THE FOODWAYS OF BUTTE, MONTANA:

THE FOODWAYS OF BUTTE, MONTANA:

FOOD AND CULTURE IN AN INDUSTRIAL AMERICAN CITY

by

Kehli Kankelborg Hazlett

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master’s in Technical Communication

Montana Tech of the University of Montana

2013

ii

Abstract

Food is more than a material necessity: it is also a commodity and a sign loaded with cultural

meaning. As a commodity, food can be bought at a local market but it can also be “consumed”

through mass media such as popular culture magazines, television shows, radio, and books.

Americans express and define their identity through consumption. However, before there was

McDonald’s and other pop culture food commodities, there were foodways. Foodways are a

cultural pathway whereby food preparation and consumption patterns can be traced through

cultures and time. Food is a sign that communicates cultural habits, rituals, or other meaning.

This thesis interrogates the foodways of Butte, Montana and how these foodways preserved

ethnicity while adapting to cultural change. This thesis examines the following topics: foodways,

cross-cultural communication, food in American pop culture, Butte mining and history, and

Butte restaurants. The particular Butte restaurants examined as an example of foodways are: the

Pekin Noodle Parlor, Pork Chop John’s, Matt’s Place Drive-In, Lydia’s Supper Club, and Joe’s

Pasty Shop. These restaurants express Butte’s living history and foodways that can be

experienced when eating a meal in Butte.

Keywords: foodways, intercultural communication, popular culture, food as

communication

iii

Dedication

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

~Virginia Woolf

Grad Pack, as a group we have grown and walked individual paths on the same journey. I am

lucky to know you all, to be your friend, and glad that we went through this process together.

Paula McGarvey, thank you for always being there for me with positive thoughts and words.

Your help and friendship has meant a lot to me.

Lisa Sullivan, there are many roads in life that one must take, and I am glad I found you during

this period of time. Your support and friendship has meant a lot to me. I have a friend for life

because of this journey we have taken.

Frank Kankelborg, thank you for being my father. Without you, I would not be so persistent in

pursuing what I want for my future. Your support and love mean more than you will ever know.

Annette Kankelborg, thank you for being my mother, my friend, and my mentor. You have

pushed, questioned, and supported me through this journey and life. You are such a strong

woman and I am so lucky to be your daughter.

Randy Hazlett, my amazing husband that has loved and supported me through ups and downs

during this thesis and graduate work. You are my best friend in this life, and I am glad you

chose me to be your wife.

Lastly, Louise Kankelborg, my beloved grandmother, without you I would not know about how

to make breadsticks, chicken noodle soup from scratch, and how to pull povitia dough correctly

without making holes (I can still hear your voice of “be careful” and “stop pulling the dough like

that”). You helped me fall in love with food and cooking. Thank you for your love, your spitfire

spirit, and the time I had with you.

iv

Acknowledgements

Pat Munday, thank you for your time, wisdom, and pushing me to be my best and keeping me

on my time line. Your knowledge and belief in me helped me to finish.

Emma Mackenzie, thank you for teaching and listening to me. This process is not easy, but you

helped me to acknowledge that I could do this myself.

Nick Hawthorne, thank you for wanting to be a part of my project. I appreciate your time and

talent, and the knowledge you shared with me.

Professional & Technical Communications department, thank you for all that you have taught me

and my fellow students. The time and wisdom that you provided to me will never be forgotten.

v

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. II

DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................................ III

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... IV

CHAPTER 1 ..................................................................................................................................................... 1

FOODWAYS ................................................................................................................................................. 1

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION THROUGH FOODWAYS ................................................. 3

FOOD IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE ....................................................................................... 4

BUTTE MINING AND HISTORY ............................................................................................................. 6

FOODWAYS OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICAN CITIES .......................................................................... 8

CHINESE AMERICAN FOODWAYS ...................................................................................................... 8

GERMAN AMERICAN FOODWAYS ...................................................................................................... 9

ITALIAN AMERICAN FOODWAYS ..................................................................................................... 10

CORNISH AMERICAN FOODWAYS .................................................................................................... 10

CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................................... 12

FOODWAYS AND CULTURAL COMMUNICATION ........................................................................ 12

AMERICAN FOODWAYS AND ADAPTATION .................................................................................. 14

CHINESE AMERICAN FOODWAYS .................................................................................................... 14

GERMAN AMERICAN FOODWAYS .................................................................................................... 15

ITALIAN AMERICAN FOODWAYS ..................................................................................................... 16

CORNISH AMERICAN FOODWAYS .................................................................................................... 17

AMERICAN FOODWAYS AND AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE .............................................. 18

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CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................................... 22

PEKIN NOODLE PARLOR ..................................................................................................................... 23

PORK CHOP JOHN’S .............................................................................................................................. 32

MATT’S PLACE DRIVE-IN ..................................................................................................................... 38

LYDIA’S SUPPER CLUB ......................................................................................................................... 44

JOE’S PASTY SHOP ................................................................................................................................. 50

CHAPTER 4 ................................................................................................................................................... 57

FOOD AS COMMUNICATION ............................................................................................................... 57

FOOD AS SIGN .......................................................................................................................................... 58

PEKIN NOODLE PARLOR ..................................................................................................................... 60

PORK CHOP JOHN’S .............................................................................................................................. 62

MATT’S PLACE DRIVE-IN ..................................................................................................................... 64

LYDIA’S SUPPER CLUB ......................................................................................................................... 66

JOE’S PASTY SHOP ................................................................................................................................. 68

LOSS OF CULTURAL SYMBOLISM-IDENTITY POLITICS ........................................................... 70

CHAPTER 5 ................................................................................................................................................... 73

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 73

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ....................................................................... 75

