David Page, FOOD AMERICANA: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories behind America’s Favorite Dishes

[1:51]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Special announcement. I am teaming up with Katie Couric Media's Wake Up Call and Random House to give away 100 copies of the book Stranger Care by Sarah Santillis. I'm really excited about this. Here's a little about Sarah's book, and we collectively are giving away a 100 copies. After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Santilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system's goal is the child's reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social workers who question them, evaluate them, and ultimately prepare them to welcome a child into their lives even if it means most likely having to give the child back. Stranger care is an illuminating read, and Sarah will be on this podcast soon. So if you would like to enter for a chance to win, please go to the link in the episode description from right where you clicked on it and enter your email address first and last name. By doing so you're agreeing to the sweepstakes official rules and agree to receive communications and special offers from Katie Couric's wake up call and moms don't have time to read books. Thank you for doing it and enter to win today. Just go back to the episode description. Thanks again. David Page is the author of Food Americana. Two time Emmy winner David Page changed the world of food television by creating, developing, and executive producing the groundbreaking show Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, which by the way, my husband Kyle watches a lot, and so therefore I do too. Before that, as a network news producer based in London, Frankfurt, and Budapest, he traveled Europe, Africa, and The Middle East doing two things, covering some of the biggest stories in the world and developing a passion for some of the world's most incredible food. Once back in The States, Page pursued his passion both personally and professionally. Show producing Good Morning America, his substantial food coverage included cooking segments by Emeril Lagasse, creating diners, drive ins, and dives, and hands on producing its first eleven seasons took him deep into the world of American food, its vast variations, its history, its evolution, and especially the dedicated cooks and chefs keeping it vibrant. His next series, the syndicated Beer Geeks, dove deep into the intersection of great beer and great food. It is those experiences, that education, the discovery of little known stories and facts that led Paige to dig even deeper and tie the strands together in Food Americana. Welcome, David. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Food Americana, the remarkable people and incredible stories behind America's favorite dishes. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with me. It's great to be here. So, David, would you mind telling listeners a bit more aside from this great subtitle about what Food Americana is about? And, also what made you wanna write this book? Well, Food Americana

[5:16]David Page: is an attempt to, a successful one, hope, define what American cuisine is. We all go about our lives every day eating a relatively narrow selection of foods that have become American, but few people stopped to think, how did they become American? How how did our menu get made? And the answer that I found was we've created our own cuisine from bits and pieces of the foods of other countries and other cultures, analogous to how we created a country from immigrants, from here, there, and everywhere. And I I was motivated to write it because, first of all, most of my career, I was a TV producer. Writing for television is a unique, often undervalued skill because it requires some real jumping around and some anonymity. You're not writing your story in your words. You're using your words to tie together as invisibly as possible things that are unfolding on screen in terms of pictures and sound. When you write a TV piece, you don't get to sit down I was almost gonna say typewriter. You don't get to sit down at the keyboard and simply start with, it was a dark and stormy night and then Oedipus killed his father. And in every TV producer's mind, there is a sense that I could write a book. I myself have gone through a variety of careers. I'm a little restless. Yes. Almost all of them were television, but they were different kinds of television. I I tend to change every few years. And we had just gotten to the point where it was time for something new. And I said to myself, I'm just gonna sit down and write the damn thing.

[7:14]Zibby Owens: So I did. And here it is. Fantastic. That really Thank you. The difference between becoming an author or not. The magic is in actually having a manuscript and getting it out there.

[7:24]David Page: Well, but also the naivete involved in not knowing just how hard it is. I allotted a year to the project. It took two. Okay. And in deciding what to put in the book, I was somewhat naive. I chose to do a variety of different foods or food ways, one per chapter, well, one per most chapters, without really thinking through the fact that to do adequate research to write a chapter on something is almost as much research as to write a book on something. So it would have been a lot easier to write a book on lobster rolls or or a book on sushi,

[8:04]Zibby Owens: but instead, I dumped it all in my own lap, and it it it took a good couple of years. But it was enjoyable. I was surprised to learn how sushi came about through Yule Brenner and the one tiny little store near the cinema not the cinema. What do you call it? Studio. The

