What America Tastes Like

Observations · RootedNomad · October 26, 2026

A Dutch-language coffee order and a McDonald's tray in Arnhem, and the foods of the Americas, from maize to chocolate, that the whole world now eats.

“Een venti latte met een extra shot, alsjeblieft.”

I ordered it in Dutch, at a Starbucks in Arnhem. A venti triple-shot latte. It was a small visit to Washington.

Then I walked to McDonald's and ordered a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, with fries and a Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola mattered.

The restaurant was busy. I didn't notice much of it. I was somewhere else, in all the McDonald's I'd eaten in as a kid, wherever we happened to be. It has always meant comfort to me, for better or for worse.

Then I looked at the tray.

The tray

Almost nothing on it started where it ended up. I knew that already. But remembering where each thing came from gave me more of a sense of home than eating it did.

The beef and wheat have their origins in the Old World, as does the tradition of making cheese. The potato in the fries came from the Andes. The tomato in the ketchup came from the Americas. And Coca-Cola, invented in Atlanta in 1886, took its name from two of its original ingredients: the coca leaf of South America and the kola nut of West Africa.

The latte was the same kind of story. Coffee from Ethiopia, a drink from Italy, a company from Seattle, ordered in Dutch.

I had gone looking for a taste of America. What I found was the world. And when I looked closer, a great deal of the world's food turned out to be American, in the older sense of the word.

Maize

From southern Mexico, to the Andes and the American Southwest, then to Africa.

Maize began as a wild grass in southwestern Mexico, about nine thousand years ago. Farmers there slowly bred it into corn.

From there it spread across two continents, south into the Andes and north into what is now the American Southwest. Every region bred its own varieties.

In the 1500s, Portuguese traders carried it to Africa. Today it's a staple across much of the continent: ugali in Kenya, kaunga in Uganda, nshima, sadza, or pap elsewhere. I've eaten it with tilapia on the shore of Lake Victoria. It didn't feel like an imported food. It was simply the meal in front of me, belonging to the place where I was eating it.

The journey had become invisible.

The potato

From the Andes, to Spain, then north across Europe.

The potato was first grown about eight thousand years ago near Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes between Peru and Bolivia. Andean farmers raised thousands of varieties.

The Spanish carried it to Europe in the 1500s. It spread north slowly, and by the early 1800s it was a staple across northern Europe.

In the Netherlands, it became stamppot. Few meals are more Dutch. I lived there long enough for that kind of food to become part of my own sense of the place.

The tomato

From South America, to Mexico, then to Italy.

The tomato's wild ancestors grew in western South America. Where it was first domesticated is still debated, but by the time the Spanish arrived, the Aztecs were growing many varieties. Its name comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl.

It reached Italy in the 1500s, where people were suspicious of it for a long time. The first Italian tomato sauce recipe wasn't published until 1692.

Today it's hard to imagine Italian food without it.

Chili peppers

From Mexico and South America, by Portuguese ship, to Africa and Asia.

Chili peppers were domesticated more than once in the Americas, and some of the oldest evidence comes from Mexico, at least six thousand years ago. In the 1500s, Portuguese traders carried them to Africa and on to their ports in Asia, including Goa in India. From there they spread across the continent.

Today they are at the heart of vindaloo, Thai curry, Sichuan chili oil, and Korean kimchi.

Chocolate

From the upper Amazon, to Mesoamerica, then to Europe.

The earliest known use of cacao comes from the upper Amazon, near what is now the border of Ecuador and Peru, more than five thousand years ago. It later traveled north, where the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec prepared it as a drink, often bitter and spiced.

The Spanish brought it to Europe and sweetened it. Much later, the Swiss and the Belgians made it their own.

What America tastes like

Put it together, and the world tastes like America. But not the America I was thinking of when I walked into McDonald's.

It tastes like the farmers of Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Amazon, who domesticated maize, potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, and cacao over thousands of years. Their work is in Kenyan ugali, Dutch stamppot, Italian sauce, Indian curry, and Swiss chocolate. Most of the people who eat those foods every day never think about where they began.

The farmers who first grew maize weren't growing ugali for someone in Kenya. The people who cultivated potatoes in the Andes weren't imagining stamppot. The first people to use cacao couldn't have pictured a Belgian praline. Each place took what arrived and made it its own, until it tasted like home.

McDonald's is part of the same story, just the newest chapter. A meal built from the Old World and the New, carried across the world, and taken in as comfort by people far from where it started. Including me.

None of that made the comfort any less real.

I finished the Coca-Cola. It tasted the way it always has. Like home, wherever that happens to be.

Wander deeply. Live rooted.

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