USA
The USA is not a single culinary tradition but a collection of regional cuisines that happen to share national borders.
Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971 and in doing so founded both Californian cuisine and the entire farm to table idea, where the menu is written according to what is available rather than the other way round. Judy Rodgers carried that legacy forward at Zuni Café, and her roast chicken with bread salad is one of the most widely recreated restaurant dishes in the country.
The South has the deepest tradition. Edna Lewis wrote about the seasonal cooking of Black Virginia in 1976 and established Southern American food as serious cooking, a tradition Sean Brock has carried forward through heritage ingredients, corn and slow smoking.
David Chang's Momofuku from 2009 is the category's turning point, a book about ramen, pork buns and kimchi that rewrote the rules for what a restaurant cookbook was allowed to sound like.
The category also includes barbecue, Cajun and Creole cooking from Louisiana, Tex Mex, New England seafood and The Joy of Cooking, which has sold more than 20 million copies since 1931 and can be found in practically every American home.
