Let’s face it. New England cuisine is sourly in the need of a make-over. In 2021 who wants bland spiceless food that requires a teenager’s ability to boil water or operate a fryer to prepare?
Lobster, steamers, mussels, corn on the cob, raw oysters – come on, the ingredients do all the work. Even baked beans just require opening a can. Fried fish and seafood? Again, the ingredients provide all the star power, they can only be ruined by overuse of batter and not draining the oil.
Whoopie Pies? Basically a Devil Dog.
Even chowders have been ruined by the overuse of cream and skimping on ingredients. We even have to worry about fake laboratory-made “crabmeat” and “scallops” that are really just round chunks of some kind of trash fish.
No wonder over the past few decades we’ve seen food from other regions have flooded into New England – Southern BBQ, Tex-Mex, Steak, Pizza and burger joints.
Other than the occasional use of bacon, spices seem foreign to New England cuisine. No “Old Bay Seasonings”. No Tabasco hot sauce. I haven’t even seen salt and pepper on the tables lately – well, maybe that is due to Covid.
A lot of the problem can be traced to a time when most New Englanders worked in cities, far removed from the food sources. Butter and milk were shipped in from rural Vermont. Ethic food was considered foreign and was supplanted by do gooders who ” believed firmly in teaching immigrants to cook mushy, bland, inexpensive food, under the mistaken impression that spices provoke dyspepsia, and fruits and vegetables are mere indulgences (unfortunately, the existence of vitamins was not firmly established until after 1900).”
In the 1890’s, Richards opened a public kitchen to serve cheap carry-out food in Boston’s North End, a neighborhood primarily populated by recent immigrants from Italy. Her menus largely consisted of beef broth, pea soup, fish, clam, and corn chowders, succotash, creamed codfish, corn mush, boiled hominy, oatmeal mush, cracked wheat, baked beans, and Indian pudding — all prepared with as little salt, pork, fat, and sugar as possible.
No wonder Penzeys spices don’t have any store locations in Maine! They would go bankrupt trying to sell flavor to Mainers.
The real problem with New England cuisine is that it ignores the contributions from immigrants that could be celebrated – rather than focusing on the bland Irish staples of corned beef and cabbage – the flavors of Italy or the Caribbean could have been incorporated.
“New England currently has substantial populations of migrants from Puerto Rico, and immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.”
WHY not incorporate the flavors from thes regions?
In 2021 I don’t know why New England continues to serve up the same boring food from decades ago. I recall my mom and grandmother talking negatively about pepper – like it was a sin to taste your food. I’ve been around the world sampling flavorful food from all corners of the globe, as no doubt have many of the tourists who visit Maine and the other New England stage. Why serve them something only old white people who grew up in New England would like?
You can see this in any seafood restaurant in the region – they attract the white senior citizens. Young people are eating Sushi and dining at Thai restaurants.