0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

0:14

Fry. I'm Tracy B. Wilson.

0:16

I think it's safe to say that one of the most diverse

0:18

things about the United States is actually its

0:20

food industry. And for foodie,

0:23

seeking out the elusive and I'm putting

0:25

this in quotes authentic flavors of any

0:27

given culture can become an obsession. Uh.

0:30

There are a lot of things that are often

0:32

seen as belonging to an ethnic cuisine

0:34

that are in fact not even recognized

0:36

in the culture that they're associated with. Fortune

0:39

cookies, for example, are a

0:41

North American invention. This

0:44

episode was inspired by our listener Justin,

0:47

who actually asked for a history of Thai food in

0:49

the US. And we're not actually going to

0:51

talk about Thai food this time around. Perhaps if

0:53

we do a follow up episode we will, but

0:55

for now, we're talking about the most popular

0:57

ethnic foods in the US to trace their

1:00

adoption and adaptations to ultimately

1:02

become part of our culinary

1:04

melting pot. Uh. This also ended

1:07

up being an episode that touches a lot of other

1:09

episodes that we have done because so much of

1:11

it is linked to the story of immigration.

1:14

And one of the things that all of these foods

1:16

really have in common is a basic

1:18

trajectory. So they are first thought of with

1:20

a degree of suspicion or disdain by

1:22

the resident population when they are

1:24

brought in via immigration, and then there's

1:27

this slow acceptance and revelation

1:30

that hey, this is delicious. Uh,

1:33

And then it shifts and these cultural

1:35

dishes become celebrated, but in a way

1:37

that doesn't usually resemble their

1:40

country of origins cuisine very much.

1:45

The term ethnic food, which we are putting

1:47

in air quotes here, really started

1:50

to see usage in the United States and the nineteen

1:52

fifties, and before that, food

1:55

from cultures that were outside of the United

1:57

States were just usually referred to as foreign

1:59

foods. And this was to some

2:01

degree part of a larger post

2:03

war shift where white Americans

2:05

were trying to figure out exactly how to

2:07

refer to anything that wasn't part of

2:10

their own culture. So like

2:12

American and quotes

2:15

white people food, calling

2:17

everything apart from that ethnic

2:21

that's weird and kind

2:24

of gross, But yeah,

2:26

I mean, it's one of those things where I

2:29

actually think there was probably

2:33

a desire to find an appropriate

2:37

way to do it. But just in

2:39

in that that hunt

2:41

and setting things apart, you're kind

2:44

of automatically in a danger zone,

2:46

right like not us other food,

2:48

and then US is definitely like

2:51

mainstream white American

2:54

palette. Yeah, but I

2:56

I read an interview recently

2:59

with Christian Endu Ray, who is

3:01

an author who wrote The Ethnic Restaurant Tour,

3:03

and he didn't he's also the cheer of

3:06

Nutrition and food studies at New York University,

3:08

and he brought up a really interesting point that

3:10

he's not the first to make it, but he he articulated

3:13

it really well in a Washington Post interview

3:15

that he did in sixteen, and he pointed

3:17

out, uh, something that has

3:19

been discussed by other scholars, that

3:21

there is this inherent, subconscious association

3:24

of inferiority with the term ethnic

3:26

food. So, for example,

3:28

foods that are usually categorized as ethnic

3:31

and quotation marks a lot of times those are Indian

3:33

and Thai, Chinese, Mexican.

3:36

I've even heard people refer

3:38

to American cuisines from

3:41

specific groups, like I've heard people

3:43

call soul food ethnic

3:46

food when that's an American

3:48

cuisine, or sometimes Cajun

3:50

food gets it too. Yeah, yeah,

3:53

and and like these tends

3:55

to be often less

3:57

expensive a lot of times with a

4:00

less cultural prestige

4:03

within the mainstream then say French

4:05

food or Japanese food, which a

4:07

lot of times don't wind up in the bucket

4:09

of quote ethnic. There are,

4:12

of course, some exceptions to that. There are

4:14

high end Chinese restaurants, economically

4:17

priced French cafes. There's a whole idea

4:20

of fusion, which a lot of times

4:22

is viewed as something that's a little higher

4:25

class but draws from different

4:28

ethnic ethnicities. But you know, as a

4:30

general rule, that's pretty accurate

4:32

observation. So as we said,

4:36

we want to just sort of set that up so you're thinking

4:38

about it as we go through this. But we're

4:40

going to cover the three most popular

4:42

categories of ethnic food again

4:44

using the quotes in the US today, and

4:46

those are Chinese, Mexican, and

4:49

Italian. Chinese food

4:51

was one of the most common cuisines

4:54

in the United States. Even very small towns

4:56

typically have a Chinese restaurant. I know I

4:58

have been two, some

5:01

like incredibly, not even

5:03

the stoplight, but there's a Chinese restaurant.

