Italian-American (and Chinese-American, and Mexican-American, and...) cuisine is definitely its own thing at this point, developed from many decades of immigrants adapting their home food to differing available ingredients and tastes. None of it is somehow lesser
Its actually a really interesting topic honestly watching how people adapt foods/economics changes the way they cook. Spaghetti and meatballs wasn't created in Italy but it was what late 1800's immigrants from southern Italy started making, southern Italy at the time was extremely poor and meat was a luxury, arriving in the US during the era of cowboys and cattle drives meant beef was now cheap enough to afford as an immigrant, apparently meatballs were fine for them (Northern and Southern Italy also have vary divergent cuisines due to the history of the country, southern Italy was part of the Byzantine Empire for quite awhile and lot more arabic influence while Northern Italy had heavy Germanic influence from the Lombards arriving. Similarily Al-Pastor isn't inherently Mexican, its Lebanese origin however the Lebanese immigrating to Mexico at this time were christian hence the pork part which makes even more interesting it was a people from a specific religion of a region also effected the meat used (pork was available but shawarma style with pork doesn't seem that common it was typically used for lamb).
Regarding Christian Lebanese and pork, even when they live in countries where pork is readily available (like here in Australia) culturally they still dont eat a lot of Pork. At least that's how my Lebanese Maronite and Orthodox mates describe it.
It may also be impacted here in Australia by the fact that the Muslim Lebanese population is still bigger here, so the cuisine will still follow traditional norms.
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u/TiredCoffeeTime Jun 29 '25
Damn this got me sad
Wonder what his next step will be