You can never step into or order the same Chop Suey twice.
Heraclitus
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Green Goddess
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Easy Cheese
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My sense is that Korean food is very far from having been widely adopted by the American public at large. Sure you find it in certain large urban coastal areas but once youāre more than an hour away, Korean food has no visibility. In contrast to sushi which has taken over in a way that is probably unimaginable 20 years ago. Americanized versions of sushi rolls with multiple fish with mayo and sickly sweet sauces are found in grocery stores everywhere. I canāt say Iāve ever seen bulgogi or pajeon in a megamart grocery store takeout shelf. Sure there will be some 8oz jar of an oddball kimchi made with white cabbage buried on a shelf. But thatās not enough for Korean influences to have yet insinuated itself enough to be American. YMMV.
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Thereās aspects i agree (not widely adopted) and aspects i donāt agree (thereās Americanized Korean food that turn up from time to time even in NYC where it has absolutely no resemblance to Korean food).
Thereās also extremely watered down versions of it where it loses its authenticity (no one in South Korea would willingly eat it with their hard earned money). The dishes were made that way to serve the local palate.
Almost all of it are creations from people that have no idea what Korean food is like (using the word āKoreanā purely for marketing purposes). And Iām not even counting the Korean French, Italian Korean, Korean Italian, etc dishes where the soul of both cultures are alive and well.
Iāve seen someone calling their fried chicken sandwich āKoreanā with ākimchiā but instead of gochujang they use sriracha (not Korean)ā¦ And instead of actual kimchi, which is widely available in NYC, they used slaw and put red pepper flakes on itā¦ I donāt know what else to call that besides American food. There was literally nothing in that item that was remotely Korean.
This is not to confuse with Korean Americans. As Korean Americans donāt enjoy watered down Korean food. As much as weāre considered āotherā in the US, weāre not what Americanized Korean food suggests we are (lost). Korean Americans have started to speak out more as of late. Hopefully we get the rest of our fellow Americans to understand weāre American too but we bring a lot of different flavors with us. I learned the hard way Iām not Korean when we moved there as a kid. lol. Never did fit in.
And having pajeon in grocery stores, yes, i agree we donāt see Korean food in those places across the country. Iād say itās mostly because Korean food is extremely disappointing when not freshly made. Sushi is technically the same, but most folks donāt understand how the rice should be to notice (both texture and seasoning) and it somewhat holds up when refrigerated.
Also to add, we donāt see a lot of Japanese food around the country as well. Typically only one or two types. Similar to pajeon would be okonomiyaki. Too much work for a grocery store to keep churning these out.
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Most adaptations of food in the US are not a question of funding or ingredients, itās simply adapting to local preferences.
That is why you have so Many Chinese-American dishes that combine meat and vegetables. Each person orders separately and they get every thing in one. As where a Chinese family would mostly order as a family, so the spinach with garlic would be just that: an entire plate of spinach with garlic.
At an American table, each person might order a chicken dish with only the sauce and vegetables being different. I remember as a kid weād end up with a table full of four chicken dishes.
BK, I was able to find two different versions of Kimchi in a grocery store in Hamilton, a small town in Montana. I was fairly surprised, but it was there and it is good. They also had gochujang, which was good but not as close to the Korean goods I get at H Mart in Springfield VA. I have never traveled to Korea, so I do not know how authentic H Mart is, but considering the size and wealth of the Korean market in Northern Virginia, I have to assume it is a reasonable facsimile thereof. Steve would have a much better take on how authentic H Martās kimchi and gochujang are than I do, though.
So the two items I mentioned are a tiny bit of Korean goods/foods but it is interesting to see them in small town Montana at all.
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I think we are talking about different things. I donāt think just because something is being made, sold and served by someone in America makes it American food. Its not like a dish created in the US makes it American in the way a person born here regardless of where their parents came from makes that person an American citizen.
I think in order for something to be American food means that your mom makes it for dinner on a Tuesday night at home. Taco Tuesday is a common phrase. The tacos served on Tuesday bear only passing resemblance to a taco from Mexico but I suspect many of us had it growing up. I did and my kids love it too and thereās not a drop of Mexican background in our lives. There were the old commercials for Prince spaghetti night. Wednesday night I make spaghetti of various types and Iām no paesan.
Or you could be anywhere in America and the family will head out for a Saturday night dinner and you go to the local Chinese place that your family has been going to for 50+ years. Your parents and maybe even your grandparents went there. Unlikely anyone makes Chinese food at home but its part and parcel part of American culture. Like going out for pizza. Nothing like you will find in China or Italy. Only in America. All over America.
I did a quick google search. I found that there are about 45,000 Chinese restaurants and 25,000 Japanese restaurants but not even 7,000 Korean restaurants in the US. In addition to being in NYC where there are plenty of all three, I spend a good chunk of time in the middle of Connecticut and in Utah. There are several Chinese restaurants and a couple of Japanese in each area but not a single Korean. The immigration from Korea is much more recent than the Chinese and Japanese. I think most of that has happened since the 60s. I love Korean food. But I have yet to see anything I would say that has been widely adopted from Korean food that I would say is American food.
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Yes it is very different.
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Might depend on the state. Iām in landlocked Ontario, and in the midsized formerly mangiacake WASP city where I was raised, we have over 2 dozen Korean restaurants. The city (London, POP 423 000) is located 2 h from Buffalo and an hour from Detroit.
I would think other midsized cities in Ohio, Michigan and New York would also have Korean food available like London, Windsor, Kitchener, Kingston, and all the other 75 000- 500 000 person cities do in Ontario.
Detroit had an amazing multicultural food scene right now.
