After listening to an interview, I ordered this book of Amish/soul food fusion recipes. This deserves to become a new tradition. Amish foodways add sweet & sour elements to recognizably Southern specialties.
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So many and many. Southern BBQ definitely is very American. Fried chicken I suppose. I do not disagree what an important role hamburgers are to America, but burgers are also everywhere. I am surprised that they list hamburger and cheesehamburger as two items. Just so many wonderful foods on the list.
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So many! Oysters Rockefeller, seafood pan roasts, chicken fried steak with cream gravy. Recipes using Coca Cola, ubiquitous in the south - Coca Cola Ham, cake, ribs, etc. Peanut butter & jelly, peanut butter cookies, pumpkin pies, breads, cakes. 1000 Island DressingShrimp & crab Louie salads. Just a few that come to mind.
The Cajun stuff, Creole influences to make uniquely American foods, Navajo tacos, fry bread, New Mexican cuisine as well. Chuck wagon style foods for hungry cowboys lol.
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Thatās really cool 
2 food cultures I never imagined together.
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For what it worth, when I first heard about chicken and waffle, I did not understand why these two are together. (almost like M&Ms on Grilled Salmon) Now, they seem natural.
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Iāve never been to an Olive Garden. However, from looking at their menus on line, the corporate entity that is Olive Garden across many states has nothing in common with American diner food, which is almost always family-owned small restaurants, that serve standard āAmericanā food with local additions that can include Portuguese, Spanish, Brazil, Colombia, Mexican, Basque, Native American, French Quebec/Louisiana, German, Polish, Czech, Russian, African, Central American, Indian, Greek, Ashkenazi Jewish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Albanian, Asian, ā¦Iām leaving out a lot here.
A local breakfast/lunch place we visit often in Somerville a few blocks from Boston, incorporates Greek, Middle Eastern, and Portuguese elements along with eggs, bacon, pancakes, hamburgers, among others. Youāll see a different mix in different American regions, depending on which countries are represented among local immigrants recently and historically. We also have a small restaurant that serves excellent Sicilian American food, and lots of other not as great ethnic restaurants serving Irish and generic North European food.
Itās always been fun to me when visiting other US regions to find those hole-in-the-wall restaurants/diners that have incorporated foods from immigrant groups than are not as common here in Boston. Or in North Carolina, where I grew up.
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The Greek diner with the menu thatās 27 pages.
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My favorite!!
The issue people have with American food is that so much of it is imported. But I donāt think that matters one bit. Almost all food is imported in one way or another. We think of ramen as Japanese food but the Japanese consider it Chinese food.
On and on you will see examples like this all over the world. If itās commonly consumed in America itās American food, even if itās also another countryās food, like pizza. No one gets a monopoly on food ownership.
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Aināt nothing more 'merican than a root beer float. Unless itās barbecue washed down with a root beer float.
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If you were in North Carolina, it would be barbecue with Cheerwine or Pepsi, both created in NC. Root beer sounds too much like ābeerā for NC, or did when I was growing up there in 1960s and 1970s. Oh wait, thereās āwineā in Cheerwineā¦never mind. Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola were also created in the south.
And in NC during those years, there was so much sugar in the iced tea that was served to everyone, including children, at every meal except breakfast, and in every season, there was no need to add ice cream to the drink accompanying the meal. Sometimes we did combine SunDrop, a soft drink developed elsewhere in the south, with orange sherbet for dessert, however.
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When my cousins (not Southerners) and I (not a Southerner) would visit our grandparents in the South, we made sure to put enough sugar in our iced tea that the spoon would stand up in the glass. Or we tried to.
Today, I drink my iced tea unsweetened.
But I always looked forward to Dr Pepper. We didnāt have it up north.
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You miss my point. People all over the world drink Pepsi (I have never even seen Cheerwine, let alone tried it), but I donāt know any non-American that drinks root beer.
Me neither. But there must be a goodly number who do - my normal supermarket stocks it
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/soda-folk-root-beer-4x330ml
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I live in regional Japan (Shizuoka now and before in Tokushima) and all the stores which carry intāl food & drink (not restaurants/bars) sell A&W or Dadās Root Beer. True, many of the people who buy it are Americans or Canadians, but surprisingly I know quite a few Japanese people who buy it, too. Many of those also like Dr. Pepper which like root beer is seen here as an acquired taste. BTW, A&W Root Beer as a fast-food place is an old standard (since 1963!) in Okinawa Prefecture with 23 locations on Okinawa Island and surrounding islands in the prefecture (āsite is bilingual) https://www.awok.co.jp/. Mainly thatās because of the US military presence there. but lots of Okinawans and other Japanese eat there, too. I used to be able to find diet A&W Root Beer and even regular & diet A&W Cream Soda in Japan, but havenāt seen those in many years.
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Many Canadians drink root beer.
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Weāre cousins from a different motherā¦
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One chain restaurant in Ontario with a pretty good beer selection keeps around 6 different fancy root beers in stock. I donāt like root beer enough to finish the whole bottle. 3 sips is enough 
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I am often confused by the use of the term āAmericanā.
I donāt mean to revisit my previous faux pas, and no offense intended, but isnāt that like āEuropeanā? I guess to some it means USA, to others āNorth Americaā. I tend to think of all the Americas, unless someone specifies USA.
If American means all the Americas, āAmerican foodā would have to include at least corn, and I think beans, and chilies, and probably tomatoes.
But for USA, Iād still be thinking of regional dishes.
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