[chefjoe73]

I work at a restaurant called "America" A classic American restaurant.
Our menu consists of local ingredients used in a "worldly" influenced cuisine, with our nation being a large "melting pot" of cultures and foods, is there really an "American" style cuisine, or are we just a wide array of styles and preparations, since america isn't really a cooking style.

My question is does anyone have a description of what upscale american food is?

Any help would be appreciated.

check us out at americaripon . com

Thanks,

Chef Joseph A. Hauer
Chef de Cuisine

[chefhow]

I would suggest you look at the following website, Larry Forgione who is one of the ppl who started the movement years ago. Also look at Alice Waters, Bradley Ogden and any of a number of old school steak house around the country. Here is the website.

Welcome to An American Place

[greyeaglem]

We were just talking today at work about being lucky to live where there is so much variety in food because it's all fusion. (Think spaghetti with meat sauce, pizza, chow mein, etc. All American based on other cultures). Chicken fried steak evolved from German weiner snitztel. Corn starch gravy from a chuck roast is French fond lie, even mac and cheese is a fusion of french and Italian (or French and Chinese if you want to go back to the source of noodles). So there really isn't an "American" cuisine unless you go back to what the Indians ate before anyone else came here. Look at Louisiana, with it's creole (French/Spanish) and Cajun (French, American Indian and African) cuisine. Traditional dishes made with available food. The possibilities are endless, and all can be called "American".

[shroomgirl]

I'd not looked at AAP's website for a long time, they've really made some interesting changes....good to know it's still going strong in Downtown STL.

[soup]

I feel a classic American cusine you are missing in your lineup are smoked meats/barbeque. Smoked meats complemented with original spice rubs and BBQ sauce on the side can be very eligant and depending on the sauce, can definitely take people to a distict region of the US. I specialize in Kansas City style BBQ. If you would like my sauce recipe (I developed it over 20 years), it gets raves from people who know KC Style BBQ, drop me an email.

[Gunnar]

wow, what a amazingly complicated idea to get across, for one of the youngest countries of the world, relatively speaking. It would be easier to point to American Regional Cooking and its roots then looking for the main source of today's American food as a whole.