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What is "American" food? The answer
is that it is part Italian, part British, part German, part Mexican, part Chinese.... When
people from other countries came to live in the U.S.A., they brought different cooking
traditions. Some of them opened restaurants and food stores, and today Americans enjoy
food from all over the world.
Over the years, some foreign dishes changed a little.
"Tex-Mex" food is popular in
Texas and other states in the Southwest. But it is not quite the same as the Mexican food
you will find in Mexico.
Doughnuts
were originally from Holland. But doughnuts with a hole in the middle are American. In
1847 a young boy complained to his mother that her doughnuts were never cooked in the
middle. He cut out the centers and his mother cooked them - and they were delicious!
Maybe the U.S.A. is most famous for
"fast foods" - fast food restaurants which are open
24 hours a
day
(McDonald's, Wendy's, Kentucky Fried Chickens, Roy Rogers, and so on). The first
fast food restaurants served hamburgers, but now they serve other kinds of food as well -
quality burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, pizza,
pancakes, and other favourities for reasonable prices. Many fast food restaurants have a drive-in-section. Here you can order and
pick up your food without even getting out of your car! Inside there is often a ”salad bar”, where you can help yourself to as much salad as
you want.
Americans eat out a lot, and when they go to a restaurant, they do not
expect to be hungry afterwards. Most restaurants will put a lot of food on your plate -
sometimes it can be too much. But if you can't finish it all, don't worry: the waiter will
bring you a
"doggy bag"
and you can take it home with you.
THE STORY OF COCA-COLA
No advertising slogan is more familiar to more
people throughout the world than the simple directive: "Drink Coca-Cola". Since
its discovery in 1886, Coca-Cola has become probably the most popular soft drink in the
world. And yet, ironically, this successful liquid started off as a rather bad-tasting
headache medicine.
In 1885 pharmacist John Styth Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia, mixed
together a patent medicine, which he called "French Wine Cola", and sold it as a
nerve stimulant. The following year he removed the wine from his recipe and added
caffeine. It tasted so bad that he threw in some extract of cola (kola) nuts and other
oils to improve it. The result was a unique-tasting drink that Pemberton called
"Coca-Cola", and he began selling it in 1886 mainly as a headache cure.
Not long after, a customer entered an Atlanta drugstore in search for
headache medicine. The druggist, instead of adding the usual tap water to Pemberton's
liquid, mixed the syrup with sparkling water. The result was an unusually pleasant drink,
which the druggist's customer began buying with ever-increasing frequency. Then, in 1887,
Pemberton sold the rights to his syrup to three druggists. They, in turn, resold all
rights for 2,000 dollars in 1891 to another Atlanta druggist, Asa Griggs Candler, who
himself often had headaches. But Candler thought Coca-Cola tasted too good to sell as
medicine alone, so he began marketing it mainly as a soft drink. Soon business was
booming, and in 1892 Candler formed the Coca-Cola Company. A system of independent local
bottling companies was set up, and the now familiarly shaped bottle, said to be like a
hobble skirt, was designed. In 1919, when the company was sold by Candler's family -
against his will - to a group headed by Ernest Woodruff, it brought 25 million dollars.
The new owners, comprising the Chase National and Guaranty Trust banks
of New York, along with the Trust Company of Georgia, called Woodruff's son, Robert, to
run the Coca-Cola Company in 1923. While Asa Candler is known for turning Coca-Cola into a
national drink, Robert Woodruff was successful in making it famous worldwide.
Today, all around the globe, people drink above 150 million cans,
bottles or glasses of Coca-Cola each day. A traveler would have to wander very far to find
someone who had not at least heard of the former headache medicine called Coke.
