Appetites Without Prejudice: U.S. Foreign Restaurants and the Globalization of American Food Between the Wars

Abstract

The popularity of foreign-themed restaurants grew dramatically in the United States following the Great War. This article analyzes the contradiction between the “Americanization” of food at the same time as native-born Americans enjoyed a growing taste for global cuisines. Distinguishing between foreign and foreign-themed restaurants, this article argues that the latter exposed American palates to a variety of global flavors. In turn, Americans began to conceive of “American food” in more cosmopolitan terms. This article also places material decorations, including the bodies of employees, at the center of its interpretation of the restaurant space and expands the debate over restaurants’ use of foreign languages on printed menus to encompass the place of the spoken word. Ultimately, this article argues that the rising popularity of global foodways in the United States not only changed the taste of traditional “American food” but led to a “world citizen” ideal of American national identity.

Notes

1. Throughout this essay, I assume that it is possible to consider what Americans ate as both food and cuisine. My rationale that such a thing as “American cuisine” exists falls in line with Krishnendu Ray's definition of American cuisine, which treats cuisine as “a particular kind of talk about cooking” imagined into existence by professional food writers and restaurants, where national cuisine is “performed in the public sphere” (Ray 2008: 265, 289).

2. In discussions questioning the existence of an American cuisine, both Sidney Mintz and Krish-nendu Ray (despite their different conclusions) support the idea that cuisine is inextricably tied to language and the “talk” about food, not only the tasting of food (Mintz 2002; Ray 2008).

3. The materiality of the restaurant space, and the production of racial and ethnic images within the eating establishments, are part of what Kristin Hoganson calls “performative geography”—the performance of the geographically different through the manipulation of costume, stage settings, and cultural ephemera, thereby producing “representations of difference” (Hoganson 2007: 137). American-born white customers wanted to feel welcomed by the difference, rather than alienated by it. Therefore, successful foreign-themed restaurants tried to invoke foreign places and yet retain some level of familiarity for its patrons. For instance, owners of the Pagoda Inn advertised their restaurant on its menus as “High-Class Chinese and American,” stating: “It is the aim of the management to introduce a part of the Chinese civilization to our American friends” (Pagoda). Similarly, businesses such as Green's Chinese American Restaurant in Philadelphia offered “American or Chinese Food—You ask for it, we have it,” and San Antonio's Shangri-La Restaurant served “typical Chinese food and also specializes in American steaks and fried chicken dinners” (Green; Shangri-La 1944: 9).