Cuisine vs. Food: What is American Cuisine?

If someone asked you, "What exactly is American cuisine?", what would your answer be? This question is something that I have been struggling with over the past few years. When we think of Japanese cuisine we thing of sushi, udon, ramen, and kobe beef with soy sauce and rice and seaweed. When we think of Italian cuisine, we think of pasta and different sauces. When we think of Mexican cuisine we think of beans, rice, and tortillas. Yes, these are all oversimplifications of each "cuisine" but the point I am making is that there are national dishes that somewhat define the food traditions of particular nations.

So, what is America's national dish? What is our national cuisine? Is it pizza?? How can it be when pizza is an import form Italy? Is it hamburgers and hot dogs? Once again, these are imports and variations of German dishes. The question of how to define American cuisine has stumped many food writers and academics alike. Sydney Mintz, perhaps the most well known anthropologist researching food, argues that America does not have a national cuisine. He claims that in a nation as big and diverse as the United States, it is almost impossible to have a cohesive food identity. Rather he argues that the US is comprised of areas of regional cuisines--think Southwestern, Creole, Southern Soul Food, New England food, and California Cuisine. I can see Mintz's point, but I also think that his outlook may be a little out of date, because now you can find each type of "regional" cuisine in almost any region of the country. I am not sure that the question of, "What is American cuisine" can ever be answered, but in asking this question the other day, I found myself pondering another question: What defines a "cuisine"?

Let me use Italy as an example. To mention, "Italian cuisine," is a bit of a misnomer. Italy has only been a unified nation for a fraction of time compared to how long "Italians" have been eating pasta. The food that you will find in the north of Italy (in regions like Piedmonte, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, and Venneto) is very different from what you will find in the south. Yet all this food is lumped together and known as "Italian cuisine," and I think this is an incorrect way to look at it. If Mintz looks at America as a nation of regional "cuisines" than Italy is certainly also a country of regional cuisines. By why do we think of "Italian cuisine" as one cohesive group of dishes? While there may be similarities in the foods across the nation of Italy, there are very different ways of eating these foods. Often it seems that the term "cuisine" is used interchangeably with the term "food," and so here I would like to tell you why I disagree--why I think there is a big difference between "food" and "cuisine".

James Beard once wrote, "The truth of the matter is that the way people eat is an unconscious reflection of the way people live." This statement, I believe, could not be more true, and I think it hits at the heart of what I believe a cuisine to be. That is, I consider "cuisine" to be not simply food, but a form of cultural expression through food. It is a form of cultural expression in the same way that music or dance are, just it is expressed through cooking and eating as opposed to body movement, rhythm, and syncopation. And through cuisine we not only tie people together, be we also pull others apart depending on their food preferences. We form community through cuisine--how we express ourselves though food--and we may exclude others from joining a particular community because of cuisine. Think of a vegan co-operative, or an Orthodox Jewish church, or a group of "locavores"--each one of these communities identifies with each other based on how they express themselves through food. They identify with each other through the similar ways that individuals eat, and they may stand in bafflement to those whose eat in a different way, with different cuisines. Therefore, "cuisine" is not just food, but rather is a system of foods and how people identify with them.

Cuisine can be clearly defined by a place of origin--often rooted in a particular nation or region. But cuisine can also be found in certain time periods (think medieval or colonial cuisine) or it can be rooted in a particular type of culture (think college student cuisine, or aspiring artist/writer/musician cuisine, or football fan cuisine, or sorority girl cuisine). Cuisine can be rooted in religion or belief system, or it can stem from political outlooks and views. Cuisines can blend into each other and are not always clearly defined, or they may be a combination of two or three different cuisines. You can see this same phenomena happening in music--look at the early pioneers of rock and roll music. Was their music blues, or country, or soul, or jazz, or something entirely new all together? Ultimately, I think that the term "cuisine" means more than just food, but rather means the big picture around food--the form of expression through food and cooking and how people use food and cooking and eating as a way of expressing identity, even if it is an unconscious or understated form of affiliation and identity.

So then I ask my question again, what is "American cuisine"? Sydney Mintz's theory that America is a nation of regional cuisines was a great way to look at it twenty years ago, but today I can get some pretty darn good fried chicken in northern California, and some darn fine gumbo in Minnesota, and some awesome "New York" cheesecake in Chicago. Do we have a system of food that defines all Americans, and that we can all identify with? I have some thoughts about this, but they are going to have to wait for another blog post. I need to ponder for a while longer. Rather I just wanted to pose this question to others. If you had a friend from a foreign country who had never been to America, what would you tell them is a quintessential American dish that they must try, and what makes that dish "American"?