SC - US bars UK

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Jessica Tiffin wrote:
> 
> Adamantius commented:
> > I can uncategorically say that there is more to American food than the
> > above... (it's not yet time to announce the completion of my book on New
> > York State foods, but rest assured that it would not have been possible
> > to even attempt the project without there being a huge wealth of
> > demonstrably and more or less exclusively American cuisine).
> 
> Anybody read Rex Stout detective novels?  Nero Wolfe, the overweight
> genius gourmet detective?  One of the books, called Too Many Cooks,
> has bits of a Nero Wolfe speech rhapsodically defending American
> cuisine to an assembled convocation of French chefs.  One of my
> favourites.  The Nero Wolfe Cookbook has some pretty groovy recipes,
> too...

I was never a big fan of Nero Wolfe; he always struck me as a hybrid of
Mycroft Holmes and James Beard. However, I own a copy of the Nero Wolfe
Cookbook; it's got some great stuff in it.

It does seem to be the case that Americans have something of an
inferiority complex about our food, and it also seems to be the case
that a lot of groups have an inferiority complex when comparing their
cuisines to that of the French. The thing is, that French cooking
(French haute cuisine, not the more reality-based regional cuisines) has
made a fine art of producing wonderful food _even when_ absolutely
perfect ingredients are not available, as is often the case in hotel and
restaurant kitchens where there will always be something that is out of
season or not available locally. Other cuisines are more easily
comparable to the French regional cuisines; they rely heavily on
seasonal dishes, but that's okay, since just as there is always
something they won't use because it's out of season, there's always
something else that _is_ in season.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the Lenny Henry BBC sitcom
"Chef!" was the title character's obsession with proving that the best
of English cooking was easily the equal, or the superior, of the best of
French cooking. This was always one of the underlying themes of the
series, regardless of whatever else was going on at the moment, and
there was an utterly magnificent segment where the crew of Le Chateau
Anglaise went over to Paris to compete in an international culinary
competition, to be constantly harrassed by sniggering French chefs who
insist on calling the Henry character Chef Rostbif...   

For all that, though, I think the French have forgotten all that their
own patron saint of food writers, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, wrote,
with a good deal of undisguised envy, about American food in the early
nineteenth century. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com