what if i told you that a lot of “Americanized” versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are not “bastardized versions”
That’s actually fascinating, does anyone have any examples?
Chinese-American food is a really good example of this and this article provides a good intro to the history http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/03/illustrated-history-of-americanized-chinese-food
I took an entire class about Italian American immigrant cuisine and how it’s a product of their unique immigrant experience. The TL;DR is that many Italian immigrants came from the south (the poor) part of Italy, and were used to a mostly vegetable-based diet. However, when they came to the US they found foods that rich northern Italians were depicted as eating, such as sugar, coffee, wine, and meat, available for prices they could afford for the very first time. This is why Italian Americans were the first to combine meatballs with pasta, and why a lot of Italian American food is sugary and/or fattening. Italian American cuisine is a celebration of Italian immigrants’ newfound access to foods they hadn’t been able to access back home.
(Source: Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and
Community in New York City. Chicago: U of Illinois, 2013. Print.)
So… the food snobbery in the name of SJ is actually an insult to immigrants?
*looks over at the folks who do that*
Congratulations, you played yourselves.
A lot of food that is commonly known as “chinese” or “italian” etc is specifically a product of interaction between immigrants and the local culinary habits. If you come to the “original” country and ask for that food, you’re either going to get blank stares or a fairly different version of that food. You are also going to get different versions of foreign food depending on where you go.
I am very sad that here peanut sauce is not generally a thing in chinese takeout places because it is in Germany and it’s great