Food Beyond Borders

By Karen Sternheimer

Trying new foods is one of my favorite aspects of travel. I’m not exactly an adventurous eater, but I enjoy learning about what the locals eat and sampling food that’s not too far out of my comfort zone. Food is not just sociological, as I wrote about many years ago, but it also reflects the politics of shifting borders and the push and pull factors that contribute to immigration.

Living in southern California, many of the meals that I prepare at home reflect the influence of Mexican dishes. Veggie burritos with lots of black beans, jalapeños, salsa, and guacamole might not be on the menu exactly as I make them in an authentic Mexican restaurant, but the Americanized version shapes my cooking. Immigration from southeast Asia has contributed to the popularity of sriracha, a hot sauce I put on nearly everything, Like countless others, I stock up with news of a sriracha shortage, because it has become such a staple in our household.

A recent trip to France and Italy highlights the importance of immigration, politics, and food. When you think of these countries, what foods come to mind? Coq au Vin, the famous French chicken dish cooked in wine? Escargot? Fresh pasta and gourmet pizza in Italy?

In France we dined on flammkuchen, sauerkraut, and wurst (pictured below). If this sounds German, it’s because we were in the Alsace region of France, which had been part of Germany in the past and is now right across the border.

We also ate Gözleme, a Turkish flatbread with spinach and feta (see photo below). The small Turkish market on the corner of the street we stayed on in Strasbourg made these delicious flatbreads to order, starting from a ball of dough to a quickly cooked soft and thin bread while you wait.

We also visited Germany and had some traditional German food at a Biergarten, but some of our best meals were courtesy of Turkish immigrants: Döner Kebab, schwarma, and falafel wraps were go-to-meals for at least three evenings.

We visited the northern part of Italy, a favorite place we have visited in the past, in order to hike in the Alps and to enjoy the food at the many rifugios, refuges in the mountains that have food and lodging for hikers. The meal below was a platter of some of the typical dishes within the Sud Tirol region: sauerkraut, knödel (dumpling), goulash, bratwurst, potatoes, and a pretzel that looked like a face.

If this sounds like Germanic food, rather than Italian food, that’s because this region was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of World War I. Italy’s Sud Tirol has twice as many German speakers as Italian speakers and has much more in common with their Tirolian neighbors to the north in Austria than with their southern neighbors at the other end of the Italian boot. One of my go-to meals in this region is Suppe mit knödel, a hearty soup with dumplings made from bread, spices, and speck (pronounced schpeck), an Italian cured meat.

As I have blogged about in the past, we also enjoy going to local grocery stores and cooking our own meals on occasion if we have a kitchen.  This can be an opportunity to learn to cook local dishes. At the grocery store in nearby Nova Levante, Italy, we bought knödel to make our own soup, as well as wurst (sausages), Leibniz biscuits, and spätzle, a noodle dish often served with onions and cheese.

Yes, you can find pizza and pasta in this part of Italy too, just like you can find pizza and pasta in many places around the world, but it is not the regional cuisine. We had pizza our last night in Sud Tirol, and it was mediocre—just like there are many places to get mediocre pizza at home.

Dining in northern Italy is also a reminder that what Americans think of as “Italian” food is actually Italian-American immigrant food. Immigrants from southern Italy brought pizza and pasta to the United States in the early twentieth century. Over the last century, many of these dishes became Americanized. Spaghetti and meatballs? Italian American. Pepperoni pizza? Italian American (although if you order salame on your pizza in Italy you will get what we think of as pepperoni).

Food reflects the political and social realities of immigration. It’s also a chance to get to know a region and understand why certain foods are on the menu. That’s one of the reasons I love going to local grocery stores to see what gets a lot of space in the market.

About half of my local market is occupied by many choices of fruits and vegetables, many of which are grown a few hours away in California’s central valley. I saw far fewer choices for produce on my European trip, but many options for cheese (Käse) and sausage (Wurstaufschnitt) in one supermarket in Munich (pictured below). These options are not just about customer preference, but also reflect agricultural and trade policies that make some foods more available than others in both the past and present.

What do the foods in your area teach us about borders, history, and migration patterns?

Photos courtesy of the author