THINGS I WOULD CHANGE ................................................................................................................. 76

vii

List of Images and Figures

Figure 1: Butte, Montana Neighborhood Map: The map illustrates Butte, Montana after World

War II, where “The Hill” was expanded to create the area known as “The Flats.”23

Figure 2: Fold-Pak Box ......................................................................................................26

Figure 3: Fold-N-Pack Box Unfolded into Plate ...............................................................26

Figure 4: Pekin Noodle Parlor ..........................................................................................29

Figure 5: Artist rendition of the Doyle Hotel and Pork Chop John’s ...............................35

Figure 6: Map of Butte, Montana Trolley Route in Blue: Matt’s was located near the end of the

trolley route on Montana Street. ............................................................................41

Figure 7: Matt’s Place Drive-In ........................................................................................42

Figure 8: Matt’s Place Drive-In Menu ..............................................................................44

Figure 9: Lydia’s Supper Club ..........................................................................................48

Figure 10: Joe’s Pasty Shop Entrance ...............................................................................54

Figure 11: The Peircean Model..........................................................................................59

Figure 12: Interpretant: Chinese Takeout, A Cheap, Fast Meal ........................................60

Figure 13: Interpretant: Industrial Urban America ............................................................62

Figure 14: American Car Culture ......................................................................................64

Figure 15: Celebration Meal ..............................................................................................66

Figure 16: The Pasty ..........................................................................................................68

Figure 17: In Memory of Mae Laurence............................................................................77

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Chapter 1

Literature Review

“Food Has the Power of Influencing Our Lives

Because We Become What We Ingest.”

~ Fabio Parasecoli

How do Butte Montana’s foodways preserve ethnicity and adapt with changing culture?

This question is founded on and focused in the roots of foodways, communication, and culture.

My focus will be examined through the following topics: foodways, intercultural

communication1, food in American pop culture, Butte mining and history, and Butte restaurants.

These topics will be the basis of my thesis and will explore foodways and how Butte preserved

and changed foodways as a cultural process.

Foodways

Foodways is the study of where styles of food preparation originate from and where they

travel to. The travel creates a pathway showing how food moves from a place of origin to one or

many locations. Foodways are like pathways; they connect cultures together through time and

place. For a person from any point along the pathway, food expresses a cultural value.

Michael Umphrey explained how foodways create a cultural pathway. He wrote on

foodways in Montana during 1910 and provided a view on the cultures interactions of food:

“Foodways include all the details about what and how people eat, where their food comes from,

who prepares it, what rituals and activities go along with getting it, preparing it, serving it, and

1 Intercultural Communication is when different cultures communicate locally or gobally. Scollon, Ron, Suzanne

Wong Scollon, and Rodney H. Jones. Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Chichester, West

Sussex, United Kingdom: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. P. 1-3

2

eating it. As you come to understand a people's foodways, you come to understand their world.”2

This was also explained well in the PBS documentary book companion, The Meaning of Food

which states, “We are defined by what we eat, how we eat it, and with whom.”3 These

interactions provide a pattern of food traditions that create pathways, which can be followed to

find these traditions and provide meaning to our culture and our food. Foodways communicate

cultural values that are both external to the world and internal to ourselves.4 Foodways are the

“window into our most basic beliefs about the world and ourselves.” 5 Levi-Strauss explains this

well in The Raw and The Cooked, as he described cultural codes, such as eating habits, and how

people share their cultural customs through the act of eating food.6 As Brillat-Savarin stated,

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”7 According to these sources, what we

eat, where it comes from, and with whom we eat it carries cultural significance. Food and eating

is a daily activity that is a part of a greater cultural experience.

The two main goals of this thesis are: to explain the cultural pathways of food to

America, and to explain how eating and preparing food creates and reinforces a sense of culture.

At the beginning of American immigration, people from many different nations emigrated from

their homeland to create a new life. This migration created the food pathways that will be

explored in this paper. These cultural pathways provide valuable information on food culture of

people by disclosing how their food is prepared and eaten in everyday life.

2 Umphrey, Michael. “Foodways in 1910.”

(http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/edheritage/1910/1910foodway.htm accessed 2011).

3 Harris, P., D. Lyon, and S. McLaughlin. 2005. The Meaning of Food. Connecticut: The Globe Pequot Press. P. 61

4 Camp, Charles. 1989. American Foodways: What, When, Why and How We Eat in America. Little Rock,

Arkansas: August House Publishers. P. 116

5 Lawrance, Benjamin N. and Carolyn De La Pena. 2012. “Foodways, 'Foodism,' or 'Foodscapes': Navigating the

Local/Global and Food/Culture Divides.” Local Foods Meet Global Foodways: Tasting History. Florence,

Kentucky: Routledge/Taylor Francis. P. 1

6 Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Raw and the Cooked. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. P. 164

7 Fischer, M. F. K. 1949. The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Washington,

D.C.: Perseus Books Group. P. 15

http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/edheritage/1910/1910foodway.htm

3

Intercultural Communication Through Foodways

A cultural pathway allows communication exchanges. Communication exchanges happen

through language (verbal and nonverbal) and transfer a culture’s patterns to other cultures.

Cultural exchanges are a form of intercultural communication and are a significant part of how

foodways function.

