Dishing With Ruth Reichl

Also, Americans have become global eaters and we're very proud of that. It says something about us as a nation that we eat everything. We used to be a hamburger nation, now we're a taco-sushi-mooshu-steak country. What it says to us is that we are an expansive people, we are an accepting people. The melting pot has gone beyond just the people. It's now the food. There's a positive fallout with this. It's very hard to hate people if you're eating their food.

PT: Can food also be used to reclaim culture?

RR: Definitely. You can see it in the black community. What African-Americans used to eat is largely based on what slaves were allowed to eat. Now there's a shift among blacks to trying to cook some of the foods of their heritage, whether it is African or from the Islands, dishes like groundnut stew and ackee. It's a celebration of identity, like Kwanzaa.

You can see a switch among immigrants too. People used to come and try and assimilate. Now people increasingly want to hold onto their nationality. And one of the most potent ways you do it is with food. You keep your food ways.

I once took a close look at what kids in Los Angeles were taking to school for lunch. When I was growing up, most kids had pretty much the same thing in their little waxed paper bag--we didn't have lunch boxes then--a white bread sandwich that had peanut butter and jelly or balogna and cheese. Now you go in the school yard and the Japanese kids have little boxes of sushi and the Mexican kids have burritos and the Korean kids have kimchee. And it really is their parents saying to them, "Don't try and get too far away from who you are."

PT: Do you see these kids exchanging their food?

RR: Sometimes. But it's a brave Mexican child who's going to want to taste kimchee. And a very brave Anglo kid who's going to say, "I want to taste that rice wrapped in seaweed." Mostly, they don't trade food until they're in about sixth grade, and suddenly they're very curious about each other's food ways. It's a real way of absorbing culture.

PT: We tend to think of food as a way of drawing people together, but it can keep us apart, too.

RR: Absolutely. It's how we say, "These are our boundaries. This is what we brought from our homeland."

PT: Do you make judgments about people you know or meet in terms of their food preferences?

RR: Oh, I definitely do. I don't mean to choose friends by food but it's very central to my life.

PT: What criteria do you use?

RR: Well, I want people around me with the most catholic palates that I can find. I have a hard time with people who want to eat just a few things and won't experiment because what it says to me is that they are people who are very closed.

PT: I'm surprised with your upbringing that you weren't totally turned off to food. What accounts for your catholic taste now?

RR: My mother, for all her horrible cooking and all the really miserable lunches she sent me to school with, was very curious about food. We lived in Greenwich Village and she would go wandering down Bleecker Street and come back with anything she'd never seen before. Mussels is one example, cactus fruit another.

Then we would figure out how to use it. We would research it. We would ask people. It was fun--not the actual cooking, but the discovering. So, early on, food seemed to me a way of exploring the world.

I also got to show off a little bit for my friends. Kids who had come for dinner would say, "God, we had asparagus and artichokes at your house," when they were eating peas in their own home.

PT: Were there others who sparked your interest in food?

RR: I was around great cooks. My mother wasn't one of them, but I had my Aunt Birdie's maid Alice, and throughout my life there have been people who got great pleasure out of cooking and would take me into the kitchen. I think all children love to cook if they're given the opportunity.