4 ms·

Something not really touched on here is how poor people's ethnic food can become fashionable and achieve high prices and desirability, often far outside its ori

by beat 10y ago

Something not really touched on here is how poor people's ethnic food can become fashionable and achieve high prices and desirability, often far outside its origins. Consider the recent bone broth craze, for example. Here in Minneapolis, the current trend is Southern food, often made by hipsters who grew up in Minnesota and have no real cultural ties to the South. For me, with my half-southern roots, it's kind of bizarre to see stuff like bologna sandwiches and collard greens popping up everywhere and commanding high prices. That's the stuff you got at church luncheons and roadside shacks in Kentucky. I don't expect them to start serving burgoo made from red squirrels anytime soon.

CuriouslyC 10y ago
As someone who lives and has traveled extensively in the south, I have to say that from a culinary standpoint the food is the best example of a true American cuisine. New England also has a cuisine with cultural heritage, but it isn't as quintessentially American as barbecue/southern food.
- beat 10y ago
  It's definitely more strongly regional and more distinctive than other places I've traveled in America. The only place that seems to compare for uniqueness is California.
  - ferentchak 10y ago
    What would be an example of a dish that is very uniquely Californian?
    - beat 10y ago
      I think of Californian food as a range of ingredients and stylistic flairs more than a particular dish. Avocadoes, lemon, leafy greens and seeds, an avoidance of deep-frying and greasy meats. It's much lighter and fresher than Midwestern or southern food.
    - Spellman 10y ago
      Depends on how back you go I suppose. In modern cuisine, if it's got avocados, it's Californian! If you want to go much further back, you get Mexican food.
      - Maultasche 10y ago
        Having lived most of my life in California, I was surprised to discover there was such a thing as "California" food when I traveled to the East Coast about 10 years ago. It turns out that "California" food there was food that involved avocados. I had never heard of such a thing before. Avocados are definitely eaten in California, and they have been for as long as I remember, but I'm not under the impression that it defines California food. Occasionally, I'll get avocados in a sandwich, salad, or burrito, but that's about it. Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that it became associated with California. I guess if you don't live in other parts of the country, you don't have a sense of which foods are unique to your region and which foods are common throughout the country.
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        > Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that it became associated with California. It's not hard to explain. They won't grow in the rest of the country. They do grow in Mexico; I understand NAFTA hit the California avocado business pretty hard.
    - DougMerritt 10y ago
      Agreeing with and adding to the 2 previous comments, specifically "California Rolls" in sushi restaurants. There are many variants, but the primary thing is the avocado.
- js2 10y ago
  I guess the sandwich isn't a cuisine, but as a category, America has lots of wonderful variations of it: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-guide-to-the-sandwich.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-g... I'd also like to nominate creole/cajun as my favorite American cuisine, NC eastern-style bbq as my favorite bbq, and shrimp and grits (with runner-up chicken and waffles) as my favorite soul food.
- wtbob 10y ago
  And then there are things within the South like Tidewater food, which up until the past century was still a combination of English-settler and aboriginal food: pork and squash, just like our ancestors ate at Jamestown or soon after. It's almost completely extinct now, which IMHO is a damn shame: it can be delicious and filling, and — unlike so many of the cuisines in this country — really is native at this point (the English heritage took root in the Tidewater over 400 years ago, so I consider it native).
manachar 10y ago
Quinoa is a great example of this trend and the positive and negative this can bring to poor regions. Small overview: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...
- __derek__ 10y ago
  The negative, it turns out, was overstated.[1] [1]: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/31/472453674/your-quinoa-habit-really-did-help-perus-poor-but-theres-trouble-ahead http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/31/472453674/you...
donretag 10y ago
Lobster is another great example. It used to be a poor man's food and now it commands a high price.
- beat 10y ago
  Interestingly, lobster is pretty cheap now, due to abnormally high numbers of catch-sized lobsters (probably something to do with global warming). There's a restaurant here in town that specializes in basically lobster everything, and it's not out of line price-wise with standard Minneapolis hipster fare. If lobster prices ever go back up, they're toast. Their whole menu would skyrocket.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Relatively :-) Lobster meat in Maine still runs about $40 per pound. It may be about half that if you cook soft shells and pick your own meat but prices for live lobster are still $1 to $2 per pound higher this year at this time than they were the last few.
    - douche 10y ago
      No way - it's been $5-8/pound this summer, and that's buying live lobsters from the grocery store, not off the boats on the coast where it's cheaper. Of course, last year and the year before the prices were historically low; I think I bought hard-shells once for $2.50 a pound.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        Well, yes. I was talking retail, not wholesale but my point was that lobster is still pricey per pound compared to other protein at retail (and wholesale). Last week soft shells were running about $6 per pound at lobster pounds and other local retail sources. They were more like $4 to $5 last year. [EDIT: The $40-ish/lb was for picked lobster meat.]
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    Or they'll just do what tons of other restaurants already do and serve you fake lobster and no one would know the difference. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lobster-not-lobster-substitute_us_56b9eb62e4b04f9b57db0a57 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lobster-not-lobster-subs...
tcj_phx 10y ago
> Consider the recent bone broth craze, for example. Broths made with cartilage and bone are much more nutritious than muscle proteins. Humans have traditionally eaten as much of the animal as they could, for efficiency. Incorporating the types of amino acids in the rest of the animal in addition to the meat is more compatible with wellness. Bone broth is a correction of a mistake, not a "craze".
- beat 10y ago
  Not knocking bone broth as a food - it's wonderful. But as the latest "magic ingredient", as Michael Pollan would put it? Yeah. Bone broth is a pain for restaurants to make. Doing it right takes very long cook times. It won't last as a trend, and people sure as heck aren't going to make it themselves, unless they're nerds (my daughter makes fish and duck bone broths at home, but she's a nerd - and half the time she cheats and pads it with hearts and livers to reduce the cooking time).
  - pandaman 10y ago
    I have not seen straight bone broth restaurants but ramen shops had been a thing for decades and don't seem to go away. Ramen is based on a broth, which might not be only from bone (even though there is tonkotsu ramen too) but still takes dozens of hours to cook.
riot504 10y ago
I am southern (New Orleans, live in Idaho now) and love collard greens, but they are super cheap to make. Also, fried pork chops, catfish etc... southern/Cajun is hands down the best food in the world. Nothing is more hipster than paying a high price for bologna sandwich.
- chiph 10y ago
  The hard part about preparing collards is making sure you washed all the sand out of them. In rural Georgia and the Carolinas, you'll see an old washing machine on the back porch that's used just for that purpose - throw the greens in there, short cycle on cold (no soap of course!) and they're ready for cooking. BBQ is another southern classic. Whether it's Eastern NC style chopped pork with vinegar sauce, or Texas smoked brisket served dry, it's all good.
  - dwc 10y ago
    I'm from Arizona, but I love that NC vinegar sauce!

