Yes, ladies and uh… ladies, it's time for a sequel to the Spring 2025 sleeper hit, That Dish Doesn't Come From Where You Think It Does; bigger, bolder, more explosions; yes, the big bucks have been spent.
Did we miss out your country last time around? Did we not spend long enough in it? Were there dishes you knew of and hoped we didn't find them? The passport was whipped out, the airport lines were joined, and after several run-ins with security we are back with an even bigger list. Let's get into it.
Crispy Fried Spring Rolls (China, and Vietnam)
Everybody has had these, be they the veggie ones or the chicken, or pork, and a little pot of that sweet chilli sauce; we all know what they are, and we have eaten them in their billions.
Trouble is China (and Vietnam) doesn't actually have a clue what the hell these things are. Spring rolls are soft and are traditionally wrapped in a pancake batter (rice paper is also used).
Why must Westerners insist on deep frying everything? Speaking of which…
Mozzarella Sticks (Italy)
These are no more Italian than the restaurant chains Olive Garden (US) or Prezzo (UK). To Italians, mozzarella is served as is, with fresh tomatoes, basil leaves, seasoning, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar with a good-quality ciabatta.
What you categorically do not do is roll them in egg and breadcrumbs, and then plunge them into hot oil.
Doughnuts (USA)
Baked, fried, filled, glazed, it matters little, we love doughnuts (yes, you can flip and flop how you spell the word — both are correct). They have become synonymous with the USA and we all know the jokes about cops. They ain't American.
The Dutch call them olykoeks, and do you know why? Because they invented the damn things.
Meatloaf (USA)
Another bonafide American dish that is cheap, simple, and hearty. Plenty of variations of it exist and yours truly particularly likes the glazed, slightly sweet and smoky version. But is it American? Is it really?
Of course it isn't. More than 2,000 years ago, when the USA wasn't even a twinkle in Columbus's eye, the Romans were whipping this up on a regular basis, presumably because it could be sliced and served cold to be eaten on the go.
Fried Chicken (USA)
C'mon, guys, do you even have a dish you can genuinely call your own?
This one is actually contentious, as it could be from two distinct and unrelated parts of the world (both not the USA).
In the first corner we have West African nations, whose enslaved descendants brought the dish to North American shores during the transatlantic slave trade, and in the second corner are the Scots.
Both lay claim, and to be fair both are entirely plausible. West Africa, because spiced, deep-fried chicken has deep roots there and was a dish enslaved cooks made their own under brutal circumstances; and Scotland, because they basically deep fry everything.
General Tso's Chicken (China)
Could it? Possibly maybe? Yes! We have an actual American dish. Sort of.
Y'see, Chef Peng Chang-kuei, a Hunanese chef who fled to Taiwan in 1949, created this heavy, sour, hot, and salty dish in the 1950s, and named it after Zuo Zongtang (or Tso Tsung-t'ang), a revered 19th-century military leader from his home province of Hunan (General Tso had no connection to the dish whatsoever, and it isn't served in China today).
Then, New York chef T.T. Wang adapted the recipe in the early 1970s by making it sweeter and giving the chicken a crispier batter, and put it on the menu of his restaurant. So it is kind of American, or at least the version that is regularly served in the States, but it definitely isn't Chinese. Peng himself later opened his own New York restaurant too, serving his original, less sweet version — Henry Kissinger was a regular.
Maybe we will find a proper American one later on in our journey.
Garlic Bread (Italy)
I'm afraid this is another one of those ‘everyone knows what it is, everyone eats it, and no, Italy doesn't know what it is’ things.
That's it really.
Peanut Butter (USA)
Noooo! Say it isn't so! I'm afraid I cannot.
In 1884, Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal patented the process of making peanut butter. It wasn't perfect, but it was definitely peanut butter. Then Dr John Harvey Kellogg (yes, he of cereal and other somewhat strange and weird sexual diagnoses and treatments) adapted it not long after for patients who found it difficult to chew. The manufacturing of it was finally perfected in the US, and also made sweeter.
However, we can't really give Canada a home run here, because the Incan civilisation had been grinding and blending peanuts for ages, so it is they who are up at the bottom of the ninth, and walk away with the championship.
Bacon (Everyone Lays Claim To It)
Bacon is awesome. If you allowed it the time, it would solve the problem of world peace. But where exactly did it come from?
We have Canadian bacon, American bacon, British bacon, Danish bacon, to name just a few who have seemingly been making it for ages. But where did it start?
The Romans first laid claim to it, as they have done with so many other dishes, but the Greeks asked them to hold their flagons.
It wasn't them, but it was them who pointed at the Celts, who spanned a vast area from the British Isles and northern Spain, to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in what is now modern-day Turkey. They'd been around since the Late Bronze Age (1200 BCE), and so knew a few things about bacon.
Case closed.