5:07

Uh. In the

5:09

documentary The Search for General So Sully,

5:11

Who's the executive director for the Chinese Historical

5:14

Society, stated that in Chinese

5:17

people made up only one percent of the

5:20

US population, but most

5:22

Americans have eaten some form of

5:24

Chinese food. So for clarity, that one

5:27

percent number represents only

5:29

people who identified exclusively

5:31

as Chinese, not as people who

5:33

identified in combination with other

5:36

ethnicities. And that's according to the Census

5:38

Bureau. And to trace

5:40

the origins of Chinese foods popularity

5:43

to that point where almost all of us have had

5:45

it, even though Chinese

5:47

people do not make up a particularly large segment

5:49

of the population, uh

5:52

in North America, we have to go all the way

5:54

back to the eighteen fifties and even a

5:56

little bit before that, which we'll talk about, but primarily

5:59

when the California a gold Rush brought a great

6:01

deal of Chinese and specifically Cantonese

6:04

immigrants to the United States

6:06

through San Francisco, and

6:08

there was already a Chinese restaurant

6:10

in San Francisco before the gold Rush. There

6:13

was one Cantonese restaurant that had opened there

6:15

in eighteen forty nine, but initially

6:18

Chinese food seemed too new and

6:20

even scary to most of the white population.

6:23

Also in the general, so documentary they talked

6:25

about how this is where a lot of crazy

6:28

rumors began about the things that might be

6:30

included in your Chinese food. Yeah,

6:35

that continues to be like a way to

6:37

insult people's native

6:40

cuisines. Um.

6:44

But this this, all of this combines

6:46

together, the suspicion of the food and

6:48

the rumors about what the food contained,

6:52

was in part because Chinese immigrants

6:54

were seen as a threat to the job market.

6:56

That were approximately twenty five thousand

6:59

Chinese immigrants in California by eighteen

7:01

fifty one, and there was a concern

7:03

that they would be taking jobs away from

7:05

white residents. There was also

7:07

a xenophobic fear of basically all

7:10

of the culture that they had brought with them

7:12

to the United States, including the food. Eventually,

7:15

that xenophobia led to the Chinese

7:17

Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two, and

7:20

this act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur,

7:23

established a freeze on Chinese labor immigration.

7:26

Non laborers seeking to enter the

7:29

US had to get special certification

7:31

from the Chinese government, but it was incredibly

7:33

difficult to prove that a person had no intent

7:36

to work as labor once they got to the

7:38

States, So that Avenue of immigration was

7:40

really largely choked off. This

7:42

entire situation is also mentioned in

7:44

more detail in our two part episode that we

7:46

did on Executive Order ninety sixty

7:49

six and the Japanese internment camps. Not

7:51

only did the Exclusion Act make it difficult

7:54

for Chinese people to enter the United

7:56

States, it also simultaneously

7:59

sparked islands by white communities

8:01

against Chinese communities. But

8:04

if a Chinese immigrant already in the United

8:06

States left, they would have to go through the

8:08

certification process to re enter

8:10

the country. So a lot of people stayed

8:12

in spite of their being so much animosity

8:15

towards their communities. Yeah, in

8:17

many cases, people that had immigrated here

8:20

had you know, left everything.

8:23

They had built a life here, so they didn't want to leave

8:25

because they really had nowhere to go. Uh.

8:28

And as that door to jobs really closed

8:30

for the immigrants that were already living in the United

8:32

States, the need for self reliant

8:34

forms of income brought about the rise

8:36

of two business ventures that are still commonly

8:39

associated with Chinese entrepreneurs.

8:41

It's laundry service and food service.

8:44

In regarding food service, in a really savvy

8:46

business move, a lot of Chinese

8:49

restaurant owners adapted recipes to

8:51

American tastes so that they could build

8:53

their customer bases. The culinary

8:55

balance that was struck was sort of foreign

8:58

but familiar to the white

9:00

majority. While China's vast

9:03

size includes all like

9:05

a lot a lot of distinct styles

9:07

of food, Americanized

9:09

Chinese food tends to be more homogeneous.

9:12

There's Chop suey, which was the first quote

9:15

Chinese dish to gain acceptance

9:17

in the United States, largely because it was

9:19

easily adapted to include ingredients

9:22

that would appeal to the palates of white

9:24

customers. It was meat, eggs, and vegetables

9:27

that were a little different from what folks

9:29

typically had day to day, but they weren't too

9:32

foreign and taste. Uh.

9:34

That's really a dish that was made

9:37

for Chinese restaurant use in the United States,

9:39

not a dish from China.

