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America's food chains are pretty pervasive but they are NOT our national cuisine -- they are only an odoriferous blight on the American landscape. American cuisine consists of foods created in America for Americans!!! I was first tuned into this idea when I read in a Brit cookbook that "pecan pie is one of the glories of American cuisine." Just because you can buy it out of a coin-operated slot in an Automat doesn't mean it's not real American home cooking. In fact, that coin slot would stay empty and the pie would grow blue fur if it weren't real American food.
American cuisine includes:
Pecan pie, obviously!
Pumpkin pie and all other pumpkin & squash recipes
Chess pie
Chili!!!
All the American variations on the frankfurter, including corndogs, sweet-and-sour slow-cooker Vienna sausage made with ketchup and grape jelly, Coney dogs with chili and mustard, and of course the "footlong"
Anything involving sweet potatoes
Just about anything involving tomatoes
Mostly anything involving peanuts
Most sweetcorn and ripe corn recipes, like cornbread and tamales -- especially corn on the cob
Pizza -- adapted from European "pizza rustica," which really is a pie, to suit American tastes and speedy home delivery
Smoked salmon -- invented by the Aleutians, I believe
Chop suey, General Tso’s chicken, egg rolls, chow mein, Crab Rangoon -- all invented by Chinese-American immigrants and never seen in China
Spam, I'm sorry to say!
Space Food Sticks (remember those?)
All dessert abominations made of American space-age materials, like Tang Pie (Tang + Cool Whip)
Dirty rice, blackened fish, po' boys sandwiches and other Cajun delights
Planked fish, especially Shad and Whitefish baked and served on a plank, is very American
Buffalo burgers
Deep-fried Alligator tail
Reuben sandwiches
Philly steak sandwiches
Dagwood sandwiches
Bacon-and-maple sundaes
Black walnut ice cream
Deep-fried cheese
Meatloaf frosted with red mashed potatoes and bound with cornflakes
...and let us never forget that we live proudly in the Unites States of Barbecue!
American cuisine is almost exclusively regional and therefore not packaged as being universally American but rather Cajun/Creole, Tex-Mex, Southern (soul food), Hawaiian, New England, etc... Just in this small Acadiana region exist Court Billion (The dish, not the French style of cooking), Gumbo, Jambalaya, Crawfish Etouffee, Boudin, etc...
If I travel to another country and partake in eating at only chain restaurants, it reveals more about my own lack of culture than my host.
Ignorance, stereotypes, what ever you want to call it.
Both countries could do better to market themselves from a food perspective.
How many Americans would know Australians consumes more alcohol from wine than beer? Or that it is one of the worlds largest wine exporters?
That is not the Australian Stereotype. just like the USA's stereotype as a country that survives on Burgers, Tacos and Fried Chicken is not true.
Anyway I am looking forward to finding out about some good American style home cooking
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