Interview Transcript

So, here’s the book: Food Americana. It’s really a wonderful read and, you know, every case study you go through in the book, like pizza, Chinese food, Mexican food, every one is completely fascinating. I’d love to dive in and hear more about your thoughts about how all this unfolded. So, is there such a thing as American cuisine and how did you come to write this book, Food Americana?

Well, the short answer is yes, there’s American Cuisine. I came to write it out of personal experience. I became really deeply interested in food when I was posted overseas for NBC News as a producer and traveling from country to country, pre-Internet. And not ever having expected to leave America. I mean, they called me up one day and said, Hey, you wanna move to England? And from there I moved to Germany and then Budapest, Hungary. I was remarkably unprepared for all of the places I was being sent. And I kind of had a study pretty quickly. And I found that one of the best ways to understand a country or culture was through its food. You know, why do they eat so much wild boar in Tuscany? Well, because it was historically a poor region. And if you wanted to eat, you had to kill something. And what you were most likely to find that you could kill was a wild boar. When you go to Strasburg in France, why are you eating Germanic choucroute, which is, you know, pork on top of sauerkraut. Well, that reveals to you that that area went back and forth in terms of which country owned it forever. And that really awakened in me a deep interest in food.

When I got back to the States, I eventually ended up creating Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. And that got me deep into American food, if you will. And, more and more over time, I stockpiled stories and interests and decided as all TV producers do eventually, whether they actually act on it or not. Everyone thinks it’s easy to write TV and it’s hard to write a book. Those of us who are TV producers carry a chip on our shoulder because frankly, it’s harder to write for television. You can’t just sit down and type out whatever you want to type out. You’ve got to figure out the words that integrate with the pictures and that can move the pictures forward. But, you know, we all think we have a book in us, and I said, what interests me? And it was this. And I dived in; thoroughly enjoyed the process.

To answer the other half of the question, I came to the conclusion looking at everything that I had put on Diners, looking at every place that I liked eating in various towns, there was a cuisine. It was something we constructed, much like we constructed American democracy out of other countries and cultures. And you know, when you go to a Chinese restaurant in America, all of us have gone with that real bore who looks up and says, this isn’t authentic Chinese food. Well, no, it’s not authentic Chinese food. It is authentic Chinese American food. Just as, with the exception of something called polpette, which are very small round meatballs, there are no meatballs as we know them in Italy. When the poorest of the poor left Southern Italy to come to the United States in the 1800s, to their shock when they got here, they found out that being poor here was different than being poor there, where even pasta was considered a luxury item and only enjoyed on a Sunday, if ever. Here, poor people could afford meat. And that is what created Italian American cuisine, which is to a great extent based on abbondanza, you know, a whole lot of everything. I live in New Jersey where red sauce cooking means open your belt and, you know, strap in for a few hours of absolute gluttony. And we’ve done that with bagels from Poland. In Poland, they weren’t quite what they are here. But they were similar, and they were sold by Jewish peddlers in the streets on long sticks. Because they had holes in the middle, you could, you could stack ’em on the sticks and young kids would walk around the town square shouting in polish. I don’t know the actual words but shouting something that translated as bagels and lemonade. When Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States, packed into the Lower East side into tenements, they did what they knew how to do. And bakers started making bagels which then became far more than a Jewish food. They became a New York food. And then in horribly awful incarnations, they became an American food. I would argue it’s still hard to get a decent bagel outside of New York for any number of reasons, but bagels are American cuisine now. They’re not the bagels per se that were eaten in Poland. But there’s something from another country that we took and made into our own. And by the way, the cuisine continues to evolve. It now includes Vietnamese banh mi. As more and more cuisines are sampled here, they’re modified by the lack of availability of original ingredients for the immigrants who are here who have to look for alternatives. And they’re modified to suit broader tastes. You know, the original spices of much of Mexican cuisine… and when I say Mexican cuisine, it was basically the food of the Nortenos, Northern Mexico, because as with all countries, Mexico is a combination of cuisines based on regionality. But, when Americans started sampling, quote, Mexican cuisine, unquote, much of it was too hot for us. For the most part, those people who had lived in what was Mexico who were now living in America after the Mexican American war, when America seized half of Mexico. Those who opened restaurants realize that, you know, if you want a broader clientele, you better tone things down. That’s the Americanization of another culture’s food, and that is American cuisine.