9:42

So for a lot of diners in the early part of the twentie

9:45

century, Chop suey was their

9:47

introduction to this foreign

9:49

food, and the Chinese

9:51

Exclusion Act, initially intended as a

9:53

ten year moratorium, was extended

9:56

for a second decade in eighteen ninety

9:58

two with the passing of the Gearya Act, and then

10:00

it was made permanent in nineteen o two.

10:03

In the nineteen twenties, it was replaced

10:05

with a quota system as immigration once again

10:08

swelled after after World War One, and

10:11

then UH, almost

10:13

twenty years later, the Exclusion

10:15

Act was repealed in nineteen forty three.

10:18

Throughout all of this, as anti Chinese

10:20

sentiments slowly ebbed, Chinese

10:22

eateries in the US continued to serve

10:24

up dishes that offered a taste of Asia,

10:27

but was still in this sort of comforting,

10:29

not too aggressive or frightening way

10:34

to appeal to the white diners

10:36

that they were hoping to get. As

10:39

a side note, UH, it seems like

10:41

every December there will be an article about

10:44

how Chinese cuisine

10:46

became uh. What Jewish

10:49

people eat at Christmas because

10:51

for a long time, the Chinese restaurants were the only

10:53

ones that were open on Christmas,

10:56

and so now culturally there's also this connection

10:58

between Chinese community is in Jewish communities,

11:01

um around the food that

11:03

is eaten at Christmas time. Uh.

11:06

And next up we will talk about

11:08

the ebb and flow of Chinese foods growing

11:11

acceptance in the United States. But

11:13

first we will pause for a quick word from

11:15

a sponsor By

11:21

the nineteen forties, Chinese food had

11:23

really become a two way cultural gate

11:25

in the United States. It enabled

11:27

white Americans to feel like they had an

11:30

end with another culture, and it simultaneously

11:32

offered Chinese immigrants a way to fit

11:34

into majority white communities and

11:37

with China as an ally. In World War Two

11:39

and the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act,

11:42

the early nineteen forties actually saw an explosion

11:44

in popularity of Chinese restaurants.

11:48

Unfortunately, though, that wave of acceptance

11:50

for Chinese culture was short lived. Chinese

11:53

Communist revolution changed things a lot,

11:55

and once again Chinese people living in

11:57

the United States were viewed with suspicion. There

12:00

was a drop at that point in the popularity

12:02

of Chinese restaurants. Actually have a

12:04

whole uh I think

12:07

four part podcasts covering

12:09

this window of Chinese history. For

12:11

the next three decades, appreciation

12:14

for Chinese food really waxed and waned

12:16

within American culture. In nineteen

12:18

sixty there were six thousand Chinese

12:20

restaurants in the US. Ten percent of

12:23

those were in New York City. And

12:25

that may sound like a lot, but we have a lot

12:27

more now. After President

12:29

Nixon visited China in nineteen seventy

12:31

two, and he was shown on live television

12:34

eating Chinese food. During that visit,

12:36

Chinese cuisine once again experienced

12:39

a massive boom and popularity

12:41

in the United States, and this

12:43

time UH. This really led

12:45

to an interesting diversification. So

12:47

instead of just general Chinese restaurants

12:50

or what we've come to call American Chinese

12:52

restaurants, that sort of homogenized version

12:55

of Chinese food, it became a

12:57

lot more common to start to see eaters that were

12:59

specializing some of the regional cuisines

13:01

of China, think Kunan and Sechuan,

13:03

for example. Since

13:06

the nineteen seventies, Chinese foods popularity

13:08

has continued to grow throughout the United

13:11

States, and in teen, there were

13:13

more than forty three thousand

13:15

Chinese restaurants spread across across

13:17

the country. UH. And next

13:20

up, we will talk about another cuisine

13:22

that makes up a really big segment of the ethnic

13:24

food market in the United States. And again we're

13:26

using ethnic food in quotes, UH,

13:28

and that is Mexican and it has become

13:31

so popular that, for example, salta will

13:33

now vie with ketchup and sharracha

13:35

for most popular condiment in America. When

13:37

you see those sort of cutesi cultural

13:39

food articles pop up, and sometimes

13:41

it wins those those um

13:43

which is the most popular condiment discussions

13:46

depending on what source you're looking at. So,

13:48

in short, Mexican food huge

13:50

part of the American cultural food

13:52

landscape. At this point. In

13:55

the early part of the twentieth century,

13:57

Mexican immigrants made up a small portion

13:59

of the It States population. The

14:01

first instance of tacos arriving

14:04

in the United States was during the Mexican Revolution,

14:07

which started in nineteen ten. Before

14:09

that, most immigrants were from northern

14:11

Mexico, and tacos, which started

14:14

being called by that name in the eighteen eighties,

14:16

were common a little farther south. If

14:19

you listen to our episode on the Burscero program

14:22

from August of sixteen, you may recall

14:24

that in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen

14:27

thirties there was a lot of hostility aimed

14:29

at Mexican immigrants, massive deportation

14:31

and also segregation, and this

14:34

was all spawned by the same problem that had

14:36

caused a distrust of Chinese immigrants,

14:38

which was concern over the effect

14:40

migration was going to have on the labor pool,

14:43

and that environment of distrust

14:45

fostered an opinion the Mexican

14:47

food was for the poor and lower classes,

14:50

and it had that reputation for a long time.

