American food culture's turning point

Feels like the moment to celebrate the Immigration Act of 1965. Plus: Happy birthday, butter chicken 🧈

Happy Saturday, open-hearted cook!

I hardly recognize America at the moment. In the space of a few days, we’ve been watching, helpless, as our free and independent press — so essential to the functioning of democracy — crumbles before our very eyes. At the same time, the scapegoating of immigrants has become national sport.

For anyone (on either side of the aisle) excited by dining and cooking, it seems worthwhile to think about, and appreciate, what immigrants have contributed to our food culture in the last sixty years.

It may be hard for young people to imagine, but mid-century America was nowhere near as diverse as it is today; consequently, the restaurant scene was overwhelmingly Eurocentric and actually pretty dull.

A few decades before that, Congress had passed the xenophobic Immigration Act of 1924. As I explained in my 1999 book American Appetite, “With the Immigration Act of 1924, America went from an attitude of ‘Give me your tired, your poor . . . ‘ to ‘Give me your well-he…