Made-in-the-U.S.A. dishes have reshaped the culinary landscape the world over. Alan Richman tucks into the 20 most influential

Before we were able to pay attention to food, Americans had to perfect democracy, settle the West, free the slaves, crush the Nazis, and fight the commies. Meanwhile, we ate whatever was at hand. We stewed squirrels. We turned turtles into soup. Food was secondary. Oh, we had raw materials aplenty: fields of waving grain, herds of juicy protein, oceans of non-farmed fish. We just didn't know what to do with it all.

Our first uniquely American restaurants appeared in the fifties and sixties. We called them Polynesian, even though none of us knew where Polynesia was or what Polynesians ate. We concocted Sesame Chicken Aku-Aku and Shrimp Bongo Bongo. It was our first date food. In the seventies, food started to change, courtesy of a place we had never taken seriously before: California—home to Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, fresh vegetables and wood-grilled meats.

Once we discovered how much fun it was to eat, there was no stopping us. We freed chickens from their pens—and ate them! We let pasta get cold—on purpose! We shunned preservatives that prevented spoilage—and called it health food!

Soon we had a culinary tradition all our own. We named it New American cuisine (although to be honest, there never really was an Old American cuisine—barbecue excepted). On the following pages are those dishes that elevated American food from its ponderous past and established a new identity: sweet and spicy, colorful and multicultural, unfettered, inventive, and joyous. These are the 20 dishes that made America—culinarily, at least.

Baked Sonoma Goat Cheese with Garden Lettuces
Chez Panisse, Berkeley, California
Alice Waters insisted on local Laura Chenel goat cheese when she could have played it safe with a more traditional offering from France. Her audacity gave credibility to the then-insignificant American artisanal cheese industry and created one of the classics of the California-cuisine movement. "People still order it every time they come in," says Waters. What's more, the lettuces accompanying the cheese forever changed what we have come to hope for from a salad—freshness was born that day in 1981 when she put fresh-picked field greens on the menu. Today, it is not the pursuit of cheese or greens that Waters considers her most essential undertaking—it's fresh fruit. "A perfect peach says everything," she says. "If it's not mind-blowing, I don't want it here."
Get it today at Chez Panisse, where it is often on the menu (1517 Shattuck Ave.; 510-548-5525; $10).

Barbecue Pork Sandwich
Skylight Inn, Ayden, North Carolina
Barbecue is America's greatest gift to cuisine, and of all the barbecue this nation has proudly produced, nothing comes close to the glorious eastern North Carolina chopped pork sandwich. At the Skylight Inn, which has been around since 1947, the pork is cooked on hickory and oak, enhanced with a spicy vinegar-based sauce, topped with finely textured coleslaw, reunited with crunchy bits of fat and skin from the pig, and placed on a hamburger bun. Allow us to proclaim the obvious: This is the best sandwich on earth.
Get it today at the Skylight Inn (4618 S. Lee St.; 252-746-4113; $2.50).