a lot of impact. American Adjunct Lagers are brewed in a lot of countries:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/styles/38/

I don't like them, but they've certainly had a major influence on world beer. Most of the world's 10 most popular beer brands are American Adjunct Lager.

That list takes an awfully broad view of "American Adjunct": despite the self-description "made popular in America after Prohibition", there's plenty of 19th-century brands like Fosters, San Miguel, Sol, Dos Equis etc in there that predate the Prohibition by decades, and thus descend from German pale lagers.

> Those are only universal because they were so successful.

Well, sure, but so what? At the point where something's popular worldwide, to the point that people draw on it without thinking of it as from somewhere else, it's not a cultural thing anymore.

> Ooh, here's a fun one! Craft beer. It's pretty interesting watching American beer styles migrate over to Europe.

Craft beer very much came out of the UK with CAMRA and British traditional ales, American involvement came later. What we have now is very much international with influences in all directions, not an American culture spreading out one way.

You can probably get twice-cooked pork anywhere in Europe and in every city in the US with more than 40,000 people in it (ie: everywhere). But it is absolutely a Sichuan Chinese dish, regardless of its universality.

If you define "true" American cuisine as something that is (a) only eaten in America and (b) eaten consistently throughout America, you've come up with a definition that probably nothing fits. Though: watch the British Bakeoff episode where they attempt brownies, one possible contender.

Lots of stuff is probably only gettable in America! I doubt you can get a good cheese steak, italian beef, po' boy, biscuits & gravy, or scrapple in Europe. But you can't get a good version of all of those in most places in America, too.

> You can probably get twice-cooked pork anywhere in Europe and in every city in the US with more than 40,000 people in it (ie: everywhere).

> [a sentence about caesar salad that disappeared]

Sure. But not at a generic restaurant; you'll have to go to a specifically Chinese restaurant. I guess you could argue that you'd have to go to a western restaurant for Caesar salad, but at least where I am now you'd be more likely to find a Caesar salad in a "european" restaurant than in an "american" one.

I just didn't want the argument about the Americanity of a Caesar salad; it's a quintessential American dish, but Wikipedia would give you fodder to debate. I sort of puckishly thought I was up for that debate, and then thought better of it.

America is huge. There is American food, universal throughout the 50 states, but almost definitionally anything that's 3,000 miles successful is going to be popular outside of the US as well.

>a generic restaurant;

There is no such thing.

I’m fascinated that every American dish you mentioned in this thread aside from (Mexican) Caesar salad is brown. Our food leaves a lot to be desired.

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