by beat 10y ago

CuriouslyC 10y ago

As someone who lives and has traveled extensively in the south, I have to say that from a culinary standpoint the food is the best example of a true American cuisine. New England also has a cuisine with cultural heritage, but it isn't as quintessentially American as barbecue/southern food.

beat 10y ago
It's definitely more strongly regional and more distinctive than other places I've traveled in America. The only place that seems to compare for uniqueness is California.
- ferentchak 10y ago
  What would be an example of a dish that is very uniquely Californian?
  - beat 10y ago
    I think of Californian food as a range of ingredients and stylistic flairs more than a particular dish. Avocadoes, lemon, leafy greens and seeds, an avoidance of deep-frying and greasy meats. It's much lighter and fresher than Midwestern or southern food.
  - Spellman 10y ago
    Depends on how back you go I suppose. In modern cuisine, if it's got avocados, it's Californian! If you want to go much further back, you get Mexican food.
    - Maultasche 10y ago
      Having lived most of my life in California, I was surprised to discover there was such a thing as "California" food when I traveled to the East Coast about 10 years ago. It turns out that "California" food there was food that involved avocados. I had never heard of such a thing before. Avocados are definitely eaten in California, and they have been for as long as I remember, but I'm not under the impression that it defines California food. Occasionally, I'll get avocados in a sandwich, salad, or burrito, but that's about it. Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that it became associated with California. I guess if you don't live in other parts of the country, you don't have a sense of which foods are unique to your region and which foods are common throughout the country.
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        > Maybe eating avocados was so foreign to the rest of the country that it became associated with California. It's not hard to explain. They won't grow in the rest of the country. They do grow in Mexico; I understand NAFTA hit the California avocado business pretty hard.
  - DougMerritt 10y ago
    Agreeing with and adding to the 2 previous comments, specifically "California Rolls" in sushi restaurants. There are many variants, but the primary thing is the avocado.
js2 10y ago
I guess the sandwich isn't a cuisine, but as a category, America has lots of wonderful variations of it: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-guide-to-the-sandwich.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-g... I'd also like to nominate creole/cajun as my favorite American cuisine, NC eastern-style bbq as my favorite bbq, and shrimp and grits (with runner-up chicken and waffles) as my favorite soul food.
wtbob 10y ago
And then there are things within the South like Tidewater food, which up until the past century was still a combination of English-settler and aboriginal food: pork and squash, just like our ancestors ate at Jamestown or soon after. It's almost completely extinct now, which IMHO is a damn shame: it can be delicious and filling, and — unlike so many of the cuisines in this country — really is native at this point (the English heritage took root in the Tidewater over 400 years ago, so I consider it native).