Exploring cultural communication and interaction, migration, and cultural destinations is

important. The migration shows how individuals’ “food travels through time and space and its

significance in cultural interaction.”89

Just as the written word was adapted into symbols so the

words could travel through time and space by the telegraph machine,10

food communication

adapted and changed how cultures communicate their foodways to others. Immigrants were

influenced by their previous cultural norms, behaviors, and food, and they exerted influence on

the culture of their new locality in America.11

Food was an important way in which cultures

communicated their values. Recipes were a way for individuals to keep their cultural identity and

at the same time share their cultural heritage with others in their neighborhood.12

Neighborhood

restaurants also facilitated this cultural interaction. People left their cultural foodways in their

kitchens to explore new immigrants’ less expensive cultural fare.13

This exploration was an early

form of food tourism and allowed the individual to keep his or her own culture while

8 Food becoming a symbolic transaction.

9 Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking. 2007. Ed. Sidney C. H. Cheung and Chee Beng

Tran. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 183

10 Carey, James. 1989. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York, New York:

Psychology Press. P. 204

11 The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. 1998. Ed. Shortridge B. and Shortridge

James R. Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. P. 21

12 Eves, Rosalyn Collings. 2005. “A Recipe for Remembrance: Memory and Identity in African-American

Women's Cookbooks.” Rhetoric Review 24, no. 3. P. 282 13 Hoerder, Dirk. 2002. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham, North Carolina:

Duke University Press. P. 522

4

experiencing another through food.14

Food tourism can influence the second generation of

immigrants to adapt and accept other cultures’ behaviors as their own.15

Intercultural communication through foodways is important when looking at how

individuals from different cultures communicate with one another. My thesis explores how a

simple meal from a restaurant can communicate one’s culture to others. The research will also

fill a gap on restaurants as a form of intercultural communication. Up until this time, most

academic research on food interaction has focused on cultural exchange through recipes and

cookbooks.

Food in American Popular Culture

American popular culture is a broad subject and is even broader when the focus is food.

In general, American popular culture can be defined through two different concepts. The first is

the identity of America as a free frontier with vast resources that could be consumed and provide

profit to those who sold these resources.16

Second are popular leisure activities such as

books/articles, television, sports, and the arts or mass media entertainment. A person’s popular

culture activities are shaped by ethnic background.17

The activities that create American popular

culture should not be confused with “high culture” activities such as the fine arts, classical

music, or great literature.18

American popular culture includes mass media entertainment and is

14 Culinary Tourism. 2004. Ed. Lucy M. Long. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. P. I-XIV

15 McArthur, Laura H., Ruben P. Viramontez Anguiano, and Deigo Nocetti. 2001. “Maintenance and Change in the

Diet of Hispanic Immigrants in Eastern North Carolina.” Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal 29, no.

4: 309-309-335. P. 310

16 “The American Frontier: History, Rhetoric, Concept. Americana.” The Journal of American Popular Culture

(1900-present), Spring 2007, Volume 6, Issue 1.

http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2007/gouge.htm (accessed December 2012, 2012).

17 Library of Congress. American Popular Culture. http://www.loc.gov (accessed December 2012, 2013). 18 O'Barr, William M. 2000. “High Culture/Low Culture: Advertising in Literature, Art, Film, and Popular

Culture.” Advertising & Society Review. P. 1

5

considered “low culture.”19

America today is highly focused on entertainment and popular

culture, which is key when exploring American popular culture.

Food is also a subject in American popular culture. Food is an all-encompassing concept

that is a part of our everyday lives.20

As Courtney Reum states on the Internet publication The

Blog, “we're exposed to popular culture everyday, and we eat, everyday,” thus creating a

combination that has flooded “low culture” mass media.21

“Low culture” media helped make

food an object that we want to possess. As Fabio Parasecoli states,

Food as material. It is extremely important in the matter of reality. Food has the power of

influencing our lives because we become what we ingest.22

“Everyone is a consumer. Consumption is the only way of obtaining the resource for life”

(p. 28).23

McDonald argues that food as a material concept must be coupled with the idea of

change and adaptation through popular culture. 24

The popular culture of food speaks to “the

global proliferation of food venues reflecting a growing prosperity and changing consumption

patterns and pop culture.”25

Food and popular culture affect each other through changing beliefs

and trends that alter our food cultural habits.26

Food in American popular culture provides a lens for this paper. Food is a popular topic

on television, on the Internet, and in magazines. Food is more than just a vital part of what

people need to survive. Food is a way to express our identity as a consumer. An example of

19 Grossberg, Lawerence. 2006. Media Making: Mass Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, California:

Sage Publications. P. 53

20 Parasecoli, Fabio. 2008. Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture. New York, New York: Berg Publishing. P. 2

21 Reum, Courtney. “Where Food, Drink and Pop Culture Meet.” www.huffingtonpost.com (accessed December

2012, 2012).

22 Parasecoli, Fabio. “Presentation: Food and Popular Culture.” The New School.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFIWVVrUTcA (accessed December 2012, 2012).

23 Fiske, John. 2010. Understanding Popular Culture. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 28

24 McDonald, Stuart. “Eat Blog Eat: The Intersection of Pop Culture and Food.” http://eat-blog-eat.blogspot.com

(accessed November 2012, 2010). 25 Fedorak, Shirley. 2009. Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of

Toronto Press. P. 84

26 Rodriguez, Judith C. “Popular Culture, Food and....” www.diet.com (accessed November 2012, 2012).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

http://eat-blog-eat.blogspot.com/

6

food as a commodity is a restaurant’s logo (such as McDonald’s Golden Arches emblem).

McDonald’s logo is seen as a symbol of America across the world. In some countries, people

believe that eating in McDonald’s is like a visit to America, with food creating a sense of place.27

Food’s place in popular culture will be a vital piece of the analysis and understanding of

American restaurants and foodways.

Butte Mining and History

At the turn of the century, Butte was a thriving city based on the mining industry.

Immigrants that migrated to Butte created distinct communities, neighborhoods, and identities

derived from their home countries. Butte’s international population and the community

interaction created the distinctive multi-cultural place that is Butte, Montana.

