Can dates be pinpointed for “the first X restaurant opened in the United States”? For instance:
it’s hard to imagine that Indian cuisine was available in the U.S. circa WWII … but maybe I’m wrong.
same with sushi places (excepting perhaps in Hawai’i and the West Coast). Outside of those areas, sushi restaurants have to be no older than, say, the late 1950s, right?
it seems that the Chinese restaurant scene is likely to be pretty old on the West Coast (and perhaps in Boston & N.Y., too). But how long did people in places like Saginaw, Little Rock, Topeka, or Syracuse have to wait before Chinese restaurants were commonplace locally?
Well, Chop Souy has been in the US since 1888. Before the turn of the centruy, the dish had spread throughout the country.
If you consider Soul Food as an ethnic dish, the first recipes to be printed were published in 1881 (over 80 years before the term Soul Food was created).
Even tiny little Mayberry. NC had a Chinese restaurant in The Andy Griffith show. That goes back to the early 1960’s and it is written to suggest that it was perfectly natural for even small Southern towns to have Chinese restaurants by that point so your point may have some basis in fact.
Fior d’ Italia, in San Francisco is still open, and was founded it 1886. Isn’t Italian ethnic?
I wonder if a white dude could’ve walked into a Chinese restaurant during the California gold rush and get served. I’ve eaten in tons of restaurants where no one spoke a word of English and still managed to get food. The Four Seas in San Francisco has been open since the 1930’s and certainly there were Chinese restaurants before then.
I don’t think soul food counts as ethnic food. It is a type of American food and has very deep roots especially in the South. Likewise, Louisiana has a few types of unique cuisines that are highly regarded internationally. A lot of it is derived from French cooking styles but it is still a native born cooking tradition. New Orleans in particular has existing restaurants like Antoine’s that date back before the Civil War but the cooking style itself goes back to the 1700’s. Those types of cooking styles are as American as you can but most people don’t think of it that way because it is dependent on localized American history.
I believe you are correct. The point still stands though. I find it interesting that you could get Chinese food in some of those types of towns back in the 1950’s and 60’s but you couldn’t get pizza. My parents were born around 1950 and they never had pizza until they were teenagers. It barely existed in large parts of the country until the 1970’s.
I personally consider Soul Food to be American food also, much like Creole and Tex-Mex food as American. However, I’ve gotten into arguments with people who claim all three of those are ethnic foods. So I thought I’d be on the safe side and pitch the idea out there just in case, thus the inclusion of the phrase “if you consider”.
in the WPA guide to New York from 1939, it lists restaurants from these nationalities: Armenian, Austrian, Chinese, East Indian, English, French, French-Hungarian, French-Italian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Latin-American, Mexican, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Syrian, Swedish, and Turkish. With explanations of unfamiliar dishes like ravioli, tortillas, tacos, borscht, arroz con pollo, smorgasbord, shish kebab, and bouillabaisse.
Well, yeah, after 1827. James Fenimore Cooper used it as referring to French restaurants in Paris. In the US, while restaurants existed, you wouldn’t know them as restaurants until the 1850s or so.
Indian restaurants existed in New York in the 1920s. Probably not many, but they were there.
Long time! When we came back to Iowa from Seattle in 1990, we looked for Chinese restaurants. We found a good one in Iowa City, but it wasn’t until several years later that one opened up within a reasonable driving distance. Now there are four within 8 miles, and several more within 30.
Didn’t get a real Italian pizza place until the early 60’s.
Would some immigrants have opened restaurants as soon as they arrived? Or are you asking about ethnic food outside of immigrant neighborhoods?
