1695foods/
728 words
April 18, 2013
a column by
Harley L. Sachs
Food choices have changed drastically over the
years. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s the typical restaurant menus
offered, besides steak and pork chops, liver and onions, chicken and dumplings in a
white sauce, meat loaf, half a roast or
fried chicken, scalloped potatoes and various generic soups like chicken noodle
or tomato. You could find ham or pot roast. Hamburgers were White Castle sliders or Wimpy,
inspired by Popeye’s burger gulping pal. You could order a grilled cheese
sandwich, egg salad or a hot dog. Fish? Well, there was perch or cod.
Outside of cities where there were large Jewish
populations, there was no such thing as a bagel. You had to find a delicatessen
to get a pastrami sandwich with an authentic kosher dill pickle. Only Jews heard of lox and bagels with or
without a schmere of cream cheese.. Only in places like New Jersey did anyone ever hear of
something called pizza. Even chili was relatively new, an import from the
Southwest. There were occasional Chinese restaurants serving not authentic
Chinese foods, but American chop suey and chow mien. How much has changed since
then!
I never heard of a taco until I visited Bob, my best
friend from high school, who had moved to California in 1949. A taco was ethnic
Mexican food and didn’t reach the Midwest until later. He also
introduced me to giant prawns at a restaurant near the Salton Sea.
Today there are bagels in every grocery store,
though the New York aficionados will deny that
they are authentic unless boiled first. They come in all flavors, plain
blueberry, whole wheat, and “everything.” Now, of course, prawns and similar
shellfish of all sizes can be had frozen in the big grocery stores. Tacos are
everywhere, and MacDonald’s and Burger King, Wendy’s and other burger joints
compete with upcoming Subway which cries
“eat fresh,” a comment on the places where burgers may sit, waiting for customers, until their
company-designated expiration time runs out.
My first exposure to pizza was in Newark, New Jersey in 1953 when I visited a
roommate from college while on my way to Germany and army service in Heidelberg. That pizza was a
memorable, milestone meal. Now they are everywhere, in all sizes with your
choice of toppings.
Today you would be hard pressed to find liver and
onions on the menu of most restaurants. There are occasional meatloaf
offerings, and chicken is Southern fried, dipped in batter. KFC dominates the
Southern Fried Chicken business and is all over the world.
We have become foodies. Portland, Oregon, for instance, has become
the foodie capital of the world with literally hundreds of ethnic food carts
clustered wherever there is sufficient foot traffic. A food cart, being on
wheels, is taxed only as a vehicle, so there is no property tax, much to the
chagrin of real restaurant competitors. At least, those offer dining
indoors.
Those early Depression days of basic meals are over.
We have become epicureans. Now, thanks to the post Vietnam War influx of
immigrants, we have Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese dishes in additional to
previous waves of immigrants with their ethnic foods like Poles, Germans,
Russians, etc. The English bought us fish and chips. The food carts offer just about everything you
can take away. Sampling a different
place every day you could indulge literally for years.
It’s all about choices, but if you long for a dish
of liver and onions or chicken and dumplings, you may have to look a long time.
As for fish, thanks to depleted stocks, cod has almost disappeared. Now we
ubiquitous farmed seafood: salmon, steelhead, tilapia, prawns, and hush puppies
grown in ponds and pens. They are crowded together in water polluted with their
own excrement. To counteract the bad effects of swimming in their own filth
they are fed antibiotics which we get to absorb second hand.
In those early days of the Great Depression we ate
locally grown foods. Now my menu includes melon from Costa Rica, bananas from
Central America, tilapia from Thailand, pineapple from Indonesia, various foods
from China, even lamb from New Zealand (when I can afford it!). The list goes
on and on. To paraphrase Dorothy, when it comes to food we aren’t in Michigan any more. Our stomachs are
world travelers and we don’t even have to leave town.
