I travelled across the USA (I loved it) and don’t get me wrong the food was good, and you get a lot of it. but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally. I did try biscuits and gravy, as much as I disagree with the definition. it wasn’t half bad. Pecan pie was another winner.
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> but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally.
The same is true of basically all cuisines, it just depends on how far back you go. Think about how iconic tomatoes are in Italian food, even though they originated in the Americas, for example. Or potatoes in Irish food, or chile peppers in Thai food.
That said, if you want to define the most distinctively or uniquely American foods, I feel like some top contenders would be southern/soul food, BBQ, and creole/cajun food. And it’s not *food*, but I would argue that cocktails are an important American contribution as well.
> as much as I disagree with the definition.
It always amazes me how you Brits are so unwilling to accept that things are different in other parts of the world.
As for most things coming from elsewhere originally… This is part of why we always say we are an immigrant nation….
As a melting pot type of country, most things *should* be from other nations originally. The more unique stuff comes from the Native Americans but much of those ingredients have become commonplace around the world as well — things like corn, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.
Regional BBQ, Cajun, regional pizzas, General Tsos chicken.
There are some fairly unambiguously American cuisines: BBQ, Creole/Cajun, etc.
But I’ll also throw it out there that if the Neopolitans are going to throw “that’s not a real pizza!” in our faces, that cuts both ways lol American pizza is American. Texmex is American. Americanized Chinese is American.
That’s, uh, kinda how food works.
burger
Part of our American cuisine is taking cuisines from where we came from as immigrants and making it American. Most Mexicans shiver at the thought at what we consider Mexican food (or Tex-mex) but it’s amazing.
My family visits from Italy and tells me our “Italian” food is American food not Italian, and other friends from Europe tell me it’s Italian food, not American cuisine….
Uniquely American, I would say hamburgers (no, it’s not from Hamburg Germany), barbecue, Cajun cuisine, PBJ, Southern fried chicken.
I would also say we do a lot of crazy fusion cuisine not seen in other countries. I have a Korean Tex Mex restaurant near my house that’s unbelievable
>but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally
Your national food is curry.
This is true of all food everywhere. Everyone’s national cuisine is a tweaked version of something that came from somewhere else.
>as much as I disagree with the definition
Can you imagine how weird it would be if I went to Britain and continually insisted that calling a cookie a biscuit is *wrong* instead of just recognizing that things are different in other places and adapting as necessary?
I hate to break it to you but most British food came from other countries too. Fish and chips? Those chips came from potatoes that were originally indigenous to the Americas.
Edit: u/gavifromthepod pointed out that fried fish was brought to Britain by Jewish immigrants.
> but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally
Wait until you find out that tomatoes came to Italy from elsewhere, likewise with ramen noodles to Japan.
> as much as I disagree with the definition
This is like going to Spain and disagreeing with the definition of every single word because it’s in Spanish.
chocolate chip cookies, gumbo, jambalaya, Nashville hot chicken, poboys, muffuletta sandwiches, lobster rolls, clam chowder, eggs benedict, bananas foster, baked beans, chili con carne, maque choux, etc.
Tex-Mex, is a cuisine from the Tejano people of Texas. Many people mistakenly think it’s an American attempt at Mexican food.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex-Mex
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cuisine
What foods in your country didn’t come from another originally?
All your food thats worth eating was taken from other cultures. Beans on toast and mushy peas aint shit
Did you think your food magically manifested by declaration of King Arthur or something? Everything comes from somewhere. You like meat and potatoes? Potatoes came from the Americas.
“I did try biscuits and gravy, as much as I disagree with the definition”
Found the Brit.
The balls it takes for any British person to criticize our food in any capacity …whew.
>I did try biscuits and gravy, as much as I disagree with the definition.
Do you not realize how condescending this sounds, or…? It’s probably going to derail a lot of the discussion you were hoping to have.
>but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally.
Pretty much like every American with the exception of Native Americans. This isn’t hard to figure out.
What’s British food? Isn’t most of it taken from other countries also?
Nothing is as British as tea…🤦♂️
>as much as I disagree with the definition.
There’s nothing to disagree about. It is used entirely appropriately given the cultural context it is used in. That some people don’t understand how language works is on them, not on our usage of the words.