[8:20]David Page: studio. No. He he played a big part, and he was representative of the celebrities who played a big part. Sushi came to America for the most part with Japanese businessmen who were posted in California as Japan rebuilt its economy after World War two. However, as often happens in Hollywood, some celebrities got a sniff of it and decided to make it the thing. It started with, among others, Yul Brenner, who would often eat sushi at a restaurant next to one of the studios that he was shooting at. The glitterati picked it up. It became kind of a hip thing to do, but two other elements of American society played a great role in this. Number one, in the seventies, we went through a governmental food health phase. People were being, perhaps for the first time, warned by their government to eat less red meat, more fish, try to eat better. And there was a mini series on NBC called Shogun, starring Richard Chamberlain as a samurai. And all of a sudden because of that, everything Japanese became hip. So yes, it became kind of a cool thing to do to have sushi. So is it like the kombucha of today? Better by my own opinion, but yes. It is a food trend that was created to a great extent by people being cool. Will kombucha be with us in forty or fifty years? We can check back and see if it entered the lexicon of American cuisine like sushi did. Now, and remember, sushi is a perfect example of how foods become part of our cuisine. We we check them out, we try them, and then we change them to our taste. The vast majority of the sushi sold in The United States is big rolls. There are not a lot of big rolls sold in Japan. There are a fair amount of rolls. They tend to be simple, Ours tend to be overstuffed complex and sauced beyond belief. Some of ours are filled with things like french fries and steak. Some of ours, I I focus on a a sushi bar and a gas station in Oklahoma where their top seller is deep fried sushi because they said to themselves and by the way, they they sell very traditional style sushi also for those who want it, But if you're gonna sell sushi in Del City, Oklahoma, no aspersions on Oklahoma. I briefly attended both of their state universities and left without a degree. If you're gonna sell sushi in in Del City, Oklahoma, you're you're gonna have to deep fry a lot of it. Wow.

[11:21]Zibby Owens: No. It's so true. And you point out, you can get sushi now everywhere. It used to be such deli. Now it's like not only is it at Cinderella, but it's like, you know, at the airport. Like, first time I saw in the airport, I'm like, do I want sushi at the airport? How do I feel about this? I didn't like, now it's everywhere. It's just like anywhere you go. Well, top executives,

[11:39]David Page: the most pre sushi in America told me, she made this analogy because she certainly considers it American food, that when she and her friends would duck out of high school to get lunch, they went for a burger. Her kids today go for sushi. And my definition, by the way, of what I think of as American food is a food item that has truly become a part of our daily menu virtually everywhere. There are other popular foods such as Thai or Vietnamese that I don't think have yet crossed over. They're popular in many places, but they're not, hey, let's go out for sushi. It's a different experience.

[12:20]Zibby Owens: Yes, that's true. Yeah. Sushi now is like the common denominator. I feel like even with, and I know you mentioned that, like, one of the most popular was the the California roll or something like just very tame. Like, not even like, you know, the cucumber rolls or things that are doing heavy fish, all of that.

[12:38]David Page: Except what's interesting about the California roll, and I am told that the California roll has now migrated to Japan Oh, that's interesting. Where it's obviously seen as an American item, but people think the California roll was one of those items invented for Americans, and there is great dispute about this. There is a school of thought that the California roll, which has no raw fish in it and has avocado, was actually invented during a time of year when fatty tuna was unavailable on the West Coast Of The US and it was invented for a Japanese clientele using the texture and fattiness of the avocado specifically to replace the fatty tuna. Now others say it was invented to suit American tastes. Whether it was or not, it certainly fits American tastes.

[13:34]Zibby Owens: Very true. Wow. I've even been trying to teach my little guy how to make cucumber rolls with the seaweed and everything. So, yes, I could say it's safely pervaded, and I don't mean to spend the whole time talking about it. I know this is one only one chapter in your book. But But, you know, cucumber rolls are very, very traditionally Japanese.

[13:55]David Page: Sushi does not require fish. Sushi refers to a foodstuff that is based around vinegared rice, so it's not at all unusual to have sushi in Japan

[14:09]Zibby Owens: that features vegetables, not fish. Okay. Well, now I don't feel quite like sushi Well, here you go. Sushi lightweight.

[14:16]David Page: You're not a lightweight. You know? Can't, like, amikaze or whatever. You know? Well, amikaze is you don't have to do it. The chef will No. I can't even eat it. I get like, why not? You know what? If you went in and told a sushi chef, a, omakase, but b, I'm a first timer and I'm an American,

[14:36]Zibby Owens: the chef would take care of you. I don't know. I really only eat salmon.