“Butte culture” was considered “a truly democratic community where nationalities have

shared and adopted each other’s customs and culinary habits and have continually joined

together in celebration of each other’s holidays and religious observances.”28

Pat Kearney

expressed this concept through the words of another Butte native, Al Niemi, in the book Butte

Voices,

It was the type of town where you had to learn other languages and customs. If a fellow

miner said hello to you in his native tongue be it Gaelic, Italian, Serbian, Finnish or

whatever you had to know how to make the appropriate response. If you did not [speak

other languages], the miner and his buddies would teach you a lesson down underneath

the hill.29

27 Ritzer, George. 2013. The McDonaldization of Society: 20th Anniversary Edition. Thousand Oaks, California:

Sage Publications. P. 7

28 Butte's Heritage Cookbook. Ed. J. McGrath. 10th ed. Butte, MT: Butte-Silver Bow Bi-Centennial Commission.

P. VI

29 Kearney, Pat. 1998. Butte Voices: Mining, Neighborhoods, People. Ed. McGlashan, Z. B. Butte, MT: Skyhigh

Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. P. 127

7

Another miner stated:

I loved the fellowship that was there between the miners. You always had this special

feeling of being a team underground that you found nowhere above the surface.

Everyone depended on his partner to stay alive. You were always looking out for the

other guy. It did not matter what ethnic group you were or the color of your skin. When

you were underground working in Butte, Montana everyone was equal.30

Butte’s mines were not the only place where residents shared language and culture. The

neighborhoods were where most of the cultural interaction happened. Butte radio supported the

multicultural backgrounds of the neighborhood residents by playing music from the immigrants’

countries in community broadcasts. 31

Along with the radio broadcasts, neighborhood wives and

widows (the high mortality rate for miners resulted in a high proportion of widows) relied on

each other. “In Butte, women were constructed as conservers of culture and caretakers of family

and community.”32

In Motherlode, many stories are retold of women from different cultures

working together to rear children, cook meals, and promote the survival of their families and the

Butte community at large.33

Women, “particularly on the borders of ethnic neighborhoods or in

the stores that served more than one ethnic community, …exchanged recipes, child raising

stories, and the fears common to all miners’ wives.” 34

Intercultural interactions in the mines and

in homes shaped Butte’s neighborhoods and community.

Although Butte is not unique regarding foodways, it does serve as an excellent example

of American industrial and mining culture. Butte culture serves as the setting for this thesis.

30 Kearney, Pat. 1998. Butte Voices: Mining, Neighborhoods, People. Ed. McGlashan Z. B. Butte, MT: Skyhigh


31 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-41.

Chicago and Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. P. 170

32 Finn, Janet L. 1998. Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture, and Community from Butte to Chuquicamata.

Berkely CA: University of California Press. P. 129

33 Motherlode: Legacies of Women's Lives and Laborers in Butte, MT. 2005. Ed. Finn J. L., Crain E. Livingston,

MT: Clark City Press. P. 29

34 Emmons, D. M. The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925. Ed. Daniels R.,

Dolan J.P., and Vecoli R.J. Urbana, IL and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. P. 77

8

Butte people, customs, and foodways will be examined and analyzed for the purpose of

understanding how specific foodways came to Butte and continue to this day. Butte’s immigrant

environment is vital to understanding this American city and how different cultures’ foodways

traveled from one location to the next to create “food as place.”

Foodways of Industrial American Cities

America’s industrial cities and immigrants created foodways. Each food has a country of

origin. Five foodways will be examined in this thesis: Italian American supper clubs, American

hamburger joints, Cornish pasties, adaptations of German pork chop sandwiches, and Chinese

food. The five foodways provide a living history of Butte as a microcosm of American culture

and as a meal that can be shared.

Chinese American Foodways

Chinese American food draws from a rich history of Chinese noodles, stir fries, egg rolls,

and soups. The Chinese American foodway started in San Francisco, California, where one of

the first Chinese restaurants opened in 1849. The ingredients for the Chinese main food dishes

came from different regions of China, though Cantonese is the variation most restaurants used.

Cantonese food stands in “stark contrast to the diverse, spicy meals offered in the Chinese

provinces of Szechuan and Hunan,”35

and the original ingredients were changed to make the

meals more appealing to the North American population.36

With respect to authentic Chinese

food, Chinese American does not mirror most traditional Chinese dishes due to the use of dairy

35 Sanefuji, Noriko and Yu, Tim. “Collections: Cecilia Chiang and the Mandarin Restaurant.” Smithsonian Asian

Pacific American Center. http://apanews.si.edu (accessed August 2012, 2012).

36 “1849: First Chinese Restaurant in America.” www.uglychinesecanadian.com (accessed August, 2012, 2012).

9

products.37

The Chinese American food pathway has made an impact on American culture and

has become popular across the United States.

German American Foodways

The origin of the pork chop sandwich pathway is found in the German/Austrian roots of

schnitzel; however, there is also an argument that this dish has Italian origins.38

Schnitzel,

German/Austrian/Italian in origin, is a thinly cut slice of meat that is then breaded and fried.39

Adding a bun made this into the pork chop sandwich and Americanized the schnitzel. This

pathway came through the Midwest state of Illinois because of industrial city food carts.40

Pork

chop sandwiches are a meal that is easily eaten while on the move, and they were sold at various

cart wagon businesses. 41

Although there are not pork chop sandwiches in every American

industrial city, this food is common in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

Hamburgers provide another glimpse into American food culture. The only argument

concerns who made hamburgers first for the general public to consume. Some candidates

include: "Hamburger Charlie" Nagreen from Seymour, Wisconsin in 1885; Frank and Charles

Menches from Hamburg, N.Y. in 1885; Louis Lassen in 1900; "Uncle" Fletcher David from

Texas in the late 1880s; or Oscar Weber Bilby from Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1891.42

No matter who

started the first hamburger business in America, this foodway was widely introduced to the

American masses in1904 at the World’s Fair.43

Hamburgers came to America with the Germans

37 Wu, David and Tang Chee-Beng. 2001. Changing Chinese Foodways in Asia. Hong Kong, China: The Chinese

University of Hong Kong. P. 10

38 “History of Food: Schnitzel History.” www.kidchefonline.com (accessed November 2012, 2012).

