Exploring Diverse Cuisines
 Passage 1

Food has always been considered one of the most salient markers of cultural traditions. When I was a small child, food was the only thing that helped identify my family as Filipino American. We ate pansit lug-lug (a noodle dish) and my father put patis (salty fish sauce) on everything. However, even this connection lessened as I grew older. As my parents became more acculturated, we ate less typically Filipino food. When I was twelve, my mother took cooking classes and learned to make French and Italian dishes. When I was in high school, we ate chicken marsala and shrimp fra diablo more often than Filipino dishes like pansit lug-lug.

Passage 2

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin—who in 1825 confidently announced, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are”—would have no trouble describing cultural identities of the United States. Our food reveals us as tolerant adventurers who do not feel constrained by tradition. We “play with our food” far more readily than we preserve the culinary rules of our varied ancestors. Americans have no single national cuisine. What unites American eaters culturally is how we eat, not what we eat. As eaters, Americans mingle the culinary traditions of many regions and cultures. We are multiethnic eaters.