One of my pet theories is that the "United States" aren't...that culturally, people from different parts of the US identify more strongly with the region they're from than with being Americans (and that this effect is particularly strong in New England and in the former Confederacy but shows up all over the country).
Furthermore, I've traveled the length and breadth of this great nation and found that the amount of similarity between one region and the next is no greater than it would be traveling from Lisbon to Moscow (a shorter distance than the one between, say, Miami and Seattle, incidentally.) In New England, where I'm from, it's all about seafood, Saturday night franks n' beans, and (for people old enough to remember the commercials) "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day." What's more, get west of the Hudson River and nobody knows what the fuck "American Chop Suey" is (think Chef Boyardee Beefaroni with more chunk tomatoes and a dash of Worcestershire, at least the recipe that Wakefield Public Schools used).
This all has me thinking, is there any chance Americans could agree on a national dish? What would the dish be...and how would the "authentic American" version of the dish be prepared (yes, barbecue fans in Memphis, Texas, Kansas City, and eastern Tennessee/North Carolina, I'm inviting you to fight to the death on this one about pork vs. beef and vinegar sauce vs. tomato-based sauce vs. dry rub.)
Personally I'd nominate BBQ ribs (REAL ones, in a smoker, slow cooked) with a sauce inspired by the Kansas City sweet sauce tradition (only because that's what most Americans think of when they think of barbecue sauce and we're going for national unity here.) My fellow Americans are invited to nominate their choice for a dish we can toss out there and say to the rest of the world, "This is the food foreign travelers should seek out as America's national dish." And please, for the love of the gods, don't fucking say McDonald's hamburgers!
And for our large non-US contingent, what's your national dish in your country? Or does your country devolve into squabbling along regional lines the way America does (Italians, I'm looking squarely at you)?
Furthermore, I've traveled the length and breadth of this great nation and found that the amount of similarity between one region and the next is no greater than it would be traveling from Lisbon to Moscow (a shorter distance than the one between, say, Miami and Seattle, incidentally.) In New England, where I'm from, it's all about seafood, Saturday night franks n' beans, and (for people old enough to remember the commercials) "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day." What's more, get west of the Hudson River and nobody knows what the fuck "American Chop Suey" is (think Chef Boyardee Beefaroni with more chunk tomatoes and a dash of Worcestershire, at least the recipe that Wakefield Public Schools used).
This all has me thinking, is there any chance Americans could agree on a national dish? What would the dish be...and how would the "authentic American" version of the dish be prepared (yes, barbecue fans in Memphis, Texas, Kansas City, and eastern Tennessee/North Carolina, I'm inviting you to fight to the death on this one about pork vs. beef and vinegar sauce vs. tomato-based sauce vs. dry rub.)
Personally I'd nominate BBQ ribs (REAL ones, in a smoker, slow cooked) with a sauce inspired by the Kansas City sweet sauce tradition (only because that's what most Americans think of when they think of barbecue sauce and we're going for national unity here.) My fellow Americans are invited to nominate their choice for a dish we can toss out there and say to the rest of the world, "This is the food foreign travelers should seek out as America's national dish." And please, for the love of the gods, don't fucking say McDonald's hamburgers!
And for our large non-US contingent, what's your national dish in your country? Or does your country devolve into squabbling along regional lines the way America does (Italians, I'm looking squarely at you)?
