No at least not from my experience. We have a local soda maker. Foxon Park. Somehow has managed to survive the onslaught of the mega brands. They have a birch soda. Doesn’t taste like root beer.
According to them it has a wintergreen flavor
They’re such a great local company. Whenever I go out and Foxon Park is an option I go with it just to keep it going. Many of the independent restaurants carry it as it’s hyper local.
Weighing in on the original question, American food is as regional as anywhere else. Its a big country. Sure there is recent homogenization due to the influence of TV and internet but regional cuisine is still a thing though with lots of overlap.
I grew up down south and what I ate as a youth is very different than what I eat everyday in the northeast. For example as a child, my mom would regularly make me a bowl of grits with a big pat of butter for breakfast. I’ve never seen anyone make grits for breakfast at home in NY who wasn’t from the South. I have grits in my pantry at all times. The first time I encountered a bagel (pre-internet days so there wasn’t much to compare it to for a country boy) I first thought it was a weird donut. The thought of putting cream cheese and this slimy piece of fish on it made my stomach turn. I hated it. Now I crave a proper chewy bagel with a smear and lox. Speaking of donuts Krispy Kreme was an icon of my childhood. Didn’t exist in NYC when I got there. I remember when the first store opened at the old WTC and lining up for one.
As I wrote this I realized at least for me an iconic American food is grits. Grits with eggs, cheese grits, shrimp & grits. I’m making myself hungry. And no its not the same as polenta (though I like that too.)
For my New England born and bred wife, baked beans is an equally important part of her early life. She really doesn’t like grits and I am equally not fond of beans baked with crazy amounts of sugar and molasses.
Foxon Park makes me think of Pepe’s Pizza. I dig it.
I grew up in New York but my dad was from Alabama, and he drank grits every morning for breakfast from something like a travel mug, but not. One could regularly find some on the floor of his car.
My mother’s family is from Nevis in the West Indies, but grew up in Brooklyn, and she much preferred deli food, so there was always pickeld herring , halvah, and lox in the refrigerator.
Of course there was always beef patties and coco bread and pizza by the slice on Jamaica Ave in Queens, and when we started hanging out in the Bronx, it was all about yellow rice, pernil, and various cuchifritos.
Breakfast in Georgia, with my in-laws from Jamaica is usually ackee AND saltfish with bammy but also bacon and eggs when I am visiting.
Different menu out here in Northern California.
I think the universe shudders every time someone drinks grits.
Interesting. My grandmother was rural Louisiana born and bred, in fact lived there all her life, and would not allow grits on her table … or in her pantry. No idea why.
What town/region?
I wondered the same thing. I use a spoon but its not soup and drinkable from a cup. At least with how I make it.
Maybe she didn’t like it. Not everyone does. No different than any other food item.
Northern central Louisiana
Assimilation! I have never had it that way, but I never ate them on a work day.
When in New York, If you are going to have breakfast, eat/drink your breakfast on your way to work!
I remember travelling down to 23rd St in 1997 to try my first Krispy Kreme. They expanded to Canada by 2002.
Around 2002, in Ontario, it was a big deal to show up at a party with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts from 120 miles away. I remember stopping to buy a box for the office when I passed by a location north of Toronto. Now I live 1 mile from 2 different Krispy Kreme locations in Toronto, and I don’t think I’ve had one of their donuts in the past 10 years.
Sugar twist donut or egg on a roll.
I could put cheese on ice cream.
Guess my nationality.
“American food” is mostly a marketing term.
That said, there are truly indigenous American foods, which are based on indigenous American ingredients.
Some American foods (usually animal-based) can be found in Europe or Asia, but they’re still American. And as for plant-based, you’ve got the corn-beans-squash triumverate, plus a few others (cranberries, maple syrup).
I guess I’m really referring to North American then.
You’re referring to Pre-Columbian foods, which are North American, since the beans/ squash / corn were grown in present-day United States of America and Canada.
That’s what it says on my passport.
LOL.
Right. I said “North American.”