[14:41]David Page: Yeah. But, you know, salmon is actually one of the most dangerous fishes in that respect. When salmon is used in sushi, when salmon is served quote unquote raw, by law it must have been frozen first because salmon is host to all sorts of parasites. So now I've turned you off salmon Oh my gosh, that explains it. There's always lox and bagels, Yeah. Which is the perfect food. Yes,

[15:12]Zibby Owens: I'll eat salmon in all forms. Yes, there's nothing wrong with the bagel or the smoked salmon is the perfect food.

[15:19]David Page: A bagel locks the cheese is the food. It's it's yeah. I I I don't live in New York anymore. I live in New Jersey. So intrinsically, you're not gonna reach those levels of perfection. But I I had I stopped at New York bagels today and got a bagel ox and cream cheese sandwich. My wife did as well, both on everything bagels, and I could die now. It's great.

[15:44]Zibby Owens: Perfect. I was just saying that yesterday for Father's Day, and I don't this will probably air later, but we were debating having, like, going out, and I was like, or we could all just get bagels. And then we were like, well, does anybody want are we gonna all eat bagels? Then we're gonna be hungry later. And I don't know. Anyway, we decided not to get bagels. We went out and it was terrible. So we should have just gotten the bagels. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quint's has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free

[19:15]David Page: But you know, you, you talk about the premise of my book is that foods of other countries and cultures became American. I got an ad in my email promoting either July 4 or Father's Day as the day to eat bagels. Oh, come on. Okay. It wasn't Israeli Independence Day. Wow. It's it's in fact, you know, the most bagels in America are now sold by Dunkin' Donuts or Dunkin' as they've rebranded. I I don't like that rebrand. What what is up with that? Well, you know, it's interesting. I've been doing some research for another project. They identify themselves as a coffee retailer, not as a donut retailer anymore. And and when it comes to franchised coffee sales, they are by far number one. Now they're dwarfed by Starbucks, which owns all of its own stores, but no, Dunkin's a coffee company. Still.

[20:08]Zibby Owens: I don't know. I I don't like anything to change, so I would be happy. But Okay. You're clearly a a culinary consumer. I know. It's embarrassing. It is embarrassing. So you don't like the fact that regional

[20:18]David Page: specialties are now available all over the country, that you can get a lobster roll in Utah?

[20:24]Zibby Owens: Well, I'm a little suspect. Don't think I I would not order a lobster roll in Utah. Would you?

[20:29]David Page: Well, depending on what no. Look. I I grew up in Western Mass. We would go to Maine for the summers. I have a deep and abiding respect for lobster eaten right off the pier. The question is, as my book explores, any number of regional foods are now available all over the country. Lobster rolls are a perfect example. There are several companies that own or franchise lobster roll trucks all over the country. The question is, should you not be able to get a lobster roll at all in Utah? I use them specifically because I feature a Utah lobster roll joint in the book. Or because the processing of lobster, whether it be shipped fresh or frozen, has gotten pretty damn good. And the lobster meat you get in Salt Lake or Park City, no. It's nowhere near as good as you'd get off the wharf. But for those who don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, is it better that you can have a lobster roll at all? How I was almost gonna use the word authentic, which I hate. How I'm so glad you stopped yourself. Yeah. I get I'm relieved on your behalf. I I almost hit the screen. How traditionally faith faithful are they to the way I think a lobster roll should be made on a certain kind of bun, grilled a certain way? The noted food journalist Ruth Reischel told me in no no question about it that eating a lobster roll outside of Maine, even though the place that made them famous was in New York, is in New York, that eating a lobster roll anywhere but Maine is like eating strawberries out of season. But the fact of the matter is in our current culinary culture, we do eat strawberries out of season and and tasteless tomatoes and all sorts of things because we want everything good enough all the time. It's a conundrum. I've always looked forward to going to particular places because of the particular food you can get there. New Orleans, for example, being an extreme, but the fact is there are things that originally could only be had in their hometown, state, region. Now pretty much everything is available pretty much anywhere. I still look forward to going to where it was created.

[23:02]Zibby Owens: We recently went I know you have the whole chapter on pizza and the evolution of that and who, you know, made it how the crust even was different because of the dough and all this stuff. And recently, I took my husband to Sally's Pizza in New Haven, And I'm like, no, no, this is like No. No. Sally's a pizza. Sorry. Sally's a pizza. You're right. You I know. Can do that. I apologize. I'm so sorry. Anyway, I'm like and I hadn't gone in twenty years or something like that, and he had never been. And I'm like, well, how much better is it than you know, what is the difference? Right? Anyway, could it really be that much better than all the pizzas we've had all over the country? It was, wasn't It amazing. For two reasons.