39 “The Kitchen Project: Schnitzel.” www.kitchenproject.com (accessed August, 2012, 2012).

40 Ellison, Jim. “Breaded Pork Tenderloin.” http://midnightsnack.wordpress.com (accessed August, 2012, 2012).

41 Duis, Perry. 1998. Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everday Life, 1837-1920. Urbana, IL: University of

Illinois. P. 160

42 “History of the Hamburger: From Immigrant Fare to Fast Food Favorite.” www.foxnews.com (accessed

November 2012, 2012).

43 “American Food History: A Work in Progress.” www.streetdirectory.com (accessed August, 2012, 2012).

10

(the city of Hamburg is the geographical namesake of this food) and “was simply flavored

shredded low-grade beef with regional spices, and both cooked and raw it became a standard

meal among the poorer classes.”44

Although there are many origin stories for the hamburger’s

introduction and alteration in America, it serves as an iconic food that defines American food

culture throughout the world.

Italian American Foodways

Italian foodways were introduced to the American public in 1880 when farmers from

southern Italy immigrated to America looking for a better life for themselves and their families.45

These immigrants made homes in New York City, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,

Maryland, Rhode Island, and Louisiana.46

The American evolution of Italian food involved the

incorporation of Italian ingredients such as pasta, sauce, olive oil, and cheeses with the American

staple of meat.47

Italian American food does not reflect the enormous regional variation in Italy,

where Italians eat fresh local foods.48

Also, Italian American food was adapted to American

culture and incorporated the products that were locally available in America.

Cornish American Foodways

In the 1880s, as the mining industry in England diminished, Cornish miners left to find

new employment in America and brought along their pasty recipes.49

The pasty was a good meal

for miners; one variation consisted of a folded piecrust holding potatoes, onion, and beef. It was

44 Stradley, Linda. “Hamburgers - History and Legends of Hamburgers.”

www.whatscookingamerica.net/History/HamburgerHistory.htm (accessed August, 2012, 2012).

45 Essman, Elliot. “Italian Food in the United States,” www.lifeintheusa.com (accessed November 2012, 2012).

46 Bakerjian, Martha. “A Little Bit of Italy in the United States and Montreal: Little Italy and Italian

Neighborhoods.” http://goitaly.about.com (accessed November 2012, 2012).

47 Diner, Hasia R. 2001. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. P. 81

48 Mariani, J. F. 2011. How Italian Food Conquered the World. New York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan. P. X

49 Miller, Luke and Westergren, Marc. “History of the Pasty.” Michigan Tech.

http://www.hu.mtu.edu/vup/pasty/history.htm (accessed December 2012, 2012).

file:///F:/Kehli's%20Computer%20Files/Grad%20Project%20Fall%202012/Photos%20for%20Grad%20Thesis/Miller,%20Luke%20and%20Westergren,%20Marc.%20“History%20of%20the%20Pasty”.%20Michigan%20Tech.%20http:/www.hu.mtu.edu/vup/pasty/history.htm%20(accessed%20December%202012,%202012)

file:///F:/Kehli's%20Computer%20Files/Grad%20Project%20Fall%202012/Photos%20for%20Grad%20Thesis/Miller,%20Luke%20and%20Westergren,%20Marc.%20“History%20of%20the%20Pasty”.%20Michigan%20Tech.%20http:/www.hu.mtu.edu/vup/pasty/history.htm%20(accessed%20December%202012,%202012)

11

easy to eat and could be eaten hot or cold. In Michigan, the pasty became a well-known meal

throughout the mining community, not just for English miners. Finnish miners even took the

pasty as their own.50

Although most information about pasties in America is from Michigan, the

pasty foodway was also found in American East Coast and Western mining states, ranging from

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to Montana and California.51

Foodways of industrial American cities are just a fraction of the existing foodways across

America; however, my main focus is researching when food in industrial American cities and

how these foods reflected America as a whole. I will examine the five cultural foodways as they

came to Butte, Montana, and give the reader an understanding of how foodways extended across

the United States and created “food as place.” My thesis provides insight into how foods are

integrated into urban culture through migration and social change. It should be noted that there

are some historical gaps in the historical literature about food. Regional cuisine, such as pork

chop sandwiches and pasties, are not often written about in either academic or popular media.

This is due to the limited locations in which these foods were adopted and the particular general

focus in American historical writing on foodways. In contrast, Chinese, Italian, and German

foodways are a popular topic in American history. My thesis will fill the foodways gaps by

providing not only a history on pork chop sandwiches and pasties, but also details on how all five

cultural foodways came to Butte, Montana and were adapted to American culture.

50

The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. 1998. Ed. Shortridge B. and Shortridge

James R. Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. P. 21–36 51

Cornish Pasty Company. “The Cornish Pasty: American Pasty.” www.cornishpasties.org.uk (accessed November

2012).

12

Chapter 2

Foodways and American Popular Culture

“Tell Me What You Eat, and I Will Tell You What You Are”

~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Foodways and Cultural Communication

In trying to understand the concept of foodways, I refer to the Jean Anthelme Brillat-

Savarin quote, “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,”52

Although Brillat-

Savarin was talking about health, this concept of “you are what you eat” provides a beginning to

understand how a person’s cultural identity is created by how they prepare, create, and consume

food.

Food embodies culture and can be communicated to others to establish cultural identity

through food. In this chapter I will discuss foodways as a form of cultural communication and

how foodways evolved in American popular culture.

