Just add butter.

Hands down, my favorite kind of food is what I like to call Americanized Ethnic Food. For example:

This morning I ate lefse that I bought in WI. For those of you who don't know, lefse is kind of like a Scandinavian tortilla made from riced potatoes. Amazing. I am not Scandinavian, myself, but I grew up Lutheran in Minnesota, so it's close enough. I love it. It is one thing I absolutely must get when I go home (that, and Fat Squirrel beer from the New Glarus brewery...Minnesota is my home, but Swissconsin has some darn good food on my route!). However, lefse is often traditionally eated with lutefisk. Lutefisk is gross. There is no other word for it. It is a white fish (often cod in the US) that is soaked in lye. It has the consistency of translucent Jell-O. I like to eat lefse with butter and cinnamon sugar. Or chicken and gravy. America.

Italian food. When we were in Italy, the food was good...but they don't use as much sauce, and the pasta was much more al dente than it is here. That whole 'dip the bread in the olive oil, parmesan, and pepper' thing? Maybe we were just in the wrong part of Italy, but we got some funny looks when we tried dipping the bread in the olive oil. Of course, there is no substitute for a good Tuscan chianti and gelato every day, but frankly, I tend to prefer Olive Garden.

Chinese food. Think about the best Chinese restaurant you've ever been to. Chances are, they had an American menu and a Chinese menu. If you are fortunate enough to have Chinese friends, they might order for you from the Chinese menu, and some of the food will have been magnificent. However. There is a reason they do not put the whole fish or the chicken feet on the American menu. And I am fine with that.

This past weekend I was in Minnesota, and my brother took me out to a sushi bar. Now here is a more-or-less authentic Japanese tradition (according to my Japanese post-doc). At Ichiban in Minneapolis, you have the option of sitting at their All-You-Can-Eat-For-One-Hour sushi bar. The chef stands in the middle of an oval bar, and prepares the sushi fresh. In Japan, the chef apparently puts the sushi on a conveyor belt. Here, he puts them on BOATS. No kidding. There is literally running water around the bar, with BOATS. You just take whatever sushi you want off of the boats. I have discovered that I really really like salmon sashimi and even eel. I do, however, draw the line at what my postdoc claims is delicious, and that is horse sashimi (raw horse meat). Yep, horses. God bless America, where the only raw food we eat is from the ocean.