[23:43]David Page: One, they invented it so as long as they've stayed true to what they do, they're the ones everyone else is copying. And number two, eating done right is an experience that includes environment, that includes tradition, that includes looking around and going, they they made this thing here first. Yeah. You know, you can get a good clam pie a lot of places. I I live on a tourist island in South New Jersey where the clams are fresh, And there's a place that makes a pretty good clam It ain't gonna be like New Haven. Just isn't. Yep.

[24:22]Zibby Owens: Well, I guess I don't know. I don't even have the answer. Do I I mean, I guess I'm glad that there's things everywhere, but there is something special about going to the the source of it and the experience of it. And even now post COVID with all these restaurants serving food in, plastic containers, I'm like, what? This no. This is, like, ruining the whole thing. So

[24:42]David Page: and Yeah. And and and look, let let's not forget the fact that hype aside, there's there's a lot of hype for things like heritage god knows what. Real food is real. I was interviewed by some folks down in South Carolina the other day and we got to talking about grits and I confessed that I, a New York Jew, used instant grits. They fell over, clutched their throats in agony and sent me two large sacks of heritage grits, two different types from the the low country. And I made grits the other day and God almighty was there a difference. It was astonishing. And and I pretty intensely focused on food and food quality had gone my entire life without making real grits. It was time to fix that. It was amazing. Now if I could only get fresh shrimp, but I don't live in a shrimp region, so there you go. Gosh. The last thing I need is more foods to fall in love with. I feel like it's hard enough to not overeat the ones that I already love. Well, I'm trying to figure out what the taste contrast would be because where I live, we bring in there's a small commercial fishing port at the top of the island, and I believe that we bring in the finest scallops on earth. And I'm trying to figure out, given the sweetness of shrimp and the sweetness of scallops, if I could do something with scallops and grits. I would order that. Yeah. I'm gonna try it. We'll see what happens. That'll be your next project? My next big project. I'll report back. Can

[26:23]Zibby Owens: you give me, like, the quick rundown of your how you even got into being so obsessed with food and how this all started and your TV career all in, like, know, minutes and Yeah.

[26:37]David Page: About forty one. Thirty seconds, forty one. I grew up with a wonderful mother and father, neither of whom could cook worth a damn. So I really didn't appreciate food for a long time. I mean, I like to eat. I'm not thin. But it wasn't until NBC News sent me to Europe, once I covered Europe, Africa, and The Middle East, that I really started to focus on food as a a thing, a matter of substance. As I went from country to country or even region to region in various countries, I would encounter foods very specific to that place and quickly came to the realization that in many ways food is the gateway to another country's culture. Along the way I started to develop a real appreciation for food as more than just fuel or or something to fill up on. When it came back to The States, I worked in network news for another several years. We ended up leaving network news, briefly working at home shopping, which I quickly figured out I really shouldn't be doing. Left, opened a production company, and had no business. So I called a friend of mine who had worked for me at the weekend today show, Al Roker, who had a production company of his own in addition to his NBC activities and said, I'm starving. Do you have any work? And he said, yeah. I'm doing a lot of stuff for the Food Network. Why don't you do some of that for me? So I did, including Al subcontracted a documentary to me on the history of diners, and that's how I got my toe into the food journalism world. And as you know, you are in journalism or certainly television, the last thing you were. So I had once been an investigative reporter, then I was an international journalist, then I was a morning show. Well, now I'm a a food guy. Okay. I started pitching the Food Network directly and got nowhere. I would talk to the same executive over and over and over again, and she would be very kind and polite and say no, no, no. Finally, one day I'm on the phone with her pitching, pitching, pitching, and she's saying no, no, no. And harkening back to that documentary I had worked on, she finally said to me in desperation, don't you have anything else about diners? And I said, oh, yeah. I'm developing a show called Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. And she said, well, sounds interesting. This was late on a Thursday or Friday. She said, we're having a development meeting Tuesday. Get me something on Monday. So I hung up the phone, and, on one hand, this was great. They'd shown interest on something. On the other hand, I had just invented the title out of thin air or pulled it out of a body part if you wish to be a little more scatological, spent the weekend calling people, this was kind of before everything was done by email, wrote a proposal, got it to her on Monday, and shortly thereafter, they they picked up a special, which then turned into a series, and now I'm a food journalist. Oh my gosh. And are you still involved with the show or what? No. I left after the eleventh season. How many seasons are there? Oh, they're in thirty something. Oh my gosh. Yeah. There's at the time I was doing it, we we were doing three seasons a year. They may be down to two. Got it. But, no, I I left after season eleven. I syndicated a show on craft beer. That's right. I read that. And then I then I did some development work for streaming venture, and then I decided it was time to write the book. Wow. And what next? Another book. Another book. Yeah. No. I I like this author thing. It was a dark and stormy night. It's a book that's sort of a sequel to this, but different. It's it's different categories of food,

