What is considered American food?

Written by:  Amy listening to Devan, Abigail and Colleen “play” Minecraft “together”.

What does Ireland think is American cuisine?  We’ve been to several places that claim to have American food.  What we see is typically burgers and fries with the usual Irish cuisine thrown in for local familiarity.  When we see Mexican food, it typically tastes like barbeque.  Barbeque sauce does not taste like it is supposed to here so I’m not counting that as American Cuisine.  Tex-Mex in Ireland is a bizarre combination of foods with none of the spice.  It’s not good.

So, what would be typical American cuisine?  More specifically, what would you find in an American restaurant that you wouldn’t find anywhere else? I can tell you it’s not steak.  Or potatoes.  Those are both found all over the world.  It’s not seafood or it’s many preparations because that’s found all over the world as well.  It’s not pork chops, pulled pork, or turkey. It’s not even the hamburgers since most locations have cows and have discovered how to mince the meat up for patties.  There are hot dogs and buns, but they are usually found in the Slavic section. 

Instead, we do not see foods like jambalaya, collard greens, hush puppies, black-eyed peas, and gumbo.  So, the American south is not represented.  Weirdly enough, there is no root beer here.  It’s kinda weird.  The grocery stores lack staples like dried beans (split pea, lentils, pinto and the like), chicken broth, vegetable broth, cornmeal, dried bread, to name a few.  However, there is a make it yourself mentality so with broth, I bet they just pull a DIY on that.

We have been into some stores that claim to cater to the American ex-pat crowd living in Ireland.  What we found there was certainly an eye opener.  There was: Captain Crunch cereal, Lucky Charms cereal (so embarrassing!), Nerds, Cheetos, Marshmallow “Fluff”, Pumpkin Pie filling, Twinkies, Hawaiian Punch, Arizona Sweet Tea, Fanta Grape soda, Wonka Chocolate bars, and a whole host of candy that I have never seen before in my life. Eek.  This is American?