14:53

For decades, Mexican cuisine

14:55

was a staple in more low income homes.

14:58

But slowly the middle glass,

15:00

starting in the border States and then spreading

15:02

throughout the country, came to adopt Mexican

15:05

food as their own, and

15:07

in the nineteen forties, San Antonio, Texas,

15:09

actually started importing chili powder from

15:11

Mexico to meet the growing demand. In

15:14

nineteen sixty two, fast food giant

15:16

Taco Bell was founded in Downey, California.

15:19

By the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,

15:22

Mexican restaurants had become popular neighborhood

15:24

eateries throughout the country. But

15:27

then, as now, if you were to

15:29

go into most Mexican restaurants, you'd

15:31

see a pretty similar list of items on

15:33

the menu, things like ca city as, tacos,

15:35

and burritos. The concept

15:37

of Mexican food has become, as

15:39

with Chinese food, largely homogenized.

15:42

Mexico, like China, has a number

15:44

of regional cuisines that don't

15:47

always get as much focus in restaurants

15:49

in the States, so in very

15:51

broad strokes to talk about some of them.

15:53

Northern Mexican food tends to include

15:55

a lot of beef and cheese and wheat. Wahaca

15:58

cuisine includes a lot of corn, chili,

16:01

peppers, and beans. Yucatan

16:03

dishes feature avocados and slow

16:05

cooked salted pork and chocolate.

16:08

Western Mexican food is characterized by

16:10

the frequent inclusion of fresh fish

16:12

and Vera Cruz cuisine favors the use

16:14

of tropical fruit. I

16:17

want to eat all of that. I know it sounds

16:19

so good. It doesn't

16:21

help that we are recording this at eleven

16:24

forty eight a m uh.

16:27

As you listen to that list, you probably noticed

16:29

a number of items that are common

16:31

ingredients in Mexican food here in the United

16:34

States, because as Mexican food gained

16:36

mainstream acceptance, it became a hodgepodge

16:39

of all the various aspects of regional cuisines

16:41

that appealed to a broader audience.

16:44

Yeah, it's not to say there wouldn't have been crossover in

16:46

those cuisines anyway, but like it's almost

16:49

like somebody went through and went, yes, fish,

16:51

fish, tacos would be good. Yes, Also, we want

16:53

the cheese for sure. Also to

16:55

put avocado on a fish taco, put

16:57

avocado on everything, and

17:00

additionally, approaches to preparation change.

17:02

So while a burrito in Mexico

17:05

might include a simple assortment of ingredients

17:07

like beans and a meat protein, as

17:10

they became the handheld standards of the

17:12

US, they really changed and started

17:14

to be packed with additional things and just got

17:16

larger and larger. So the burrito

17:19

in its American incarnation didn't even

17:21

get it start in a border town near

17:23

Mexico either. It's actually credited

17:25

to the Mission District in San Francisco sometime

17:28

in the nineteen sixties. I

17:30

have witnessed a couple of very heated arguments

17:33

about what items

17:35

in a tortilla are acceptable

17:37

to call a burrito. As

17:41

long as they're delicious, I don't care, But

17:43

if you're looking at it from a

17:45

cultural and historical standpoint, you might

17:48

want to get more specific. One

17:50

of the other appeals of Mexican food

17:52

in the United States was the ability to make

17:54

it at home. Kitchen cook wear sets

17:56

that included tortilla presses and a

17:58

taco friar mill started appearing

18:01

for the home market in the latter half of

18:03

the twentieth century, and

18:05

dishes that were both very popular and

18:08

very unique to American Mexican food

18:10

also came about in the second half of the twentieth

18:12

century. So, for example, taco salad

18:15

made its debut in nineteen sixty eight, and fahitas,

18:18

which all confess that I deeply love, were

18:20

invented in nineteen seventy one. I

18:23

love uh. I love the fragrance

18:25

of fajitas like

18:28

I love it when someone else orders fahitas.