Doesn’t the UK consider chicken tikka masala, a dish that is clearly inspired by India’s food (if not originated from it, I know there’s some dispute on its origins), its national dish? Why do the Brits get to claim another culture’s food, a culture which they brutally colonized? While we get criticized for allowing our immigrant culture to be inspired by the cuisines of their homeland?
Is this yet another brit come to tell us we have no cuisine? The audacity. Tell me where y’alls national dish is from and get back to me.
Also, why is it always the British?
If you “get a lot of it” I am not sure what kind of places you were going. Our better food places serve appropriate amounts of food. Chain restaurants like a Longhorn or Texas Roadhouse isn’t consider particularly “good food”. Just solid salty, fatty and delicious food – and a lot of it.
Just like Italy claimed Pizza (but it’s actually from the Middle east), we have lots of food traditions we have built on.
We could claim lots of styles of pizza as our own. Have more than one thing on a pizza? American. Many, many foods had seed from somewhere else but we planted it. And lots of people where those foods originated moved towards the American version. Hamburger? Hot dogs. Lots of “Mexican” foods are American born. Apple pie. Fried Chicken.
Choose a food associated with a country and it can probably be traced back to a different one.
Sausages are Roman, potatoes from the Americas “Bangers and Mash”
Your baked beans? Straight up American.
Ever had an Potato crisp? American.
Your Fish and Chips. Jewish via Portugal and Potatoes from the Americas.
We stole from other cuisines just like you guys, and every body else.
Smoked Brisket and potato salad
Chili (beans, meat, chili powder, onion, etc)
Fried Chicken
Steak, baked potato, and grilled asparagus.
Cobb Salad
Mexican food. I know we can’t take credit, but it is a very common cuisine eaten in America for a long time.
Regular foods like sandwiches or omelettes, but with avocado on it.
> but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally
If we’re going by weird nonsensical purist ideals, the English language isn’t from the UK. It was brought over to the UK by immigrants speaking Germanic language variants.
We’re a nation of immigrants.
What is here is now considered American. Detroit Pizza was developed by working class Italian immigrants who cooked pizza in the metal trays they’d use for tools at the factories. The muffaletta was developed by Italian immigrants in New Orleans.
>most would have come from other countries originally
This is the core of our culture. The vast majority of the country is descendent from relatively recent immigrants. Even most of the families that are not so recent have only been here a few hundred years. So, almost every aspect of our culture was made from taking bits of other cultures and then mixing them around in some new ways to create the American version. That this describes our food just makes our food even more distinctly American.
British people: lol American food is all derived from other countries, that doesn’t count
Also British people: chicken tikka masala is British teehee 🥰
Okay.
>but come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally
Like fish and chips (Sephardic Jewish population in Portugal), chicken tikka masala (invented by a Pakistani immigrant), and turkey (native to the Americas)? As a metro Detroiter, I noticed when in London that Detroit-style pizza is gaining ground there. So that’s a dish with tomatoes (native to the Americas), based on Italian cuisine, then adapted in a US Rust Belt city using local equipment…
American and British cuisine are similar in that both have been heavily influenced by various waves of immigration.
America is hardly inioque in that our food comes from other places. French cuisine is quite famous and often considered the standard for fine dining. But a lot of French cuisine actually comes from Italy with legends attributing it to Catherine de’ Medici, a Florentine noblewoman who’s marriage led her to becoming the queen of France but other food historians pointing to a list of French nobility dining at high tables in Italy.
Also tomatoes are from the Americas and feature heavily in Italian cooking as is corn. A0nd potatoes are from South America.
As a Brit, I fully agree with this poster!
*sips tea*
American food is just stolen from other countries
*opens luxurious can of baked beans*
Like, be original already innit m8?
*opens leftover of the national dish, curry*
See, we here in UnitedEnglandKingdom had all our food right here grown on our very own doorstep!
*pours tomatoes on top of potatoes*
I hope you guys can find some culinary originality soon oi
*pours baked beans onto rye bread and calls it breakfast*
Don’t care. Chief rule of food in america: eat whatever you want we have it all!
Would say hotdogs and burgers. I know you can trace the roots for each elsewhere, but it seems that the way we serve them is what makes them uniquely ours.