Food preparation and eating is an everyday activity that we must do to survive. Food

also provides a way for people to express themselves culturally. How food is prepared and eaten

in everyday life provides valuable information on American immigrant culture. Foodways

connect cultures through time and place. A pathway expresses not only the migration of a

culture’s beliefs, rituals, and cultural values. Foodways help tell us how cultures interacted and

explored new foods. In the United States we have many locations where people from different

cultures settled together. Food was an important intercultural interaction. Particular foods and

cultural (“ethnic”) recipes were a way for individuals to maintain cultural identity while at the

52 Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. 1949. The Physiology of Taste or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy.

New York, New York: The Heritage Press. P. 3

13

same time sharing their cultural heritage with others in their neighborhood.53

Food preparation

and socializing with outside cultures provided a way to share culture. 54

This social interaction

was reciprocal communication. As one culture shared its foodways, other cultures modified

them based upon location and availability of ingredients. 55

An example of cultural sharing of

food at a social event is articulated well by Iris Carter Ford,

For outsiders who need help, Countians56

demystify the process of food transformation

by making private acts public: by making their foodways more available through church

suppers, festivals, fairs, and by sharing the cultural knowledge required to open oyster

and eat a crab. It is through these acts that we know who’s who by knowing who eats

what. 57

When an individual learned about local resources for use as ingredients, they modified their

recipes and the foodway. 58

This is a form of cultural evolution or adaptation that can happen

when an individual is in a new environment with ready access to new resources and where

accustomed resources are not available.59

Foodways are a communication process that facilitates culture change. Foodways help

an individual and their culture adapt to the new environment in which they have settled. When

cultures come together to socialize they learn from each other to use these new resources and to

modify their food traditions with new ingredients and ideas. This evolution helps explain the

role of foodways in American popular culture.

53 Eves, Rosalyn Collings. 2005. “A Recipe for Remembrance: Memory and Identity in African-American

Women's Cookbooks.” Rhetoric Review 24, no. 3. P.282

54 AP Graesch, J Bernard, AC Noah. 2010. Across a Great Divide: Continuity and Change in Native North

American Societies 1400-1900: A Cross-Cultural Study of Colonialism and Indigenous Foodways in Western North

America. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. P. 212

55 Wu, David and Tang Chee-Beng. 2001. Changing Chinese Foodways in Asia. Hong Kong, China: The Chinese

University of Hong Kong. P. 145

56 Countains are people who live in a specified county. For this quotation, Carter Ford is examining St. Mary’s

county in Maryland.

57 Carter Ford, Iris. 2008. ““Every Good Bye Ain't Gone” Foodways: An Enduring Legacy of Agriculture.”

Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 28, 2008, June. P. 12

58 Deagan, Kathleen. Summer 1996. “Colonial Tansformation: Euro-American Cultural Genesis in the Early

Spanish-American Colonies.” Journal of Anthropological Research 52, no. 2: 135-135-160. P. 148

59 Majid, Madya Abd Azis Abd, Artinah Zainal, and S. M. Radzi. 2012. Hospitality and Tourism. London, United

Kingdom: Francis & Taylor. P. 361

14

American Foodways and Adaptation

As immigrants made their homes in America, they brought their cultural norms,

behaviors, and food along with them, but adapted their culture to their new locality.60

The

socio-political freedom and vast natural resources of America supported cultural adaptation.61

Many different cultures have come to America, but this paper will focus on the cultures central

to five main foodways, which demonstrate different cultural adaptations in the American city of

Butte, Montana. Four cultures–Chinese, German, Italian, and Cornish—are central to the five

foodways examined in this thesis.

Chinese American Foodways

The Chinese American foodway began in San Francisco, California, where one of the

first Chinese American restaurants opened in 1849. The main dishes served at this restaurant

originated from different geographic regions of China, though Cantonese was the regional

variation most used. Chinese restaurant owners adapted to what the American customer wanted:

food that could be eaten fast, used American resources of beef or chicken, and represented

“authentic” Chinese meal.62

The owners developed several new variations of Chinese food, for

example chop suey. In China this was a modest meal including animal intestines; in America it

became a fast, economical meal that restaurant owners could make with leftovers.63

One

American chop suey origin story dates back to the start of the California Gold Rush, “According



61 Gouge, Catherine. “The American Frontier: History, Rhetoric, Concept.” Americana: The Journal of American

Popular Culture (1900-present), Spring 2007, Volume 6, Issue 1.


P. 1

62 Liu, Haiming. 2009. “Chop Suey as Imained Authentic Chinese Food: The Culinary Identity of Chinese

Restaurants in the United States.” Journal of Transnational American Studies, American Cultures and Global

Contexts Center, UC Santa Barbara 1, no. 1: 1-24. P. 1




15

to Gold Rush folklore, a group of drunken American miners entered a Chinese restaurant in San

Francisco late one night, just as the shop was about to close. The owner, in an effort to avoid a

confrontation, decided to serve them. He quickly threw together a handful of leftover table

scraps to create the dish we now know as chop suey.” 64

The adaptation involved adding local

proteins in the form of scraps of meat and not using animal intestines like in China. The

adaptation, along with restaurants providing takeout and delivery service via bike messenger,

made meals fast and easily available for American customers to eat at home.65

These adaptations

seem small, but these modifications made these restaurants truly Chinese American.

German American Foodways

German foodways began with the large German immigrant population in the 1850s,

which settled mostly in the American Midwest. 66

The German population introduced German-

style beer, hotdogs, schnitzel, and hamburgers to the communities in which they settled.67

Although hotdogs and hamburgers were thought to be uniquely American meals,68

they are

named after the German cities, Frankfurt and Hamburg, where they originated. 69

At the World’s

Fair of 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri, hamburgers in buns were introduced to the American public.

