Dining in America

Report Outline
A Varied Menu
Regional Cooking
Grocery Shopping
Fast-Food Trends
Special Focus

A Varied Menu

American Cooking: Fine Food to Fast Food

Fine dining, once the province of the rich, has become an obsession for millions of middle-class Americans. Tens of thousands are enrolled in cooking classes, learning everything from how to boil water to how to make Chinese wontons. Culinary schools are flooded with applications. Newspapers have expanded their food sections. Celebrity, once accorded only to well-known television cooks and authors such as James Beard and Julia Child, now accrues to chefs of individual restaurants.

Currently a great debate in the food world concerns the definition of the New American Cuisine. One faction takes a “Roots”-like approach, emphasizing America's culinary heritage, particularly regional cooking. The other faction borrows its style from French nouvelle cuisine, preparing simple, lightly cooked dishes from unusual but American-produced meats, vegetables and dairy products.

This schism may liven up conversations among the condo crowd and the soon-to-be-affluent “yumpies” (for young upwardly mobile persons, or professionals). But this growing interest in “gourmet” food has had little effect on the tastes of the average American. “We're talking about a very small percentage of the population that's involved in all this upscale eating, and that's not going to change,” said New York Times restaurant critic Marian Burros. While culinarians were arguing the relative merits of Cajun gumbo vs. smoked salmon pizza, the rest of America was turning a fast-food advertising slogan, “Where's The Beef?” into an instant cliché.