Pizza might be another, sure you can see the Italian influences but as I understand it, our pizza is quite different from traditional Italian pizza. I’ve never traveled there but I have worked for an Italian immigrant that owned an American pizzaria… “why… Why you do this” was a common phrase especially for sauce and pineapple lol. he did make us some great traditional dishes, including “real” pizza.
Cheese Curds, Hamburgers, and hotdogs, Apple Pie, Chili, BBQ, The different types of pizza; deep dish, new york, thin crust. While a lot of our dishes may have originated in other countries, We have given them our own take, which is worth trying out.
By your logic, any European dish that uses potatoes isn’t truly European since potatoes are actually from the Americas. For example, Italian food makes heavy use of ingredients from the Americas, namely tomatoes. So Italy’s most famous foods really aren’t Italian, they’re kinda from the Americas. Paella is also mainly Chinese food since it contains rice. Do you see the pattern?
The only “native” American food is Native American food. We’re a melting pot of different cultures and immigrants.
You guys realize that our country is less than 300 years old and everyone except the native Americans (which there are vanishingly few of comparatively) came here from another country. Most of them in the last 150 years or so.
So yeah pretty much all food here came from another country. With a few exceptions of things that were invented or innovated here. But there is no unified American cuisine. We are not a nation that has a lot of immigrate, we are a nation entirely made of immigrants.
Oddly enough one of the most American cuisines you will find is Chinese takeout. A lot of the stuff you find at Chinese restaurants in America are not Chinese at all and were invented here.
Other than that, southern comfort food and the various styles of BBQ is probably the closest we get to distinctly American cuisine.
You realize, of course, that the word biscuit comes from French?
This post has to be a troll.
I sort of disagree with your premise for reasons others have already elaborated on here.
By nature of us being a New World country, everything here is going to originate from settler communities and immigrants who came from other places, unless you’re talking the cuisines of indigenous civilizations. However, the Old World has done its fair share of adopting too.
That said, I think some cuisines that would be considered iconically American are Cajun and Creole cuisines, BBQ, Tex-Mex, Soul Food, and Hawaiian cuisine. Also, our culture of dessert pies, especially pecan, pumpkin, and key lime.
Hamburgers.
Chicken tenders
Most of our ancestors came from elsewhere, brought their food and culture with them, and adapted the recipes to what was available. Several recipes changed with influences from other people in the area they settled as well. Pretty much all of our food is American, as it has diverged from their origins.
People are saying all the obvious ones, but no one has mentioned one of the all time classics. Sloppy Joes.
Wow what an amazingly condescending, patronizing, and narrow post! I’m trying to decide to reply with an equal level of snark and sarcasm ,or to genuinely reply to the question as asked.
>…come to think of it most would have come from other countries originally…
Well, that’s not true at all is it. Everything made with corn, wild rice, tomatoes, sweet potato, pecans, walnuts, Strawberry, blueberry, Maple Syrup, Pumpkin, almost all squash, Chilies and bell peppers… I could go on…
British Cuisine comes from where? Curries- India. Shepherd’s Pie- South America (potatoes). Beef Wellington-France. Eaton Mess-France
>as much as I disagree with the definition..
You don’t get to agree or disagree with a word or definition of a word in anyone else’s language, *Especially* when the thing you”disagree about” is something you don’t have. It shows a level of self entitlement that borders on offensive. We can disagree about chips vs fries or crisps vs chips, we can even disagree about eggplants vs aubergines. We both have them, but have different names. You don’t have biscuits. At all. They are not scones, we have scones too. The closest you have to *authentic* American biscuits is one of the 27 Popeyes in the UK. And , if I’m honest , they are not great.
So to answer your original question: 90% of what you ate while you were here.
Spit roasting, Pit BBQ, Cajun, NY, Detroit, and Chicago pizza, Blue crab, Lobster, Chili, Rum, Tex-Mex, Fruit pies, Cobbler, Peanut anything, milkshakes, convenience foods, fortune cookies, General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken, Potato Chips(crisps), turkey and all the trimmings….again, I could go on. But you knew all of that, this is just a bit of that “dry humour” you are so famous for. /s
Soul food