What Makes American Cuisine?

Abstract

What Makes American Cuisine? Kelly Erby (bio) Paul Freedman. Ten Restaurants That Changed America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016. xlvi + 527 pp. Figures, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. Joy Santlofer. Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017. xix + 459 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $28.95. In the winter of 1871–1872, the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, fifth child of Tsar Alexander II, toured the United States. The Duke hunted buffalo on the Great Plains, called on President Ulysses Grant at the White House, reveled at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and dined at Delmonico's in New York City, long the most famous restaurant in America. To fête the Duke, Delmonico's chef, Charles Ranhofer—born in Alsace and classically trained in French cuisine—prepared a twelve-course menu and even created a "consommé au Grand Duc" in his honor. Haute-cuisine classics like woodcocks in pie crust and aspic and partridge filets à l'Aquitaine anchored the meal, which also included regional American delicacies such as terrapin à la Maryland, canvasback duck, and California salmon (Freedman, pp. xxi–xxxii). When the Duke later stated that there was no such thing as American cuisine and that the best food the young country had to offer were imitations of French dishes, Americans were understandably hurt. The Duke became the latest in a long tradition of European visitors to wound American pride and offend Americans' notions of their own good hospitality (the author Charles Dickens was also prominently featured on this list following derogatory remarks he made about American food culture during an 1842 tour of the United States). Does America, in fact, have a unique and notable culinary tradition of its own? This is the major historical question behind two recent books in the burgeoning field of culinary history: Ten Restaurants that Changed America by Paul Freedman and Joy Santlofer's Food City. Both writers answer in the affirmative, though Santlofer's "yes" is more enthusiastic than Freedman's. For Santlofer, American culinary identity is primarily distinguished by its sense of entrepreneurialism and inventiveness. Since the establishment of the first Dutch brewery in New York in the early decades of the 1600s, she examines [End Page 694] how the basic need for sustenance has combined with a commercial spirit to drive innovations in food and culture. Freedman's answer is more ambivalent; from his examination of ten restaurants that he argues changed the way Americans ate, Freedman concludes that the same American motivation to profit from the business of eating has meant that American appetites have too often tilted toward "convenience, uniformity, and blandness" (p. 436). Both writers focus primarily on New York—Santlofer entirely so—but nevertheless attempt to draw broader conclusions about commercial food and the nation. In his introduction, Freedman explains his criteria for picking the ten restaurants to examine. "The selection," he writes, "is based on influence and exemplification" (p. xxv). In other words, these are restaurants that were widely copied; they set new standards for how Americans dined. According to Freedman, "What we eat today is the result of the innovations of these ten restaurants" (p. xxvi). The list includes Delmonico's, which, although it was certainly not the first restaurant in America (Freedman refers to it as "the first real restaurant"), did come to define fine dining in the nineteenth century (p. xv). Delmonico's endured for nearly a hundred years and inspired imitations across the country. Antoine's in New Orleans (the only eatery included in the book not located on either coast) and Mama Leone's in New York make the cut as well, largely for their contributions in defining the tourist genre of restaurant. Schrafft's and Howard Johnson's, two northeastern chains that redefined middle-class and family dining, each have a chapter devoted to them, as does the Mandarin in San Francisco, nationally acclaimed for its upscale Chinese food and a second example (along with Mama Leone's, which specialized in Italian food) in the book of an "ethnic" eatery; Sylvia's, which continues to dish out "soul food" in Harlem; Le Pavillon, opened as part of the...