Foodies' Delight
Categories: Cookbooks
The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by Vanity Fair writer David Kamp is a must read for anyone who has any semi-serious interest in the state of American food. Kamp disputes those who claim the good old days were the highlight of American eating and leads the reader through a brief history of our national food ways until he gets to the post-war years and the rise of the Big Three: Julia Child, James Beard and Craig Claiborne.
These three very different individuals taught us how to cook, eat and read about food and opened the door for a new generation of food professionals that has led us to new expectations about what we eat and how we shop for food.
From colonial days through the nineteenth century, Americans ate seasonally and locally, buzzwords of today's foodies, but that changed with the massive industrialization of agriculture and food processing that came after the Civil War and the urbanization of the nation. Convenience trumped taste and the past fifty years have seen increased reliance on packaged and frozen supermarket foods and, of course, the rise of fast food giants such as McDonalds.
Kamp gives a capsule history of the early years of American eating but really gets going when he zeros in on the lives and careers of Child, Beard and Claiborne and their influence on the cooks, chefs, food entrepreneurs and suppliers that have arisen in the past few decades.
He's clearly in awe of the fact that a kid who grew up on Swanson's frozen dinners can now stop in at the local supermarket for a salad of exotic mixed greens and then swing by the sushi bar across from the gourmet cheese section. And as for restaurants, once you get away from the chains, many now offer innovative, fresh and appetizing food to their customers. And even McDonald-owned Chipotles uses Ninan Ranch pork that is not the run of the mill product by any means.
Kamp dishes delicious dirt about the infighting at Chez Panisse and has lots of good stories to share about familiar names like Emeril, Wolfgang and the ever flamboyant Jeremiah Tower in this chatty trip across culinary America. Hop on board and have fun.
