David Page - Food Americana: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories behind America’s Favorite Dishes

Praise for
Food Americana

Terrific food journalism. Page uncovers the untold backstories of American food. A gr eat read.

George Stephanopoulos, coanchor of Good Morning America , host of This Week , and chief anchor o f ABC News

Food Americana dives deep into the history, subculture, and popularity of everyones favorite foods. Its an incredi ble read.

Tony Gemignani, thirteen-time World Pizz a Champion

A delicious swirl of entertaining stories to fulfill any food lovers appetite.

Jerry Greenfield, cofounder Ben & Jerrys

Every food, regardless of time and place, ingredients, or mode of preparation, has a history. David Page offers a breathtaking journey across time, guiding us to the stories behind the food s we eat.

Hasia Diner, program director at New York University and author of Hungering f or America

An original gem. David Page has written a humorous cultural history full of deep research, smart anecdotes, novel information, and mouth-watering accounts of the origins of our favorite foods. I didnt know how much love goes int o a taco.

Martin Fletcher, TV correspondent and National Jewish Book Award-winning author of Pro mised Land

In Food Americana , David Page gives a hungry public just what it needs: the fascinating inside scoop on our nations most iconic foods, and the reasons why they are so beloved. Pages rich storytelling sets a grand table, serves a literary feast, and leaves you savoring ever y morsel.

Adrian Miller, James Beard Award-winning author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time

Few people think about the background and staying power of the favorite things they eat. David Page brings each foods history to ev ery bite!

Marvin Lender, cofounder of Lenders Fro zen Bagels

A delicious, nutritious multi-course meal of history that goes down as easy as an appetizer, but satisfies like a mai n course.

Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquer ed America

In Food Americana , David Page celebrates Americas iconic dishes: what they are, where they came from, where they are going, who loves them, and why. Its a gold mine of information, told not just with facts, but with beguiling anecdotes and good humor. This is a book that shows how deeply and brilliantly (and deliciously) what we eat defines wh o we are.

Michael Stern, author o f Roadfood

The Remarkable
People and Incredible Stories behind Americas Favorite Dishes

Coral Gables

Copyright 2021 by David Page

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover, Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni
Cover Illustration: lukeruk / Adobe Stock

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Food Americana: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories behind Americas Favorite Dishes

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2021931802
ISBN: (p) 978-1-64250-586-3, (e) 978-1-64250-587-0
BISAC category code CKB030000, COOKING / Essays & Narratives

Printed in the United States of America

Fo r Roberta.
For a million wonderfu l reasons.

Contents

When I was a child, my grandmother used to make me something she, for some reason, called Jewish spaghetti. It was pasta, boiled, then fried in a pan with onions and ketchup. And yes, it was as awful as it sounds. But in its own way, it is a perfect example of how America created a cuisine: a Jewish woman, who came to this country to escape the violent anti-Semitism of pre-World-War-Two Poland, cooking some version of an Italian dish that she saw as an American staple. The history of American food is the story of embracing another countrys cuisine, then changing it. And, as one of those who lives to eat instead of eating to live, I have long been fascinated by the backstories of food. How did a dish come to be? In making Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives , I focused on individual plates. Individual people. And I realized that virtually all of these classic American food stories had one thing in commonthey began someplace else. So, I decided to tell the broader story, how America imported the cuisines of many different countries and combined them into a cuisine of our own. I began in late 2018, talking to academics, experts, and many, many restaurateurs. Halfway through (after my reporting on large group events, such as the Buffalo Chicken Wing Festival, had been completed), the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and within its overall tragedy, it had a major impact on the restaurant business. Many employees were laid off or fired. Many restaurants went out of business entirely. Even the most high-end restaurants began doing takeout to survive. Americans had to rethink something as basic as how to eat. Yet, the essence of our cuisine did not changethe pizza we had delivered, the breakfast bagel from a drive-through, the grab-and-go-sushi purchased during a quick, masked visit to the convenience storeall are examples of food from elsewhere that we now call our own. This is their story. And ours.

Im sweating miserably. My left hand feels like its on fire, which makes sense since Ive shoved it into a thousand-degree oven to maneuver a long metal pole with a perforated oversized spatula on the end. Its a pizza peel, used to move the pies around as they bake between searing hot coals on the left and intense gas flames on the right. And Im feeling every one of the thousand degrees as I try, again and again, to get the pizzas just right. It turns out, you dont just slide one in, wait a few minutes, then slide it out. No, youve got to start by charring the crust and turning the pizza as each section facing the fire blackens just enough. Then, after each turn, the pizza must return to the exact same spot it was on, which has cooled a bit from heating the crust. Any part that lands on the hotter area outside that circle will burn, and Im having a hell of a time, not just landing in the right place, but turning the pies in the first place. Im at Tony Gemignanis International School of Pizza, and it appears Im not one of the s mart kids.

Gemignani is one of the leading lights in the world of pizza, the first American to be named World Champion Pizza Maker at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, where pizza was born, and the winner of more than a dozen other pizza competition championships. He has welcomed me to join one of the classes he teaches out of his Pizza Napolitana restaurant in the traditionally Italian North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. This is before the COVID pandemic, and applications are way up, he says, because more and more novices want to learn how to make pizza, and more and more established pizza makers want to learn how to make it better. There is a renaissance now in pizza, he says. Everythings evolving, the ingredients are evolving. It has been for the last ten years, especially with chefs coming into our industry, with bakers coming into our industry and making pizza gre at again.