70 The World’s Fair also contributed to the popularity of another favorite German foodway of

the hot dog on a bun.71

Hamburgers and hotdogs, along with the creation of the pork tenderloin

64 Chang, Iris. 2003. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York, New York: Penguin Books. P. 48

65 Zhao, Xiaojian. 2010. The New Chinese America: Class, Economy, and Social Hierarchy. Piscataway Township,

New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. P. 81

66 Ross, Britta. 2004. German American Foodways in the Midwest. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag. P. 2, 3

67 Sowell, Thomas. 1981. Ethnic America: A History. New York, New York: Basic Books Publishers. P. 58

68 Rappoport, Leon, Georg Peters, Lin Huff-Corzine, and Ronald Downey. 1992. “Reasons for Eating: An

Exploratory Cognitive Analysis.” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 28, no. 3: 171-171-189. P.178

69 Hogan, David Gerard. 1997. Selling 'Em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. New

York, New York: New York University. P. 17, 22 70 Ackerman, Marsha E. 2004. “Promotion of Pure Food at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.” Quarterly Newsletter

of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, Volume 10, Number 3 Summer 2004. P. 1 71 Ackerman, Marsha E. 2004. “Promotion of Pure Food at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.” Quarterly Newsletter

of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, Volume 10, Number 3 Summer 2004. P. 11

16

(schnitzel) sandwich in the Midwest,72

were on-the-go meals that Americans welcomed into their

fast-paced culture. This adaptation and modification of a meat protein into a sandwich embodied

the identity of Americans as people on-the-go who ate a lot of meat. Hamburgers and hotdogs

are iconic meals that connect to our American identity. Similarly, on a more restricted

geographic scale, pork tenderloin (schnitzel) sandwich is a German American foodway.

Italian American Foodways

Italian foodways were introduced to the American public in the1880’s when immigrants

left southern Italy for America.73

The American evolution of Italian food involved the

incorporation of southern Italian ingredients (pasta, sauce, olive oil, and cheeses) with the

American staple of meat.74

Theirs was the cuisine of the tomato, onion, oil, cheese, and garlic, so often associated

erroneously by Americans with the food of all of Italy. These immigrants, along with

sizeable groups from other provinces in the Mezzogiorno, such as Sicily, Calabria, and

Abruzzi, whose food preferences were not dissimilar, formed the largest market for

imported and domestic Italian-style foods. Imported and domestic foods destined for their

tables were thus widely available in the greatest variety and at the most reasonable prices.

But their food habits were changing as well, for certain things (some fruits, vegetables,

and cheeses) were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive in America, while the

poor could more easily afford such items as meat, pasta, and beer.75

Italians retained a relatively high proportion of their culture’s food in America because

they were able to import goods from Italy. However, they still had to adapt to the American

72 Bair, Julene. 1994. “Marrying Money.” The Missouri Review 17, no. 1: 55-55-66. P. 57

73 Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Steven L. Aymard Kaplan. 1986. “Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and

Culture of Human Nourishment.” Volume 3, Number 4. New York, New York: Gordon & Breach Science

Publishers. P. 3

74 Diner, Hasia R. 2001. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration .


75 Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Steven L. Aymard Kaplan. 1986. “Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and

Culture of Human Nourishment.” Vol. Volume 3, Number 4. New York, New York: Gordon & Breach Science

Publishers. P. 3

17

resources that were available to them and modify their foodways to accommodate their budget

and their new environment.

Cornish American Foodways

Cornish pasties came along with miners from Cornwall, England, in the 1800s. The

mining industry in England had declined, and the miners left to find new employment in

America.76

A hand-held pastry, the pasty was a good convenient meal for miners because the

piecrust surrounded potatoes, onion, and beef (one variation); it was easy to eat with dirty hands;

and it could be served hot or cold. “Pasty making was an ethnic art form passed on from one

generation to the next, and continues to this day. The quality of the product was not dependent

on the written instructions, but rather on the skills and talent of the producer.” 77

The Cornish

pasty was adopted by other cultures in mining communities in Michigan and Montana who

sometimes even claimed this “national dish” as their own: “In Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula,

by the mid-twentieth century the Cornish had become more self-aware of their vanishing culture.

They saw to it that their "national dish, the pasty, which had been claimed by Finns, Slavs, and

Swedes, became a hallmark of "Copper Country" cuisine.”78

Here, the adaptation of a dish was

not the variations or changes to the original recipe (there are many different variations of the

recipe), but the claim that the pasty “belonged” to other cultures in the mining community. No

longer exclusively Cornish, the pasty belongs to a community made up of many different mining

cultures in Michigan and Montana. The pasty became an emblematic food of a community of

people who mine, rather than just a meal from Cornwall, England.

76 Miller, Luke and Westergren, Marc. “History of the Pasty.” Michigan Tech.


77 Walker, Harlan. 2001. Food and the Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooker.

Devon, England: Prospect Books. P. 247



18

Adaptations of the four cultural foodways provide examples of how immigrant cultures’

food was modified in American culture. These four case histories tell us how foodways move

through culture. These foodways were communicated through occupations, importing goods to

neighborhood stores, restaurants, and the World’s Fair. Public social gatherings created an

environment where people could embrace another culture’s foodways, and led to the evolution of

these foods in America.

American Foodways and American Popular Culture

The evolution of foodways through migration and adaptation is important in explaining

the impact of foodways in American popular culture.79

American popular culture also provides a

view or lens through which we can see this adaptation and evolution of cultures through the

entertainment media that helped to create popular culture and identity in this country. America

began as a frontier nation with considerable resources, which could be consumed and used to

provide capital to the entrepreneurs who sold these resources.80

The land and resources created

an environment where immigrants could consume more resources than in their previous

environments. Due to the abundance of cheap agricultural land in America, food and natural

resources, especially meat, were more available than in the immigrants’ original home. Food

became a form of material culture in shaping American identity. For example, beef is a symbol

of American material culture. The American cowboy and free-range cattle production embodied

the notion of prosperity in America, which was seen as a land where cattle and other resources

79 American popular culture is created by mass media entertainment (magazines, books, television) branches and is

highly focused on entertainment.