manachar 10y ago

Quinoa is a great example of this trend and the positive and negative this can bring to poor regions. Small overview: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...

__derek__ 10y ago
The negative, it turns out, was overstated.[1] [1]: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/31/472453674/your-quinoa-habit-really-did-help-perus-poor-but-theres-trouble-ahead http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/31/472453674/you...

donretag 10y ago

Lobster is another great example. It used to be a poor man's food and now it commands a high price.

beat 10y ago
Interestingly, lobster is pretty cheap now, due to abnormally high numbers of catch-sized lobsters (probably something to do with global warming). There's a restaurant here in town that specializes in basically lobster everything, and it's not out of line price-wise with standard Minneapolis hipster fare. If lobster prices ever go back up, they're toast. Their whole menu would skyrocket.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Relatively :-) Lobster meat in Maine still runs about $40 per pound. It may be about half that if you cook soft shells and pick your own meat but prices for live lobster are still $1 to $2 per pound higher this year at this time than they were the last few.
  - douche 10y ago
    No way - it's been $5-8/pound this summer, and that's buying live lobsters from the grocery store, not off the boats on the coast where it's cheaper. Of course, last year and the year before the prices were historically low; I think I bought hard-shells once for $2.50 a pound.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Well, yes. I was talking retail, not wholesale but my point was that lobster is still pricey per pound compared to other protein at retail (and wholesale). Last week soft shells were running about $6 per pound at lobster pounds and other local retail sources. They were more like $4 to $5 last year. [EDIT: The $40-ish/lb was for picked lobster meat.]
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Or they'll just do what tons of other restaurants already do and serve you fake lobster and no one would know the difference. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lobster-not-lobster-substitute_us_56b9eb62e4b04f9b57db0a57 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lobster-not-lobster-subs...

tcj_phx 10y ago

> Consider the recent bone broth craze, for example. Broths made with cartilage and bone are much more nutritious than muscle proteins. Humans have traditionally eaten as much of the animal as they could, for efficiency. Incorporating the types of amino acids in the rest of the animal in addition to the meat is more compatible with wellness. Bone broth is a correction of a mistake, not a "craze".

beat 10y ago
Not knocking bone broth as a food - it's wonderful. But as the latest "magic ingredient", as Michael Pollan would put it? Yeah. Bone broth is a pain for restaurants to make. Doing it right takes very long cook times. It won't last as a trend, and people sure as heck aren't going to make it themselves, unless they're nerds (my daughter makes fish and duck bone broths at home, but she's a nerd - and half the time she cheats and pads it with hearts and livers to reduce the cooking time).
- pandaman 10y ago
  I have not seen straight bone broth restaurants but ramen shops had been a thing for decades and don't seem to go away. Ramen is based on a broth, which might not be only from bone (even though there is tonkotsu ramen too) but still takes dozens of hours to cook.

riot504 10y ago

I am southern (New Orleans, live in Idaho now) and love collard greens, but they are super cheap to make. Also, fried pork chops, catfish etc... southern/Cajun is hands down the best food in the world. Nothing is more hipster than paying a high price for bologna sandwich.

chiph 10y ago
The hard part about preparing collards is making sure you washed all the sand out of them. In rural Georgia and the Carolinas, you'll see an old washing machine on the back porch that's used just for that purpose - throw the greens in there, short cycle on cold (no soap of course!) and they're ready for cooking. BBQ is another southern classic. Whether it's Eastern NC style chopped pork with vinegar sauce, or Texas smoked brisket served dry, it's all good.
- dwc 10y ago
  I'm from Arizona, but I love that NC vinegar sauce!