I’m hoping you wouldn’t mind taking a little detour and talk about how magical it is to connect with a culture through food and through the people you meet in that context. You and I were talking before we started recording and you mentioned a trip you made to Spain and how wonderful this particular connection was. And I was thinking about some things I’ve done recently that have connected me with people and their history through their food. And there’s something very magical about that. But tell us about your trip to Spain because I thought it was very interesting.

My wife and I went to Spain a few years ago, and I had worked in Spain a fair amount when I was overseas as a journalist. But I’d never really had the opportunity to do much vacation in Spain. And I can’t remember if it was Madrid or Valencia, it may have been Valencia. But we signed up for a half day cooking course. And we showed up and it was taught by somebody’s grandmother. I made the mistake of trying to be polite and use my leftover high school Spanish, and I was the only one who in the class who did. So, she decided I was fluent, which I’m not. But she and I had a lengthy conversation during the class, which consisted of her saying things I did not understand in me nodding my head and saying, si. But it was just a remarkably wonderful experience to have my hands on and in and be learning about another culture. You know, one of the things I realized when I first started traveling much of the world for NBC and again, I had never expected to be sent overseas, was that there are a million ways to do things. You know, this is going to sound kind of gross, but until you go overseas and you realize there are different shapes to toilets, you know, people look at the same problem and figure it out in slightly different ways. You learn that there are multiple ways to approach things, to address things, to do things. And first of all, the cooking in Spain is extraordinary. And it’s an underappreciated cuisine here in the United States. But, you know, we’re in cooking class making a Spanish tortilla, which is not a Mexican tortilla. Mexican tortilla obviously is a disc of dough, either corn or wheat, depending upon the region. A tortilla in Spain is an omelet, but more than an omelet, it’s kinda like a frittata. It’s a very thick, almost spongy, egg-based product with potatoes in it. And making that and learning how to make that and the way that this teacher had clearly been making it, that she had learned from her mother, who had learned from her mother. You know, you turn it upside down to get it out of the dish. It was just a wonderful experience. And look, I’ve been fortunate enough to have that experience in any number of countries. This one, wasn’t terribly culinary, but I was in Moscow in a bar frequented by locals. And this was under the Soviet Union; it was a long time ago. But they had the bars for Westerners where they took dollars and served the good vodka, which Russians could not get by the way. I mean, there was no Stoli for Russians. But we were in this real low rent bar and a guy sat down next to me with Asian features. And through, kind of, hand signals and some assistance from I guess one of the NBC translators or something, we exchanged life stories. It turned out he was visiting from Siberia to do some kind of business. Had never been to the big city. And he had… everything in the Soviet Union was crappy. I mean, it was made of plastic. He had a plastic briefcase. But he was here on business apparently. And as we got drunker and friendlier and you know, arms around each other and hail fellow well met, he opened his briefcase to reveal that it was filled with salted fish. He had brought his own delicacy from home because you never know what you’re going to find in the big, bad city. And sitting at that bar, I had me some Siberian salted fish and it was damn fine.

What a neat experience.

Oh, it was fantastic. Just fantastic.

You’ve reminded me, and I was mentioning this to you as well, but I love barbecue of all kinds from all places. And the North Carolina form of barbecue is typically pulled pork. And the Eastern part of the state is famous for cooking whole hogs, the Western part for cooking just the pork shoulder. But in the Eastern part they say they talk about cooking everything but the squeal. And there’s a local restaurant in Raleigh, which is about a half hour for me and where I live in Durham. And there’s a well-known barbecue icon in North Carolina named Sam Jones, who’s the third generation of his family to run a restaurant in a little town called Aiden, North Carolina, which is frequently considered the best barbecue place in the state. Sam, at his restaurant in Raleigh, was running a half a day intensive workshop for those of us out there in the world who want to learn more about it. I took that workshop and it was a wonderful experience just like you’re talking about. Because not only did I learn about the techniques of cooking the food and I was in their smokehouse, and it was just a great experience. But this fellow, Sam himself, was a really interesting character. And to hear about his family history and what the food means to them and how they learned the traditions and stuff was just absolutely fascinating. And I’m reaching for, I got a copy of a book he wrote on whole hog barbecue. There’s Sam himself and with…

Daniel Vaughn the writer.

