I Begin with a Question?

Is there an American culture in food? This question has been running through my mind ever since my first Gastronomy class at the CIA. Now that over a year and a half has gone by, I am left with only one conclusion: There is no real connection between Americans and a defined cuisine, like there is in countries like France, Japan and Italy. America is more like a shopping mall with the food scene functioning as a giant revolving food court.

America’s culinary world is a revolving door spinning on an out of control axis. We have one culture after another, moving in and adding another spoke to wheel, but nothing reaches the unifying center. We are left with so many options, but nothing that brings any of the different sides together.

And that is precisely what this first question looks to, for lack of a better word, attack. The question of, "is there an American culture in food?", directly questions, what it means to be a part of the American Culture on any level. Because when we look at how dynamic and fundamental a role, cuisine plays in the foundations of other cultures, we begin to notice, that America simply doesn't have any of that.

Which leaves me wondering, "Is there such a thing as American Cuisine?” Was it once here as a dynamic and integral part of what it meant to be American, and then over time became blended so well with our multitude of cultures, that American food is part of a world culture? Or is it something else entirely? Could it be that America never really had a cuisine to call its own? That, maybe it was never possible to create a unified "new world" of food because people as a whole were so divided, so hell bent on their individual pursuits, that "us" wasn't even imaginable?