The origins of California Cuisine
Until the 1970s, going to a restaurant in the U.S. most often meant facing an enormous piece of meat drowned in brownish sauce with overcooked vegetables. Then came Alice Waters. In 1971, she opened her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, a chic suburb of San Francisco, inspired by a stay in Provence. Back in 1952, food writer Helen Evans Brown published her best-selling West Coast Cookbook, advocating the use of fresh, local and seasonal produce. These demands may seem trivial to us, but they were truly revolutionary in the American culinary landscape, where consumers were accustomed to a typically Anglo-Saxon cuisine that was rather boring, not to mention the fast-food restaurants that were booming in the country at the time.
Chez Panisse paved the way for other restaurateurs who dared to mix flavors in new ways, using local and organic products, while paying tribute to the ingredients from the four corners of the world used by the many communities living in California. In Yountville, Napa Valley, Sally Schmitt began serving monthly single-menu dinners with an emphasis on local ingredients, continuing the concept when she and her husband Don opened The French Laundry in 1978. In Los Angeles, chef Wolfgang Puck - who trained in Paris and Monaco, among other places - opened Spago in 1982, offering inventive Californian cuisine. In 1983, he also opened a fusion restaurant with Asian accents: Chinois On Main. Mark Peel, Ed LaDou and Daniel Patterson also played an important role in this made-in-California culinary revolution.
Inventive restaurateurs weren't the only ones to benefit from this wind of change. Many farmers and artisans began to produce differently. For city dwellers, farmers' markets have become a veritable institution, where local farmers offer their products. Goat's cheese, for example, was virtually unknown to Americans until the 1970s. Other Californian cheeses include Monterey Jack (similar to aged cheddar), Pepperjack (with chilli flakes), Purple Haze (fresh goat's cheese with fennel pollen and lavender flowers) and Humboldt Fog (aged goat's cheese similar to Brie, with a thin layer of ash in the middle, like our Morbier).
The US cuisine of California
While the Golden State is home to the basics of American cuisine (steak & French fries, burger, hot dog, macaroni & cheese, fried chicken, etc.), it also offers more local specialties. Fish and seafood - especially Pacific oysters - are important. In San Francisco, the signature dish is clam chowder, a creamy clam velout usually eaten in a hollowed-out sourdough bread bowl. And don't forget the dungeness crab cakes (breaded crab cakes with mayonnaise).
Mexican influences are very much in evidence. One example is the Mission burrito, a tortilla filled with Mexican-style rice (fried with onions and tomato), red beans and melting shredded meat (beef or pork). Other toppings include cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, cilantro, avocado, sour cream or hot pepper. Also on the menu: Mexican and Tex-Mex basics such as nachos, fajitas, tacos, enchiladas and more.
The Cobb salad, invented in the 1930s at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant, features a lettuce base with tomato, grilled bacon, grilled chicken fillet, hard-boiled egg, avocado and Roquefort. The Caesar salad (romaine lettuce, croutons, parmesan and a garlicky anchovy and parmesan dressing) was invented in Tijuana in the 1920s, but soon became popular with Californians fleeing Prohibition in Mexico.
Another favorite was the California-style pizza, invented by Ed LaDou, who democratized thin-crust pizzas, daring to use ingredients that were highly unusual for the time: duck sausage, chicken with barbecue sauce, avocado, cilantro, etc. The French dip is also worth mentioning. There's also the French dip, a baguette sandwich topped with slices of roast beef, cheese and caramelized onions, served with a bowl of beef broth.
Gastronomic visit in Chinatown
As the main gateway to the West Coast for immigrants from Asia, California is home to almost 15% Asians, rising to 30% in some cities like San Francisco, with a majority of Chinese. San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest in the United States, and one of the largest on the continent. As early as the mid-19th century, migrants arrived in California, attracted by the gold rush, creating new recipes with locally available ingredients.
From this Sino-American cuisine, we'll remember chop suey (a mixture of meat or seafood with vegetables and omelette), beef & broccoli (strips of beef with broccoli and oyster sauce), General Tso chicken (fried chicken in a sweet and sour sauce), crab Rangoons (fried ravioli with crab and fromage frais), Mongolian beef (strips of beef with onion and hot pepper sauce) ororange chicken (fried chicken with sweet and sour orange sauce)
Hailing from southeast China, dim sum is a bite-sized dish - often steamed dumplings - served with tea and very popular in California. While Sino-American cuisine has long been popular, more and more Americans are seeking out more authentic flavors: California's major cities are home to a multitude of restaurants offering regional Chinese cuisine from Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Sichuan and Yunnan.
In parallel, there are many other Asian enclaves, such as Japantown, in San Francisco's Western Addition district, or Little Tokyo, in Los Angeles. It was in this district that uramaki or california rolls were created, sushi with rice on the outside of nori seaweed. Little Saigon, in the San Francisco suburb of San José, is home to the world's largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam. And let's not forget Koreatown in Los Angeles, or Cambodia Town in Long Beach. Finally, there's a very large Filipino community. This melting pot translates into an infinite variety of recipes and restaurants.
Desserts and drinks
On the sweet side, a number of desserts originated in California, including maple bars (long doughnuts with a maple syrup glaze), chiffon cakes (extremely light sponge cakes), chiffon pies (tarts with an airy fruit mousse, usually lemon) and the famous fortune cookies, thin wafers containing an omen found in Chinese restaurants. Of course, let's not forget the many pastry shops offering all the classic American sweets: cupcakes, donuts, muffins, cheesecakes, as well as a multitude of cakes and pies of all kinds.
California locals are proud of their coffee culture. You'll find good, locally roasted coffee everywhere, especially in the Italian neighborhood of North Beach, where this religion began. Tea lovers will also find something to their liking, from Taiwanese bubble tea - with gelatinous tapioca beads - to richly spiced Indian chai latte.
The vineyard, US version
Californian wine earned its letters of nobility in 1976 in Paris, following a blind tasting between eleven specialists: red or white, the vintages of the Golden State came out ahead of the French. Wine-growing areas in the Golden State are often divided into four regions. First, the North Coast, north of San Francisco Bay. Here you'll find major production areas like Napa Valley and Sonoma County, as well as the Mendocino region. Then there's the Central Coast: from southwest San Francisco to Santa Barbara County, wine is grown mainly around Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Paso Robles. Then there's the South Coast, from south of Los Angeles to the Mexican border. There are a few smaller vineyards here, including Temecula. Finally, the Central Valley, located inland at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, with the Sierra Foothills vineyards stretching through the Golden Country, from Sacramento to Fresno.
Many wineries are open to visitors and offer wine-tasting tours. The most common grape varieties are Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir for reds, and Chardonnay and Sauvignon for whites. Not forgetting sparkling wines.
In addition to wines, California has a wide variety of cocktail bars: many famous compositions originate here. These include the Dry Martini (gin and vermouth with olive or lemon zest), the Cable Car(spiced rum, orange curacao and lemon juice), the Agent Orange (orange juice, vodka, Cointreau), the California Milk Punch (milk, cream, bourbon, maple syrup and vanilla), Pisco Punch (pineapple juice, pisco, lemon juice, cane sugar, soda water), Mai Tai (rum, curacao, orgeat, lime juice) and Tequila Sunrise (orange juice, tequila, grenadine). And last but not least, beer, produced by countless microbreweries, is very popular. Happy tasting!