Yes, that’s exactly right. What a great experience. I feel as you do that connecting with cultures through their food and meeting the people is just an incredible experience. Let’s get back to your book now, Food Americana. So, you gave us the example of bagels, you talked a little bit about Chinese food, but give us some more richness to how these foods might have begun and what kind of forms they took in America. And I know you talked about pizza as one example. I thought the pizza one was especially interesting. Part of it is because I spent many years of my career at Yale University and was surrounded by New Haven Pizza, which was unbelievable.

Which is called what? Apizza?

Apizza. Yes.

Well, that’s coal-fired thin crust, right?

Coal-fired. You know, I could go in one of those restaurants and just order crust and be happy. It was that good.

What I found interesting in researching one of the New Haven pizzas that’s legendary is clam pizza. And what I learned was that the clams weren’t from Connecticut. That they were brought in from someplace else. I just assumed, because, you know, you got the water there that that was a local thing. And apparently it was not, which surprised the hell outta me. I mean, I live on the coast of New Jersey and there’s a place down here that does its version of clam pizza and it is local clams.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Pizza was the food of the poor in the South of Italy. Pizza was basically dough with a little bit of tomato. And if you had a couple of bucks that day, that week, maybe you put a piece of lard on top. I mean that, that was it. And when the immigrants began arriving in the United States and found that good food was easier to obtain, that’s when pizza started to morph into what we know it as today. Now the wheat in Italy was different than the wheat here. The form of a fire being used was different. I’m trying to remember, I guess it was coal in New York at the time, and wood in Italy. So, you ended up with a different kind of crust in terms of airiness and crispness. But what you also ended up with is a perfect example of the development of American cuisine. Which is every place that pizza went, it was different. It evolved based on what was available in a particular region. You’ve got pizza in, I think it’s St. Louis, maybe Kansas City, where they use kind of a processed provel cheese. I guess it’s St. Louis. Because that’s what they had. That’s nothing. It’s not mozzarella. It’s not Parmesan. It’s the local cheese. Or you have pizza in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, that was created for the miners by a bar owner using what is rumored to have been government cheese. These were poor people. So that’s how that developed. You’ve got Detroit Pizza, which is having a renaissance moment now, but it has its square shape because it was initially baked in these blue steel automotive pans. They may have been oil pans that were liberated either from an auto factory or a parts supplier. You know, Chicago Pizza certainly developed in a unique way, although there are two kinds of Chicago pizza. There’s the deep dish that, it’s really a frigging casserole. And then there’s cracker thin pizza that, that’s delightful. But you see pizza developing according to what’s around it. I mean, it’s the perfect example of local, regional, seasonal. And then as pizza became a self-perpetuating thing, it then became a kind of a palette for creative American chefs to go nuts. The iconic decision being Wolfgang Puck at Spago in Beverly Hills. Putting what would be politely called smoked salmon, what else? New York Jews would call lox on a pizza with creme fresh and, you know, reinventing the world. In fact, the real reinvention of pizza in that way occurred at California Pizza Kitchen in California, where barbecue chicken pizza became a big deal. And pizza continues to evolve. I mean, I had a debate the other day with the owner and chef at an Italian restaurant about whether or not pineapple goes on pizza. And I obviously, I think that Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and ham is a war crime. He argues that doing what he does, which is a not canned pineapple but fresh pineapple that is macerated, chopped, and served with, I think, pork cheek as opposed to ham. Some more subtle, substantial use of pork that is in fact a terrific combination of flavors. And I’m not going to argue with him because that actually sounded pretty damn good.

It does sound good.

You know, pizza continues to evolve. What’s interesting with pizza is, and I have this complaint with so much of how Americans consume food, is that given the choice between a great local pizzeria and BS factory like Dominoes, so much of America picks Dominoes. I mean, at the time I wrote the book a few years ago, 60% of pizza was sold at chains; 40% was sold at independents. But why, why would you possibly pick this cookie cutter piece of crap when somebody down the street from you is doing it right?

You just remind me of so much, and when you mentioned Old Forge, Pennsylvania, when I read that in your book, I have a good friend who lives in Philadelphia. And I got in touch with him. I said, oh, I need to come up to Philadelphia, and we need to make a road trip to the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. And then go down to Old Forge and try this pizza David Page was writing about and stuff. And it’s just fun to do this. And I did this recently. I told you earlier, I’d made a road trip and driven part of Route 66 through Oklahoma. And stopped in this little town El Reno and had the famous Oklahoma onion burger at Johnny’s and sat at the counter and talked to the cook. And I enjoyed that as much as any four-star, high end, hundreds of dollars meal. It just, it’s fun.

