We forgot to talk about Chinese Food in our post about Mexican Food, so we’re at it again, talking about the Americanization (really, Anglo-Americanization) of cuisine. We could only think of Mexican and Chinese having Anglo-American versions, but are there others in the USA? Sorry, we’re so focused on our country. Curious about international perspectives. International relative to us that is. We’re international too :).
Why did Chinese Food get Americanized? We don’t know. Let’s do some searches.
Why did (it seems) only Chinese Food and Mexican Food get Americanized? Substantial early migrations? Huge imported labor for the railroad and agriculture respectively? 1/3 of America used to belong to Mexico until 1845!?! Approximately none of Alaska ever belonged to China?!?!
That was Russia.
Where is our American Russian food? Brighton Beach? I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard there are a lot of Russians.
Nothing is more American than Chinese Food, as served to Americans. It’s like pizza. We have appropriated it, but in this case we had help. Someone Americanized their own food. Who were these early pioneers? General Tsao is one. Just kidding, that’s most certainly racist. In all seriousness, it’s amazing, and it happened in less than a hundred years, but my guesstimating.
More research is in order. Because every Anglo-American loves all-you-can-eat. A key to USA Food is the desire to never go hungry again. This is the land of enough food. “Give us your hungry,” says the statue of Liberty. I hope we oblige.
Here’s a thrillist article that gets us started, but there has to be a book on this. To be continued…
-F/S
P.S. Sorry about the General Tso joke. It’s really making fun of the idea in the American imagination that he was a historical figure. So it was trying to make fun of Americans, which is what we are. We can remove it if it’s:
A) Not funny.
2) Not making fun of what we think we’re making fun of. We think we’re making fun of Americans who think American Chinese food is “real” Chinese food. But it is “real” in the sense that it is food. It’s just not “authentic” Chinese.
P.P.S. There is an actual General Tso, Zuo Zongtang.
