American food, like the population that eats it, is wildly diverse. From crab cakes to cupcakes and from whoopie pie to chicken booyah, our cuisine is brash, irreverent, and always changing. Its energy comes from wave after wave of immigrants, as well as from a spirit of reckless creativity that can be as corporate as the Massachusetts fluffernutter or as down-home as Kentucky burgoo. Mutable as it is, the country’s culinary hall of fame is also enamored of tradition. Consider styles of barbecue indigenous to Texas and the Carolinas or shrimp De Jonghe in Chicago or date shakes around the Salton Sea: All are dishes from decades past, unaffected by fashion or whimsy.
Since we started researching the first edition of Roadfood in the early 1970s, we have polished off tens of thousands of meals alongside all sorts of citizens, from stockbrokers in pinstripes to stock brokers in overalls (the stock being cattle), in restaurants that range from lace-doily tearooms to lumberjack mess halls. In that time, we have learned a thing or two about real American food. To be clear, by “real American” we do not mean some pure and inviolable cuisine that is this nation’s alone. We are happy to report that there is no such thing.
Travel from Frenchville, Maine, to Calexico, California, and you’ll find almost nothing to eat that is unadulterated American, except for such obscure native dishes as Navajo nok-qui-vi (mutton stew) in Monument Valley and jonnycakes (griddle-cooked corn bread) around Narragansett Bay. American cuisine is made up of hundreds of different cuisines. Cooks feel free to borrow ingredients and techniques from all over the world and to invent dishes with no precedent anywhere. If you doubt that, consider the recent popularity of Korean tacos in Los Angeles or the all-American chili dog: a wiener (originally German) topped with Greek-accented Tex-Mex chili and frequently called a Coney Island, except in upstate New York, where it is inexplicably named a Michigan, and in Rhode Island, where it is called a New York System. In West Virginia, expect your chili dog to be topped with coleslaw; in Tucson, it comes wrapped in bacon.
Whether you see the national diet as a melting pot or a smorgasbord, as something to be celebrated for its cultural diversity or fretted over for its worrisome homogenization, the fact is that ours is a cuisine that has always been happy to hyphenate with the rest of the world. Ergo chop suey, cioppino, and chimichangas. Consider pizza, once an exotic Italian flatbread and now as mainstream as a cheeseburger. The simple Neapolitan tomato pies that appeared in Northeastern cities’ Italian neighborhoods early in the twentieth century have been recast in all kinds of ways, some pretty silly (dessert pizza, anyone?). But visit New Haven for a white clam pizza strewn with tiny, tender littlenecks and a hailstorm of garlic—a 1950s innovation—and it seems ludicrous to contend that culinary miscegenation is a bad thing.
The American food described herein is democratic, not elitist. Rarified meals created by ambitious chefs who earn important critics’ benediction can be a taste-buds thrill; they may honor local produce and customs, and in the case of molecular gastronomy, they are fun to look at. But they are no more reflective of the nation’s soul than is an atonal avant-garde symphony. Food that is the creation of a uniquely gifted artist/chef, yummy though it may be, seldom means anything other than you will pay a lot of money to eat it. On the other hand, food that is part of everyday life is as fascinating as life itself (and probably a good bargain, too). The real American food of which we write is not a sui generis symphony. It is more like folk music—accessible to all, expressing the personality of the cultures and subcultures that created it more than the talent of an individual creator. America’s colloquial cooks may disrespect the rules, but neither are they interested in being cutting-edge.
Our goal is to honor dishes that are part of the fabric of people’s lives and are enjoyed at leisure and for celebration meals by friends, families, and communities. Some are relative newcomers, such as the banh mi, aka Saigon sub, and the juicy Lucy of Minneapolis; on the other hand, clambakes and pig pickin’s are older than the United States. Some of the entries in this lexicon describe local favorites as obscure as Springfield’s unique take on cashew chicken (a Dixie/Chinese/Midwest fusion) and Buffalo’s Charlie Chaplin candy. For widely appreciated specialties that don’t need a from-scratch definition (like the hamburger) and culinary rituals with which we’re all familiar (the salad bar), we have tried to find their origins, enumerate their variations, and highlight their meaning in America’s food firmament.
We aim to describe, not to prescribe or to anoint bests. The Platonic ideal for our approach is the inclusive spirit with which H. L. Mencken looked at The American Language. We see the nation’s diet very much like its language: sometimes vexing for its vulgarity and its disdain of high-minded principles, but endlessly, endearingly exuberant. Just as our guidebook Roadfood celebrates eateries that for so long remained under the radar of the food establishment (though loved by millions), we hope this lexicon encourages a fuller appreciation of our country’s irrepressible foodways.