Well, but there is a misunderstanding of what good food is. I liked, well, many things about what Pete Wells did when he was a New York Times food critic. But one of the things I really liked was the fact that he evaluated restaurants based on their intent. You could be a three-star taco stand. If the promise you are making to someone is, I’m gonna make you the best goddamn taco you ever had. You have to evaluate that based on that. Not, is it La Verna dining? And frankly, our hangup with and fascination on high end haute cuisine, $350 a plate, little, tiny morsels of shit. I much prefer real food. And, you know, the foodie culture goes nuts for stuff that is fru fru, and they did this, and they did that. Making the perfect hamburger in El Reno, Oklahoma, and you know, I talked about how in Tuscany boar was the food of poverty. Onion burgers, which are considered by some purest to be the finest form of hamburger came out of, I think it was the Depression. It was certainly a time of poverty. Where you stretched a burger by adding onions to the meat. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, I don’t think it was… is El Reno outside Oklahoma City?

Yes. It’s within an hour drive.

Yeah. It’s near Tinker Airbase. El Reno is where, I included this in the book, there is a fabulous sushi restaurant in a gas station. Now the local clientele heavily Air Force people who have been in Asia, but apparently, it’s phenomenal sushi. And interestingly enough, I just interviewed the chef owner of three restaurants in Oklahoma. He has a restaurant called Gray Sweater, which is highly upscale, and he has a couple of others. He was telling me that the food scene in Oklahoma has been really, really booming under the radar. And I went to school in Oklahoma. I was thrown out of both major state universities. And you know, back when I went, it was great chicken fried steak. There was some barbecue that was basically Texas barbecue that had migrated North. But I didn’t see Oklahoma as culinary heaven. And apparently, it’s quite the place to eat these days.

I would agree with that. I went to some really fine restaurants when I was there. Plus the people are just lovely.

Oh, yeah. And by the way, you talk about American cuisine. And I’m not sure if there was a direct evolution, but clearly it’s an Americanized form of schnitzel. It’s hard to, if you live in the East coast and you haven’t had a chicken fried steak…you have no idea what you’re missing. But again, food of poverty. You take a bad cut of meat, you tenderize it by beating the hell out of it with a mallet, then you dip it in egg and flour and you deep fry it. I mean that’s…

Oh, and the right gravy on that.

Oh yeah. The cream gravy.

Yeah.

And, you know, don’t mention it to your cardiologist, but I fell in love with that and as a college student with pure grain alcohol when I was in Oklahoma. So, it did have a couple of things I liked.

I might have recorded 300 podcasts or something like that, but none has made me as hungry.

This is good, right?

Oh, it’s great. So, let me end with a final question. And I think I can guess how you’re going to answer this, but if you look at American cuisine compared to the things that it descended from, like foods from Italy and Mexico, and China and things. Is it just different? Is it authentic in its own right? Is it better worse? How do you think about that?

It is wonderfully different. It has an antecedent. It’s like looking at a German Shepherd and also being aware it was once a wolf. They’re two completely different species. And some of the traits of one are reflected in the other, but they’re different cuisines. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in Italy, thank God. And second to Spanish food, it’s probably my number two all-time favorite. But, when you look at American cuisine, red sauce Italian is among my favorites. They’re totally different cuisines. Chinese food, the same. You know, there’s a great book and documentary In Search Of General Tso, in which the writer, Jennifer A. Lee. went looking for the guy who invented General Tso’s chicken in Taiwan. And she found him and showed him what his invention had become in America. They bear no resemblance to each other. He was shocked. But I love general. Now, I can’t eat it much because had a diabetes scare and had to lose a bunch of weight. But it’s a wonderful dish. It is about as Chinese as Matzo. You know, it’s an American invention, but remember, American Chinese food began in California after the Gold Rush when a whole bunch of Cantonese people came over to search for gold and they set up restaurants. Some came to set up restaurants for them, and they realized that Americans didn’t eat offal, and much of Chinese cuisine is, you know, a nose to tail. So, they either invented or reinvented chopped suey with Americanized proteins and that’s what kicked off the Chinese food boom. And there’s this mall in Flushing New York that serves the food the way it’s served in China. This stuff, it’ll blow your mind. It’s extraordinary. But that doesn’t make the food that you get at a good Chinese American restaurant invalid. It’s just wonderfully different.