That said, the food scene in say- Canton, Ohio seems kind of boring. Depends on the client base. The burbs of Colorado Springs look like chain central, but it turns out, if you look for indie Korean, Indian or Mexican, you can find it.
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A lot of small town greasy spoons in rural Saskatchewan are now run by recent immigrants from Laos or the Philippines, or other parts of Asia. Lots of Indian restaurants cropping up near truck stops in Ontario.
I had some delicious Filipino-made Chinese Canadian food at the cafƩ in the town closest to my family homestead. Bacon and eggs, pizza, ginger beef, butter tarts , Saskatoon berry pie and occasionally some Filipino specials!
A Cambodian family runs the greasy spoon in the formerly mostly Irish small town north of the city where I was raised in Ontario.
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Thatās what I thought. No surprise from folks who refer to green peppers as mangoes, however 
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Places Iāve lived: Indiana, NJ, Miami, Seoul, Houston, NYC.
I will disagree with your assessment of American food. The foods Iāve listed does not exist in the countries the restaurant āstyleā claims theyāre from (if they do like Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, etc). They only exist outside those countries. If they do exist there, it exists as an āAmericanā restaurant cause they have no roots in those actual countries.
the foods Iāve listed does not belong anywhere in the world besides the US. It is eaten in regions of the US and no other country claims them as theirs. They are all rooted in American history and tells a specifically American story. They are American food through and through. Not everyone in the US eats Cajun/Creole at home. Most i would think canāt handle the spice of tex mex (plenty of Texans eat this at home). Being in NYC, youāre bound to come across something that is labeled āKoreanā from a non Korean place. When i posed the question to my friends as to what mashes this āKoreanā, they said they see that as āAsianā food as a whole. How does that make sense when all the Asian foods differ greatly? This, unfortunately is an American creation made by folks who had no consideration about the culture.
You would be surprised at the number of Korean places outside Utah, Connecticutā¦ Take an uber or drive down to palisades park, Fort Lee, etc in NJ if youāre looking for the best Korean food in the tri state (itās better than NYC).
Regarding commercials, these things are catered to the very local areas. They will wildly differ.
Regarding coastal areas, A) thatās where most of the population reside. B) mayor cities like Chicago, Houston, Dallas, etc arenāt coastal Iāve had good Korean in Arizona. They exist in Louisiana. Itās basically either states that have a lot of Asian population in general or states that arenāt put off by spicy food.
I just looked up Korean restaurants in Utah and Connecticutā¦ Several seem to pop up in both (not surprised by Connecticut as Iāve been there. Utah, Iāve never been but was surprised to see them.
I would also argue that adoption of which countryās food isnāt solely based on how many people live in the country and for how long (first Koreans to immigrate were during the late 1800s and first wave of immigrants to US was 1904 or so until the US banned immigration) but also based on how spicy the food is. Most Japanese restaurants across the US are not done by Japanese people as the Japanese population is tiny compared to other East Asians (much more comfortable life living in Japan so they mostly go back) and are mostly nowhere close to actual Japanese food. Even the ones that are closely similar is completely off generally speaking (especially away from the major cities).
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I think youāre defining āAmerican Foodā differently than most of the others on this thread. Youāre listing food thatās only found in the U.S. (i.e. American-ized versions of food from other places). But most of us are listing quintessentially American food, food that is associated with the U.S., food that people from other places would recognize as āAmerican.ā
If I were listing Japanese foods, Iād come up with sushi and ramen and like that. I would not come up with the Japan-ized version of pizza. Although this is native to Japan (in the same way that the American versions of Korean dishes are native to the U.S.), I would not call it Japanese food.
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Is Korean fried chicken not Korean then? Is ramen Chinese? Is tempura Portuguese? Is the burger German? Is bbq from the west Indies (barbacoa)? Is Cajun/Creole Canadian (theyāre from Acadia) or French?
No one in Italy claims our way of making spaghetti with meatballs or fettuccine Alfredo is theirs for the same reason. They also see this as American food much like no one in Japan considers the dragon roll as Japanese food. The French certainly donāt consider Cajun food as theirs and i doubt Acadians in Canada consider Cajun theirs.
I would disagree with your assessment. Things made in the country is where that food belongs. It was made for the people in that country. These things we accept as American food wasnāt considered as American food for a long while from when they were introduced (incorrectly). I would venture most Americans still think American Chinese food is actual Chinese food (I was one of them until a short few years ago and Iām Asian American). We have a bad habit of rejecting things of ours that seem different from what we know despite it constantly being created cause many of us want it (wouldnāt persist if no one was coming).
I guess the point is this: most of American food ARE Americanized versions of other food + native food and all have history and impact to our culture (whether good or bad). The question is, who doors this food resonate with culturally?
Someone a long time ago referred to the US as a salad bowl (vs. a melting pot, althoughā¦ what with all that melty cheese n 'at >ducks<). I think that applies well to the culinary landscape.
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Forgot to add Iāve also lived in Boston 4 yearsā¦
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What @small_h said
@Eathru - youāre sounding like arguing for the sake of arguing. The Chinese food in America example can be applied to Italian food. Itās not Italian as what is eaten in Italy and most Americans who arenāt on HO have no idea what the difference is. I have a friend who went to Ireland and spent time trying to find authentic Irish corned beef and cabbage. He failed. Was pretty amusing hearing his story and then explaining the dish was created in America from a mash up of Irish and Jewish immigrants.
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No. Thereās plenty of evidence that noodles in general are of Chinese origin, but ramen is Japanese, because itās primarily associated with Japan. At this point I think youāre just being willfully argumentative, so Iāll leave you to it.
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