18:31

That is it the

18:33

d I y aspect that is not for you. The

18:37

flavor of it is never as amazing to

18:39

me as the fragrance of it. Gustavo

18:42

Ariano, journalist and author of

18:44

Taco Usa, How Mexican Food

18:46

Conquered America, take some more relaxed

18:49

view of what qualifies this Mexican

18:51

food. In an interview with the Christian

18:53

Science Monitor in he said quote,

18:55

I know a lot of Mexicans and people who love Mexican

18:58

food who believe that there's real Mexican

19:00

food and fake Mexican food. To

19:02

me, if you think it's Mexican food, it's Mexican

19:04

food. But the good

19:06

news is Mexican restaurants haven't entirely

19:09

homogenized or they have once again diversified,

19:11

and many offer lesser known specialty dishes

19:14

now that appeal to those on the hunt

19:16

for that quote, more authentic flavor. There's

19:18

also this whole discussion. I didn't

19:20

include it in this right up, but

19:23

I found it in one place where people were

19:25

saying that for people that are not familiar

19:27

with any given cuisine, they tend to assume

19:30

that the spicier it is, the more authentic it

19:32

is, which is really not the case

19:34

and kind of robs a lot of cultures of

19:36

their actual food identities because it's

19:38

not all about heat. But Ariano also

19:41

gave great advice in that interview on how

19:43

you can find the hidden treasures and Mexican

19:45

restaurants. He said, quote, when you go to a

19:47

Mexican restaurant and you see Spanish on the

19:49

menu that you have never heard in your life, order

19:52

it. That will be the regional cuisine, and more

19:54

likely than not, it's really good. I

19:58

was reading something about about

20:00

Mexican cuisine before we came

20:02

in here to record, and there was one particular

20:04

writer. It was like, y'all stop

20:07

bragging about how you tried corn smutt

20:11

is like a normal part of cuisine.

20:15

You don't get a medal for having tried

20:17

it. YEP. As

20:20

of twenty four teen, there were more

20:22

than seventy Mexican restaurants

20:24

just in the ten cities that were flagged

20:27

in this one particular article. Thousands

20:29

more are threads are spread throughout smaller

20:32

cities and towns and rural areas.

20:34

This is similar to, Uh,

20:37

like, the place where I grew up was not very

20:39

large. We

20:41

we definitely had multiple

20:44

Mexican restaurants. Yeah,

20:46

and I feel like I am in

20:49

the area of town I live in now, which is

20:51

very diverse. I will often see a

20:53

lot of little, small taco shops pop up,

20:55

and often they'll stick around for years and years. Uh

20:59

and they're to sucked sometimes into just like a random

21:01

part of a neighborhood, which

21:03

is kind of awesome because those places often have

21:06

gold, super deliciousness.

21:09

Uh. So, next up, we are about to talk about Italian

21:11

food in its place at the American table. But

21:14

first we're gonna take a quick sponsor break before

21:16

we do that. The

21:22

other big hitter in the triumvirate of

21:24

popular ethnic foods in America, again

21:27

we're using the ethic foods and quotes

21:29

is Italian and It's life in the US parallels

21:32

that of Chinese food in a lot of ways. Also

21:35

Mexican food, but this one has some

21:37

pretty direct tie ins. In the

21:39

early twentieth century, Italian food,

21:41

like both Chinese and Mexican, was seen

21:43

as a cuisine for the lower classes or

21:46

lower income homes. And the

21:48

smells of garlic and the red sauces

21:50

that started to be used in the US not

21:53

necessarily a particularly Italian

21:55

thing. We're seen as far too pungent

21:58

and overwhelming to the American palateate. That

22:01

sort of cracks me up, because garlic is

22:03

like the magic siren song that will draw me to

22:05

any kitchen. Things have changed.