Mayonnaise (France, Possibly USA Depending Upon Who You Ask)
Both of these countries have a decent shout; France because of their Mother Sauces in the 1700s, and the USA because, well… Hellmann's.
“¡Cállate, ladrón!” shouts the Spanish, somewhat angrily, for it is they who came up with it, in the port of Mahón on Menorca, where French troops are said to have discovered the local sauce in 1756 and taken it home.
Ketchup (USA — And An Apology)
Now in our first article, we made mention of tomato sauce and that it is (probably) Spanish, but we are thorough if nothing else in the DWC Kitchen, and so on our travels we dove into this a little deeper.
We stand by our original statement of the sauce being Spanish, but this is ketchup and therefore a different beast, and that isn't Spanish.
It is true that in 1812 American James Mease published one of the very first ketchup recipes, creating a sweetened, concentrated tomato sauce. But hold onto your horses there, pardner, because we are not done. Not even close.
Early ketchup versions were being created all over England in the 1600s and 1700s, but these were made from mushrooms, walnuts, and anchovies. The principle was exactly the same, but no tomatoes were being used.
Now if we go back to the 1500s and the introduction of tomatoes to the continent by Spanish explorers returning from the Americas — and this is where the confusion starts, if you're not already there yet — because ketchup and tomato are so synonymous. Thing is though, tomatoes come from the group of plants that are in the nightshade family, and as such no-one initially wanted anything to do with them when the explorers brought them back.
Still with me?
But where did the idea of ketchup come from? China, that's where. They had been creating ketchup (kê-chiap) for thousands of years, and it was a fermented fish and soybean sauce. The British took that concept back to Europe, where all this mushroom ketchup came from.
So now you know.
However, if you want to be really pedantic and must score a point, then, yes, tomato ketchup is American, but I never said ‘tomato’ did I, I just said ‘ketchup’.
Bagels (USA. NY If You Want To Be Finicky)
Ah, the steamed dense bread with a hole in it, smothered in cream cheese and smoked salmon. Of course you can put anything you want on a bagel, just ask any NY deli worth their salt. Just don't ask them where they come from.
Ask the Polish, they know, and for good reason, too.
Budweiser (Not Quite Anyone You'd Guess)
A curve ball here, as it isn't food (but to be fair, if I am being honest, some would say it isn't really beer either).
Putting aside the long, ongoing trademark dispute since 1907 with the Czech brewer Budweiser Budvar, “Bud” — as it is known in much of Europe — isn't quite American either, not really.
The company, Anheuser-Busch, was founded in St Louis by German immigrant Adolphus Busch, who, on a trip to Bohemia, fell for the “beer of kings” brewed in the town of Budweis (today České Budějovice, in the Czech Republic), and went home determined to brew something similar. So: an American company, founded by a German, brewing a beer named after, and modelled on, a Czech one. Everyone's a little bit right, and everyone's also a little bit wrong.
You can't call yourself the ‘King of Beers’ in a country that doesn't have a king, can you? Have a Miller instead, at least that is wholly American, and the Canadians are alright really.
Coleslaw (USA)
This one is a double-whammy because of mayonnaise and because of good ol' Southern cooking. If there's a BBQ (itself a Caribbean-derived word, via the Spanish barbacoa), then you can bet your momma's life there's gonna be coleslaw present, and lots of it.
Koolsla means ‘cabbage salad’, and it begins with a K because that word is Dutch.
Manchurian Chicken (China)
Manchurian. It doesn't get much more Chinese than that, there was even that political book and movie. Okay, that was America and Korea, so bad choice, but the point still stands. Manchurian is north-east China, so surely the dish hails from there.
It doesn't. It's from India. Nelson Wang invented it in Mumbai in the 1970s, and wanted a more exotic-sounding name for it.
Chicken Parmesan (Italy)
The Italians are getting a tad upset now, because not only is this thing not Italian, they have never heard of it, and neither does the closest relative of it have chicken in it.
Aubergine/eggplant is what they use, and not whatever this American nonsense is.
Chop Suey (China)
Hi, Italy, China feels your pain. It really does.
There is a Cantonese term, ‘tsap seui’, meaning random leftovers and miscellaneous stuff, this is true, but chop suey it is not.
What this is, is a creation in or nearby San Francisco during the gold rush by Chinese-American cooks. An American dish, we found a proper one!
Mac 'n' Cheese (USA)
We all knew it wasn't Italian, didn't we? And we all knew it was American. Right? Right? It isn't.
It is true that macaroni is a pasta and therefore has Italian roots, but that's where it begins and ends, because we need to travel to another country to find out where it really comes from.
Cor, Gov'nor, it be good ol' Blighty. Yes, it's British, with the earliest known recipe combining pasta and cheese sauce appearing in an English cookery manuscript centuries before the dish was ever popular in the States. Strange one admittedly but there you go.
There ends our sequel, and who knows, we might be back for a threequel at some point (if some countries will allow us back in). Probably not in 3D though.