What really is “American Cuisine”? I can’t seem to put my finger on it.
McDonald’s?
Cornbread. Or more generally, anything made from maize.
You could also throw in tomatoes, potatoes, squash, chili peppers, and all the other many food plants not native to the Old World, but most of those have since been adopted by many other national cuisines. Corn, though, never seems to have really caught on anywhere but here.
Hamburgers. Maybe pizza (US style). Sure the origins are from other countries, but one is almost 100% American and the other is far removed from its origins.
Corn: some countries put it on their pizza. Cornbread is iffy: it’s predominantly Southern. Grits certainly don’t count.
Cornbread is all over the place in the US. Different regions have different versions of it, and will argue loudly about which is the best, but everywhere in the country has some version of it or another.
And the places that put corn on pizza tend to consider it an “American” thing. That’s no different than us getting “Chinese” food in America: It doesn’t make real Chinese food any less distinctive.
Does “here” include Mexican cuisine? Not just tamales and tortillas, but everything from elotes and esquites to corn-and-black-bean salad (or soup, or salsa…).
Traditional American Thanksgiving dinner perhaps?
The hell? How are cornbread and grits not “American cuisine”? Is the South not America all of a sudden? And this is coming from a born-and-raised Yankee.
America’s a big country. There are lots of distinct regional cuisines, but I think all those add up to a larger “American cuisine.” If I were running a restaurant in a foreign country specializing in “American cuisine,” you bet grits and cornbread would be on the menu.
If there were a “world cuisine convention” somewhere I would probably like California Cuisine to represent the US.
Fresh, local ingredients (not necessarily Californian) cooked in an original way using a fusion of various different styles and ethnic flavors. I think it represents the “melting pot” concept pretty well.
Burger and Fries
Steak and Potatoes
Pizza
Fried Chicken
I think the above poster was saying (in regards to southern food) that regional foods don’t represent American food, but rather a subset of American food. The above four are pretty ubiquitous across the country, at least in terms of meat eaters.
Here in New England, cornbread would be highly unusual to see.
If we’re going to define it that way (which I think is questionable, at best), then we might want to add chili and barbecue to the list. But those, just like pizza, are highly variable depending on the region. Where does catfish fit in? I very much associate that with “American food,” but it’s not necessarily a popular item everywhere.
I’m surprised corn bread is that unusual in New England.
I suppose we can all agree on things like apple pie, pumpkin pie, rhubarb (with or without strawberry) pie, right?
Hamburgers and barbecue.
I’m happy that no one else has mentioned cream of mushroom soup, onion soup mix, cream cheese, or Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. Because I really don’t want any of those items to be involved in the distinctive American cuisine.
I very much like the argument that a friend of mine made, having grown up in a family that ran a Chinese restaurant, that American Chinese food is the real national cuisine. It’s quite distinct from actual Chinese food, and it’s popular and ubiquitous all over the country; most of the other foods offered up as ‘American cuisine’ are somewhat regionally focused.
There went my dinner plans.
I thought I read somewhere that pizza was invented in America, not Italy, but that was long ago and probably anecdotal. Other than that I’d add turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, hamburgers, corn in general, including grits. Scrambled eggs? Any eggs with the yolk freaking cooked all the way (I watch too much Gordon Ramsay)? Grilled cheese sandwiches? Banana sandwiches? Apple pie?
It was…at least for the way we use the term pizza…mostly.
Because it’s goddamn Southern cuisine. I’ve had grits maybe once in my life, and it was in the South. The rest of the country finds that stuff appalling. Northerners may know what cornbread is, but they don’t ever buy it unless they’re having stew or something, otherwise it’s 99% French, white, sourdough, etc. bread. Italian beef is from “America,” but I don’t think anyone outside of the Great Lakes has heard of it. If you include regional cuisines, then your list increases a hundredfold, including all of the “barbecue should include mustard,” “no, dry rub,” “no, anything with BBQ sauce on it and it can be microwaved” people.
Weird, I live in Chicago, and I had cornbread, grits, and even sausage gravy every once in awhile growing up. (I mean, hell, didn’t Quaker sell grits and flavored grits in similar packages to Cream of Wheat and oatmeal? I mean, no offense to Southerners for the blasphemy, but I remember those being quite common at the local supermarket.) And my parents were Polish immigrants (my father would make the sausage gravy–I suspect that was from his days in Vietnam.) Southern food is American food.
I think that’s right, but misses a larger point. Other countries don’t have a national cuisine, either. I was in Nuremburg, and told some of the people I was working with about the good German food I had at a particular restaurant. They said that wasn’t German, it was Franconian.
I think most countries, not just America, have regional differences. It’s our mistake to lump them all together into a single national cuisine.
Nonsense. 
Cornbread is very common. It’s been made here in MA since the 1620s at Plimoth.