22:08

One of the things that's funniest to me as as

22:11

far as people's UH perception,

22:15

sort of like mainstream wide perception of

22:17

what Italian food is,

22:19

is that it's sort of spaghetti in a tomato

22:22

sauce, and

22:25

uh, tomatoes did not exist

22:27

in Italy until after Europeans

22:29

started going back and forth to North America

22:31

and brought tomatoes back with them, and

22:34

then pasta also likely

22:36

introduced. All though that before

22:39

pasta was introduced into Italy, before

22:41

tomatoes were but both of those are UH

22:44

things that came about a little bit more

22:46

recently. In the grand scope of

22:48

Italian history, immigration

22:51

quotas from the nies had a significant

22:54

effect on the way the Italian

22:56

immigrant population was distributed throughout

22:58

the United States. Because the Immigration

23:01

Act of four cut the Italian

23:03

immigrant quota from forty two

23:05

thousand to just four thousand

23:07

a year, Italian neighborhoods started

23:10

to shrink. Residents who lived

23:12

in the Little Italy neighborhoods

23:14

moved in increasing numbers to the suburbs

23:17

or other neighborhoods that were less identified

23:19

by one culture and were more

23:21

diverse in terms of which cultures

23:23

lived there. The internal

23:25

migration led to a deeper

23:28

integration of Italian immigrants into

23:31

the so called American melting pot,

23:33

where they were both influenced

23:35

and influenced others. And

23:38

during World War Two, Italian

23:40

immigrants had been classified as enemy

23:42

aliens, and there were Italian Americans

23:44

interned in the same way Japanese

23:47

Americans were, and there was

23:49

there was, of course, some uh hostility

23:53

and anti Italian sentiment that went on at the

23:55

same time. However, there was

23:57

a less systematic implementation

24:00

of the provision that allowed for the removal of

24:02

Italians to detention centers. Immigrants

24:05

who had been in the United States for a lengthy

24:07

period of time, and Italian

24:09

immigrants who had become US citizens

24:11

and your naturalization were not generally subjected

24:13

to the relocation. Only Italian

24:16

nationals were, and that was a pretty small sliver

24:18

of the Italian immigrant population. While

24:21

that already indicates that Italian immigrants

24:24

were more accepted than some other

24:26

immigrant populations, another

24:28

factor gave Italian culture a boost

24:31

in the United States. Approximately

24:33

five hundred thousand Italian Americans

24:35

served in the war, sometimes going to

24:37

Italy to fight. Uh This further

24:41

eroded the sense of Italians as outsiders

24:43

the United States. It bolsterred the image

24:45

of their cuisine. I will add that

24:48

at this point, I mean, there had been immigration

24:50

from Italy to the United States for a long time, so

24:52

there were a lot of people of Italian

24:55

descent who were more than

24:57

one or two generations removed from

25:00

Italy, which met that unlike

25:03

with the Japanese American population,

25:05

it just was not feasible to try

25:07

to round up all of those folks and incarcerat

25:10

them. But

25:12

what's interesting is, unlike Mexican and Chinese

25:14

food, which were to some degree,

25:16

both really consciously shifted to

25:19

appeal to American tastes. Italian

25:21

food in the United States changed, at least

25:24

in part just because of a ingredient

25:26

availability. So, for example,

25:28

canned tomatoes were inexpensive and they

25:30

were easy to find it almost any market, and

25:32

meat was far more plentiful and affordable

25:34

in the United States than in southern

25:36

Italy, for example. And so dishes

25:39

like spaghetti and meatballs that Tracy referenced

25:41

earlier and baked zd slowly

25:43

developed here in the United States

25:45

in Italian neighborhoods, although those were not

25:48

common foods in Italy. Even

25:50

the ever popular fetatini Alfredo,

25:53

which I know, I know and love, was

25:55

invented in Italy, but it took on a very different

25:57

pro profile in the United States.

26:00

According to the lore, in nineteen fourteen,

26:02

Alfredo Delileo put parmesan

26:05

and butter on noodles as a meal for his

26:07

wife who was pregnant, and it

26:10

was such a great simple dish that he

26:12

opened up a restaurant to serve it to the masses.

26:15

But once Delileo moved from Italy

26:17

to New York and opened a new restaurant,

26:20

heavy cream entered the picture, and that

26:22

became a much different, much risher,

26:24

richer, very tasty dish.

26:27

It's so delicious. But yeah,

26:29

there are still things that are served similar

26:33

to his original dish

26:35

in Europe, but it's usually just called like pasta

26:37

with butter. It doesn't have the name Alfredo,

26:40

and it certainly is not coated in a

26:42

heavy sauce the way we think of it. A geni

26:44

alfredo. Spaghetti

26:46

carbonara, another Italian

26:49

American dish that is now often

26:51

mentioned as one of the most unhealthy things you can

26:53

eat, was invented here in

26:55

nineteen fifty seven. And as for

26:57

a pizza, we did a whole epis

27:00

old lawn that last year, which were accorded

27:02

in Chicago at C two e two. It

27:04

basically experienced the same lifespan

27:07

as other Italian food. Neapolitan

27:09

pizza slowly morphed into this Americanized

27:12

version, was heavier and doughier

27:15

and has way way more stuff on top.

27:17

One of the things I said in that live show was,

27:20

if you have this for the first time, and all

27:22

you've eaten your whole life is the kind of pizza

27:25

that served as the United States, your first

27:27

reaction might be, where are the toppings?

27:30

It's a lot, a lot simpler as

27:32

a dish. Uh. And pizza,

27:35

you know, once it had a foothold, has become

27:38

one of the most popular foods in

27:40

the United States. Yeah.

