Tacos are another one. If you lived in places like Texas, California, or the southwestern part of the United States, tacos were pretty well known. If you lived in Wisconsin or Michigan probably not so much. If someone asked if you wanted a taco you might respond, “Is that a Greek dish?” Tacos are everywhere now and so common I don’t really think of it as a foreign dish. I recognize it’s origin as Mexican but it’s just as American to me as Coca-Cola, apple pie, and baseball.
Nachos are another fairly recent dish. It was invented in the 1940s and over the next few decades spread throughout the southwest. Nachos started being sold at Arlington Stadium in the Texas in the 70s and Howard Cosell was talking about them on Monday Night Football in the late 70s.
Indeed, residents of Hawaii use about 5 cans of spam per year on average. Residents of Guam used about 16 cans of spam per year on average. It’s also common in the Philippines, South Korea, and Puerto Rico.
To be fair, there’s a big difference in Midwestern locations between Chicago – a metropolitan city which is known for its food culture – and which, I’m pretty sure, already had a significant Mexican immigrant population by the 1970s – and small town central Illinois (or Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.)
My family lived in suburban Chicago in the early 1970s, and we had tacos regularly; my father worked in the city, and there was a tortilla manufacturing plant near his office; he bought bags of tortillas at the factory store, and brought them home for my mom to use.
But, in, let’s say, Rhinelander, Wisconsin (way up north) in the 1970s, you might have heard of tacos, probably from television, but unless you traveled to a bigger city that had a Mexican restaurant (even a Chi-Chi’s or a Taco Bell), there might not have been any place to actually get tacos. Even if you knew someone locally (maybe a transplant) who was familiar with them, buying the tortillas and salsa/sauce might not have been possible at the local grocery store.
Peets was preceded by Deidrich Coffee, which started in Southern California in 1972 and, throughout the 80s, provided some of the finest coffee I’ve ever tasted. But they lost in their battle with Starbucks, who purchased them in 2006. It was a sad day, but around the same time, Peets started growing in popularity. I still think that Peets makes an exceptional cup of coffee.
Another kind of food that’s become common in the U.S. recently is the food served in Ethiopian restaurants. The first Ethiopian restaurant in the U.S. opened in 1966, but it wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s that they became common in some places. Here’s a table of how many there are in each state (and Washington, D.C.). I know more about this than most Americans because I live in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. When you include the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, they are much more common than in many parts of the U.S.:
There was an Ethiopian restaurant near here a few years ago. I think my mom and I might have been the first white people to eat at it. Unfortunately, it fell victim to covid, like so many other restaurants.
I am not a big coffee fan, but if I do need a hot beverage with caffeine boost, Peets Mocha does the job very well. And with less sugar and fat that starbux.
I don’t think guava tastes at all like Hawaiian Punch, but we had a guava tree in our backyard when I was little. My mom made guava jam sometimes. I can remember the first time I was in Hawaii and went on a hike near the Seven Sacred Falls, passed a large guava tree covered with ripe fruit, and had such a rush of sense memory back to my childhood from the scent. I always order a guava drink when I eat in a Hawaiian restaurant.
Yeah, California has 88 – the next highest is only 55. Not surpised. I’ve seen them a lot here in L.A. for a few decades.
Foods are like musical notes. The more you have, the more interesting ways in which they can be combined. There will probably never be a finite number of different dishes.
Unless, of course, we run out of a vital ingredient. I was watching a documentary the other night in which they showed how the “blackening” craze of the '80s drove the stocks of red sea bass to perilously low levels.
DC, Maryland, Virginia, Washington and Nevada should be top five, but there is a huge gulf between the first two. Two through five are 5-6 restaurants per million population. DC is 49.
E.g.
They show 7 in the state of Missouri. When I last lived there, 4 of the 7 were in one metro area of ~1M people. I’d tried all 4: they were within a ~10 mile circle of each other.
The metro area had multiple choices for that cuisine. The hinterlands had zero cuisine, period.
So which capita matters? The local urban pop, or the state pop?
These are not that different. Many new dishes fuse things from different cultures, so new ingredients (to most) mean new dishes. Koreans may know gochujang but not necessarily in ice cream or ceviche.
While it is easy to make at home I believe it requires non-homogenized milk to make it and I think that is illegal in the US (it may be possible to get in small amounts if you live near a dairy farm…not sure).
ETA: I may be conflating homogenization with pasteurization. I know they are different. I forget which needs to be done in the US (pasteurization I would think).
You’re invited to create your own table with per capita listings, listings of which cities have the highest numbers and per capita values, and listings by metropolitan areas.
I’ve never been a fan of the pretentiousness of Starbucks. The best coffee I usually have is the stuff I make at home from fresh-ground beans in a Melitta filter, but, surprisingly, McDonald’s coffee is usually pretty good. I rarely get anything at that place, but a Bacon’n’Egg McMuffin with coffee is a pretty decent breakfast.
But for a quick caffeine jolt with minimal effort, nothing beats a small cup of ready-made medium-roast cold brew coffee nuked for 60 seconds in the microwave. I normally can’t stand plain black coffee and always add lots of cream and a little sugar, but cold brew is different. I love it plain black.