[30:32]Zibby Owens: and I am, assuming it'll be another two years, but I'm hard at work on it. Wow. That's awesome. I think you should write about more of the personal stuff that you talked about in the introduction. And Damn. Boring. I don't find that stuff boring. Oh, okay. I think you have an interesting story to tell. I think you should consider it. Well, that that's very kind of you. I mean, not not everybody has had a life like that. I mean, that's very interesting. My

[30:58]David Page: my daughter wrote some about that in a Facebook post on Father's Day, and my daughter's in her late twenties, and my wife turned to me and said, see, she did listen to the war story.

[31:11]Zibby Owens: I read something about my dad too, and he's like, oh, wow. You really did. Like, did you see what I do? Yeah.

[31:17]David Page: Yeah. Well, the the story my daughter seems to like the most is during the Romanian revolution. I led I put together and led an international convoy in through the Hungarian side because the border guards at the border there in Romania were ethnic Hungarians, so they just let us through. Anyway, we got as far as Timisoara, where the rebels were putting up quite a battle with the Securitate, the government forces. Anyway, we get out of the car and my correspondent is a veteran, George Lewis, he did Vietnam. I, at this point, am relatively new to Bang Bang. We get out of the car and all of a sudden there's this huge burst of AK 47 fire, and instinctively, I find myself lying on the ground next to George. I have no idea. I do not remember going to the ground, but I was definitely there. I'd have been underground if I could. And I turned to him and I said, well, George, what do we do now? Since we were kind of pinned down outside the hotel, he reached into his backpack and came out with a bottle of booze, unscrewed it and said, this. That

[32:35]Zibby Owens: seems to be my daughter's favorite story. I think you should write that book. I think that will be a very good book. Would really think That's hard about Okay, my two do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

[32:49]David Page: Don't give up. If you've got something to say, say it. I had a hell of a time initially selling this book while I was writing it. I managed to obtain an agent. It's thundering out. My dog has just come in from shelter. I managed to obtain a relatively big name agent with the recommendation of someone famous in the food world, and she just wasn't working it. And I'm writing this book hoping the hell I can sell it, and she finally after a year sends me an email saying, hey, I tried. I'm gonna have to drop you as a client. First call I made was to an off. I had interviewed the prior week for my hamburger chapter and I said, hey, I'm changing agents and I like your book and we got along well. Could you suggest to me who you used? And he said, I didn't use an agent, I was approached by a publishing company and wrote directly for them, but I'd be glad to give you the connection. So he gave me someone's name and I, sent an email and then we had a phone call and two weeks later I had a deal. Wow. So if you believe you have a story to tell, just keep pushing. You know? Any creative endeavor involves a tremendous amount of rejection. I had a hit TV show. It was one among hundreds of shows that I pitched. You you just have to you have to keep doing it. And don't lie to yourself. Make sure you're doing it well. Alright. You know, have someone you trust read it and then rip you apart. Okay.

[34:34]Zibby Owens: Alright. Thank you. Well, this has been so fun. Next time you're in the city, and I'm in the city, which I'm not now, but we should have some bagels and lox together or something. That would be Oh, we'll go to, Russian Daughters on the memory, and I would love to do that. The Russ I like the Russ and Daughters uptown

[34:49]David Page: underneath the Guggenheim. You know? Have you been there? At the museum? Yeah. Yeah. It's been closed for the pandemic. I don't know when they're gonna open. Oh, yeah. But we'll figure it We'll find a place. Okay. Thanks so much for having me. It's been great. Thanks for coming. Bye. Take care. Thanks

[35:06]Zibby Owens: for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.