And by “things besides hamburgers”, I don’t mean “hot dogs and french fries”. This came to mind while watching the latest episode of Hidan no Aria, where this billboard appeared:
As someone who has lived in Texas, I facepalmed. For readers not from the US, burgers are definitely not Tex-Mex (and certainly not this especially generic looking burger).
Not having a good grasp on American food certainly isn’t specific to anime. In real life, I work with a substantial number of people from other countries. These people will invariably complain to me that they hate American food. I ask them what foods they hate. They tell me they hate hamburgers and French fries. Occasionally they add sandwiches to the list. I don’t bother explaining that sandwiches aren’t actually from America.
On further interrogation, it turns out that they haven’t eaten anywhere except cheap restaurants, which where I live are all either sandwich shops or Chinese restaurants. I try to explain that Americans do cook things beside sandwiches and Chinese food at home, which are only found in sit-down restaurants, if at all. My friends from Asia are shocked to hear that many Americans think everyone cooks rice in a pot on the stove, in the rare case that they cook rice at all, and have never even heard of a rice cooker. Visitors from overseas then ask: well, then, what is American food?
And then I’m stumped. I list a few things off the top of my head: barbecue, Tex-Mex, southern food, potatoes, corn… They walk away pretending to be convinced. But no one buys it. American food is hamburgers and french fries.
The problem is that even Americans don’t know what American food is. For the sake of experiment, I’ve asked Americans to name some American foods. Their answer is the same as mine. “Hamburgers, hot dogs… um… French fries? No wait, are those French?”
To risk sounding like an elementary school history textbook, America is a melting pot. Not the type you make Fondue in, although there are certainly American variations on that particular dish. But the type where it is a nation of immigrants, and we incorporate the foods of those immigrants into our own cuisine. Basically, a large part of American food is what we’ve stolen from everywhere else variations, changes and combinations of dishes brought to America by immigrants. Take Chinese food: my friends from China complain that the food in Chinese restaurants here isn’t “authentic”. To which I reply that it’s authentically American. At what point do these foods cease being Italian, German, Chinese or Japanese and become American?
Of course, this thievery culinary exchange isn’t one sided. I visited Singapore last year, and at a food court my friend ordered a “Hamburger” from a “Western food” restaurant. What he got back was no hamburger that we would have conceived of. There was no bun, and it more closely resembled the dreaded salisbury steak cafeteria meal than the type of hamburger we were familiar with. It also came with a runny egg on top. Was the hamburger American or was it Singaporean? I don’t know, but my friend ate it all.
One of the aspects I find most interesting about anime is seeing how my own culture is portrayed. By experiencing a small slice of Japanese culture, I feel like I’ve been able to better understand my own culture. What is American food? I never would have asked that question before I began watching anime: it would be like asking “what is food?”. It’s what I eat.
