Saying goodbye to American food culture

We are saying goodbye to an American food culture, and it feels like a loss. Hamburgers, hot dogs, corn dogs, tex-mex, tomahawk steaks: we eat less and less of it. The distance between Europe and America is growing politically and ideologically. It is growing at the table too.

This is heartbreak, not politics

I lived and worked in America when Obama was elected. Had the financial crisis of 2008 not happened, I might not have left until much later, if ever; my visa was not renewed during the hiring freezes. The America of then is not so different from the America of now. We are simply getting to know it as it would perhaps rather not be seen.

For a while I could not place where my own anger and sadness came from. The politics anger me, but that usually passes. So what was it? After reading an essay by Daan Heerma van Voss, and before it Menno ter Braak's 1927 essay 'Why I reject America', I understood it better. It is heartbreak. And heartbreak is not about politics, it is about culture.

Budget dining is going European

One reason for the shift is what we now know about nutrition and how food is made: salt and sugar levels, fats, but also animal welfare, working conditions, diversity and politics all play a part in what we choose to eat. European food culture is diverse, shaped by many countries and traditions, and rooted deep in individual cultures. For a long time a growing American influence shaped how we ate as well.

Walking through the city, or watching which places open, I see that changing. Where American food culture, led by fast food, until recently stood as a very successful symbol of the cheap meal, that place now seems to be taken over by European kitchens. French bistros, pizzerias, pasta places and a love of European produce are taking up more space. Space that used to be held by American products and chains built on low cost and high volume. Coincidence? I do not think so.

European kitchens have more layers

The number of American restaurants opening with a European kitchen keeps rising. The recipes are easy to find online and in books, and a concept is opened just like that. But European kitchens are far more layered and complex than a single sheet of paper. Where they will be able to reinvent themselves, an imported kitchen tends to stay limited to a few borrowed techniques and the show of impressive quantities and sizes.

And where the American traveller still comes to Europe in numbers to experience its full diversity, that love is not returned the other way. Europeans increasingly prefer to travel regionally. Our regional travel since the pandemic, the rise of Eastern European destinations, and the need to make Europe more resilient will give a boost to European economies, farming and identities. Produced closer to home, eaten closer to home.

It hurts to say goodbye to a love. We find comfort closer to home, looking for a new one, whether for a while or for good. Are we eating less American? I think we are.