27:43

I was reading in the course of doing research

27:45

for this a quote from a gentleman

27:47

who runs a Neapolitan pizza restaurant, and his

27:49

specific thing was about the crust being less

27:52

doughy but also less crispy, so he

27:54

would have customers come to him and say

27:57

this didn't cook all the way, and he was like, oh,

27:59

no, no, no,

28:01

no, I promise this is how Neopolitan pizza

28:04

works. Uh. In the nineteen nineties,

28:06

According to John Marianni, who is the author

28:08

of How Italian Food Conquered the World, Because

28:10

foods all conquered things I discovered while researching

28:13

this Italian cuisine in the US

28:15

really got what he perceived as a much needed

28:17

makeover thanks to the

28:19

rising popularity of the Mediterranean

28:21

diet, which took that focus away from the heavy

28:24

cream based sauces that were developed here and

28:26

the massive portions that also came to

28:28

be kind of an American standard. They

28:31

were also more refined ingredients

28:33

becoming more consistently available to both

28:35

chefs and home cooks. Thanks to globalization,

28:39

things like truffles and for studo became

28:41

increasingly more available and more popular

28:43

in the United States. And this development of

28:45

more options and flavors beyond this

28:48

heavily americanized Italian fair

28:50

caused a massive surgeon popularity

28:52

for Italian restaurants. There are now

28:54

about seventeen thousand Italian

28:57

restaurants just in ten

28:59

US cities. Uh. I

29:02

think very very similarly to both

29:04

Chinese and Maga Suan cuisine.

29:07

Things like pizza and spaghetti people think

29:09

of as really, you know, cheap

29:12

food, yes, inexpensive

29:15

and not nutritionally very amazing

29:18

for you, but there are

29:20

also at this point kind

29:23

of intriguing uh

29:26

I want to put it in quotes artisanal pizza

29:28

places well,

29:30

and I feel like there's this interesting

29:33

parallel that's also gone on that as

29:35

the food industry has become more health conscious,

29:38

we are seeing restaurants move two

29:41

recipes that more closely resemble their

29:43

place of origin. It's like

29:45

America really is the land of like put

29:48

more butter on it, which

29:51

don't get me wrong, I love butter, but it is an

29:53

interesting parallel to watch that

29:55

development. So

29:57

foods adopted from other cultures continu

30:00

new to gain popularity in the US. Restaurants

30:03

serving everything from Vietnamese fa to South

30:05

African bibodi, which holy man, I'm in love

30:07

with, are now available in a lot of large

30:09

cities and even in some small cities. Hybrid

30:13

foods like Korean Mexican tacos

30:15

started cropping up as early as the ninety nineties,

30:18

and today, you know, all kinds of international

30:20

cuisines from all kinds of combinations

30:23

can be found in restaurants and food trucks,

30:25

especially food trucks. It seems like all over

30:27

the United States. Yeah, I feel

30:29

like food trucks kind of offered this um

30:32

opportunity to experiment

30:34

more. I could be wrong. I'm I'm literally just

30:36

um basing this on personal

30:39

experiential chasing of food

30:41

trucks and eating a lot of food from them.

30:44

You know, It's not the same overhead as opening a

30:46

restaurant and and having

30:48

to like staff up and and do things that way.

30:50

It's a little bit of a smaller initial investment,

30:52

So I think people have a little

30:55

more of a

30:58

sense that they can experiment without

31:00

being like, my whole life just went down

31:03

the tubes. If a restaurant fails, you

31:05

might not recover. So it's

31:07

not easy to recover from any business failing.

31:09

But a restaurant seems like a much bigger initial

31:12

investment than a food truck. So I feel

31:14

like that's why food truck culture has really brought us

31:16

some amazing and interesting

31:18

and very creative things. So

31:20

as food trends wax and Wayne, we will

31:23

no doubt have opportunities to sample

31:25

all kinds of other foods in the United States.

31:27

But for the moment, the heavy

31:29

hitters in terms of these international foods

31:32

that have made their way into like

31:35

especially White American, mainstream,

31:37

Chinese, Mexican, Italian, will continue to

31:39

be the big three most likely.

31:42

Yeah, especially I

31:45

think once you get out of a city, it

31:48

drops off pretty significantly. How

31:50

like the the amount of different cuisines

31:53

available to you will be unless you live in

31:55

Like one of the great things I have discovered is

31:58

if you live in like a military town, like an

32:00

air force town, where there might be more

32:02

people from different parts of the globe, those

32:05

often have really interesting, um

32:07

you know, food scenes where you can get some

32:09

pretty yummy and different stuff. Yeah.

32:11

Well, and the places sometimes the places

32:14

that are small but also

32:16

have a big tourism industry.

