#I ordered waffles from the kids menu because I'm that kind of person

[ainaasad-art]

I have been to a restaurant that sells exclusively chilaquiles and that has all the walls covered with drawings from customers

[mooifyourecows]

What food do y’all have in good ol’ ‘Mercia?

all of it

honestly though it depends on where you are. America is a big immigrant country, with people from all over the world bringing their authentic food with them. if you're in a big city with a big variety of people (Chicago, NYC, LA, etc), you can pretty much find ANY kind of cuisine possible. If youre touring around Chicago and suddenly think "MAN i could really go for some moi moi rn..." you're in luck! you can easily find a nigerian restaurant to meet your needs no problemo!

now if you're in a small, podunk one stoplight town, variety is a lot harder to find. You WILL almost always have Mexican food as an option though. Good mexican food too. made by actual mexicans. i've been to a lot of mexican restaurants here in America on account of it is my favorite and I've never encountered one owned or operated by non mexicans. other than like... fast food like taco bell and such. white people mexican restaurants don't last long because they have to compete with authentic deliciousness and that's just not possible (obviously this is just my personal experience and i have not been to EVERY town in america so i'm sure there are some exceptions)

Different parts of the country have different popular foods. In coastal states you'll find a lot of seafood, naturally. Maine is rollin in lobster (joke about lobster rolls), and you'll find several different types of BBQ, from Texas to Kansas City to Memphis to a backyard near you 🫵. Southern Soul Food is one of my faves, what with the jambalaya and the gumbo and the corn bread and mac and cheese and so on and so forth, deliciously 🤤 (i swear if i ever make it to New Orleans one of these days, i'm not going home without gaining at least 50lbs)

We have a big pizza culture here and you can find different pizza types all over the country. There's some debate about which pizza is the BEST pizza, mainly with Chicago deep dish and NYC style in a neverending battle of butting heads. (personally i'm just happy to get any pizza so i can't say who is better)

Then there's the stuff like Philly Cheese steak, the Reuben, pies (so many pies, but namely apple and pumpkin are the big ones), New England Clam Chowder, buckeyes, cheese curds, tex-mex, etc.

Diners are kinda the backbone of American eating, if you ask me, because you're destined to find diners everywhere. they're comforting, they're familiar, they have big menus, and they're within budget. Diners usually serve breakfast all day too, so you can swing in late in the evening (or even in the middle of the night) and order a big plate of chicken and waffles and a warm slice of apple pie à la mode any damn time you want!

I hear non americans are always baffled by biscuits and gravy, because it definitely doesn't LOOK appetizing but it's SO good. country gravy with a spicy sausage on fresh, flaky biscuits? Yall i'm gettin hungry just thinking about it. that was the meal i ate, hungover, after my 21st birthday, and i didn't regret a single bite mmMMm

i also hear that non americans don't eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but those are a big part of American culture, especially when you're a kid. aint nothin hit harder at lunchtime than takin a big ol bite of a gooey pb&j and chasin it with ice cold milk

Thanksgiving dinners are also iconically American food culture. gettin 20 of your family members together in one house, cookin a big ass turkey and serving it with a plethora of homestyle sides like stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, yams, mac and cheese, buttERNUT SQUASH, ACORN SQUASH, PUMPKIN PIE OH MAN OH MY i think i need to eat something before i gnaw through my arm

there's great native food too! frybread and succotash and what not. corn is a big thing for the indigenous people here and they popularized a lot of uses for it. I unfortunately haven't had a lot of it so i can't really speak on what's great and all, but if you just look up Native American food, you will see corn's influence lol

and OF COURSE we got the hamburgers and hot dogs. i know that fast food joints like mcdonalds have spread everywhere these days like a blight on the earth, but they're like... gas station burgers in comparison to the good stuff you can get. same with hotdogs. like i know that you can buy hotdogs from the store in a lot of places (for some reason in jars of liquid in the UK, i learned recently, which is..... fun) but they're not the same as getting a delicious hotdog with the works at a baseball game, you know? it's not the SAME. there's so much variety with what you can do with burgers and hotdogs! and Americans love to grill. it's pretty normal for households to have a grill they bust out every summer for backyard BBQs and cookouts.

anyway, i can't really tell you more about specific foods only in america because i genuinely don't know which foods here haven't either been brought over from somewhere else or have breached containment and gone off to other countries. i sometimes see restaurants in other countries have a "USA style" food and it seems to almost always be the most comically disgusting thing i've ever seen. (like pizza with fries and hot dogs as toppings lmaoooo)(ngl tho, i'd try it)

if anybody has some iconic American food to mention, feel free to do so! 👀