32:19

Sometimes we'll have really really interesting

32:23

restaurant scenes, so

32:25

you know, little places that maybe have fifty

32:29

people but a lot of tourism

32:31

will often have in pretty

32:34

interesting restaurant selections. Given the size

32:36

of it. Do you want to do a little

32:39

listener mail? I

32:41

sure do. Uh

32:43

this listener mail it comes from our listener Kim,

32:46

And I will tell you that when I opened it, our

32:48

office manager Tamika, who I adore,

32:50

had come over to talk to me, and she just saw

32:52

me grinning like a fool, and then I had to

32:54

share it all with her because it's so cool. So Kim

32:57

writes, Dear Tracy and Holly, your podcast

33:00

have kept me entertained, informed and inspired

33:02

for many, many hours. But I'm writing you today

33:04

because last year's episode on French

33:06

protest hats, that's when we had our guest,

33:08

April Callahan on inspired an

33:10

entire art exhibition that is now on display

33:13

at the Doyle Art Pavilion at Orange

33:15

Coast College. I was considering

33:17

curating a show of hats by the Birthday

33:20

Crown Society UH, a

33:22

group that began by accident

33:24

when Kathleen McMurray asked a friend to make

33:26

her a personal crown for her fortieth birthday.

33:29

Kathleen was protesting the popular idea

33:31

that we should dread getting older and wanted instead

33:33

to celebrate the empowerment of entering middle

33:35

age. Her crowning ceremony was

33:38

such a success that all her friends wanted crowns

33:40

for their round number birthdays of any decade,

33:42

and since tradition has been

33:44

spreading here in Southern California with

33:47

more than sixty coronations. Your

33:49

episode on the French Ladies Fabulous Protest

33:51

Hats gave me the historical context I needed

33:54

to see the birthday crown Society hats as

33:56

both folk art and a form of social protest,

33:59

and that motivated allery director Steve uh

34:01

Rda Savach and I to pursue the exhibition

34:04

Crowning Glory and an accompanying

34:06

catalog, which I have included for you as a thank

34:08

you for your inspiration. This catalog contains

34:10

portraits by photographer Erin Namura that

34:13

capture many silly people proudly acting

34:15

their ages while wearing funny hats. It

34:17

also includes an art historical essay

34:19

that references the French protest hats and the stuff

34:21

you missed in history class episode. Thank

34:23

you and everyone at the podcast for the inspiration

34:26

from this episode and every episode. Your

34:28

work really does affect our lives and helps us listeners

34:30

make connections and generate new ideas. Um,

34:33

this is the coolest thing. She also

34:35

adds one more thing. Sometimes people ask how they

34:37

can get a hat for their round number birthday,

34:39

and the answer is you ask your friends to

34:41

make you one, which is great.

34:44

I love it. This book is

34:46

gorgeous and it is so fun and

34:48

it is so up my ami because it's very

34:50

creative, really fun art

34:54

um, just the

34:57

wackiest, most wonderful.

35:00

They're all sort of art pieces that represent

35:02

the person who will be wearing them for their

35:04

birthday. I'll try to uh share some pictures

35:07

on our social Some of them are

35:09

absolutely breathtaking and gorgeous. Some of them

35:11

will make you laugh and laugh and laugh. Um.

35:15

Everything from hats that look like bird's

35:18

nest, two hats that look like giant cookies,

35:21

two hats that just have a million things on

35:23

them, And they're all just to celebrate people

35:25

as they they transition from one year to the

35:28

next. And they're really really fun and I think everyone

35:30

should be doing this because that seems like the

35:32

most fun way to celebrate a birthday. So

35:34

thank you so much, Kim, because not only is this a

35:37

delightful letter, but this book is spectacular and

35:39

the whole thing brought a massive smile to my face.

35:41

I was literally grinning like a fool looking through

35:43

this this gorgeous book, so right,

35:47

who I need it? But if

35:50

you would like to write to us, you can do so at

35:53

History Podcast at house to have works dot com.

35:55

You can also find us across the spectrum of

35:57

social media as missed in History so that

36:00

it's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,

36:02

Tumbler, Pinterest. I

36:04

don't know if I forgot anything. Uh,

36:07

you want to visit our parents

36:09

site. That's how stuff works dot com. You could

36:11

search for almost anything you're interested

36:14

in learning by typing

36:16

it into the search bar, and you will generate a

36:18

load of results that will keep you busy and

36:20

hopefully happy and well informed. You

36:23

can visit us at misston history

36:25

dot com for all of the episodes of the show that have

36:27

ever existed, as well as show

36:29

notes for the lens Tracy and I have worked on and as

36:32

of uh recently, we have consolidated

36:34

show notes into the episode page, so

36:37

you can look at our sources right there. At the same

36:39

place you are getting the podcast, which makes life

36:41

a little easier fewer clicks for you. Who

36:44

doesn't want that? Uh So, Come and visit

36:46

us at Misston history dot com and how stuff

36:48

Works dot com

36:53

for more on this and thousands of other topics.

36:56

Is that how stuff Works dot com?

37:00

You do