80 Gouge, Catherine. “The American Frontier: History, Rhetoric, Concept. Americana.” The Journal of American

Popular Culture (1900-Present), Spring 2007, Volume 6, Issue 1.


19

were abundant.81 Beef provides one example of how food symbolizes America’s material

culture and the power food has over our everyday lives.

Given a wealth of choices, Americans create identity through the foods they choose.82

This choice of what to eat is important to American identity politics, because eating is power in

America.83

Identity politics is a term for the “collective sensibilities and actions that come from

a particular location within society.”84

In American foodways, it is reflected in the way American

societal prejudices determine what Americans will and will not eat. One example of American

identity politics is that Americans believe that certain foods are inedible or even toxic. Anne

Norton explains, “The passion for an expansive identity, and the attendant fear of consuming the

poisonous or the indigestible, animate Americans.” 85

The fear of consuming poisonous or

indigestible foods is a societal norm that comes from American’s cultural codes for food. 86

In

American cultural norms, certain foods, such as intestines, are a symbol of that which is

inedible.87

Many cultures, such as China consider eating intestines as normal within the cultural

code for food, which involves using all parts of the animal to produce economical meals. In

America, intestines are popularly considered inedible, with American norms dictating that only

the animal’s muscle and fats be eaten. This stems from America’s perception of prosperity,

which can lead to wastefulness. Although this one example provides only a small window into

81 Addlesperger, Elisa. 2007. “Beef.” Journal of Agricultural & Food Information 8, no. 4: 11-11-19. P. 11

82 Parasecoli, Fabio. “Presentation: Food and Popular Culture.” The New School.


83 Norton, Anne. 1993. Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture. Chicago, Illinois:

University of Chicago Press. P. 85

84 Hale, Charles R. 1997. “Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America.” Annual Review of Anthropology. 26, :

597-567-590. P. 568

85 Norton, Anne. 1993. Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture. Chicago, Illinois:

University of Chicago Press. P. 82

86 Laderman, Carol. 1981. “Symbolic and Empirical Reality: A New Approach to the Analysis of Food

Avoidances.” American Ethnologist. P. 486

87 Laderman, Carol. 1981. “Symbolic and Empirical Reality: A New Approach to the Analysis of Food

Avoidances.” American Ethnologist. P. 486

20

what foods American society views as inedible, it provides an example of how American food

prejudices and restrictions compare with other cultures.88

This power of choice over food is a part of the American identity. All humans consume

resources to live, but some of us can choose what to eat or not eat.89

In addition to the basic need

to eat, immigrants who moved to America faced new food choices, such as meat and rich

desserts, which shaped their identity as American consumers. For example, the “ideal”

American meal consists of meat, potatoes, vegetables, and a dessert. 90

When immigrants moved

to America, the new range of available resources and opportunities helped create a new basis for

their identity. This new identity was shaped by American popular culture and became a lens

through which the rest of the world now sees America.

American popular culture includes “low culture” or mass media entertainment, as defined

by the Internet, television, movies, and magazines. In America, “the global proliferation of food

venues reflecting a growing prosperity and changing consumption patterns and pop culture.”91

Thus, food in American culture became a way to express our identity as a “capitalist, a

consumer, and an individual of free will.”92

Food is a commodity, a logo, and a symbol of American identity. When Americans

consume food we not only take in calories to survive for a moment in time, we take in and

express “meanings and symbols.” 93

Food takes on elevated importance in American popular

88 de Garine, Igor. 2012. “Anthroplogy of Food: Views About Food Prejudice and Stereotypes.” Social Science

Information. 40, no. 3. P. 504

89 Fiske, John. 2010. Understanding Popular Culture. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 28

90 Levenstein, Harvey A. 1993. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York, New

York: Oxford University Press. P. 91

91 Fedorak, Shirley. 2009. Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of


92 Willard, Barbara E. 2002. “Evolution of Foodway Popular Culture the American Story of Meat: Discursive

Influences on Cultural Eating Practice.” The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1: 105-105-118. P. 116 93 Beardsworth, Alan and Teresa Keil. 1997. Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and

Society. New York, New York: Taylor & Francis. P. 52

21

culture as consumers invest particular foods with symbolic value. 94

An example of an American

foodway as a popular culture symbol is McDonald’s. The McDonald’s logo of golden arches,

along with the character of Ronald McDonald, are known around the world.95

People in other

countries decipher these logos or symbols in order to understand American culture through its

food.96

The McDonald’s logo signifies Americans as prosperous consumers of popular culture.

These symbols are a key to our exploration of foodways and to our investigation of how food

was invested with meaning in the American immigrant experience.

Food is important to human survival. However, it also a commodity. American culture

has embraced food as a commodity for creating identity. This commodity can be bought at a

local market or restaurant, but it can also be consumed as entertainment through America’s mass

media, as can be seen by the trendy food shows on television and radio or the popular articles

about food in magazines, newspapers, and books.

The next chapter will focus on Butte, Montana, as a small urban mining community and

five restaurants representing four popular local foodways. Butte was, as the writer Edwin Dobb

has said, “That little stage where the history of America played.” Butte began as a mining and

smelting town in the late 1800s, peaked as an urban community c. 1915, and then went into a

long, slow decline as the mining industry declined. As an industrial city of immigrants, Butte

provides an example of how food and culture combine to create American identity.

94 Fowles, Jib. 1996. Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc. P. 99

95 Crothers, Lane. 2007. Globalization and American Popular Culture. Plymouth, United Kingdom: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, Inc. P.150


Littlefield Publishers, Inc. P. 148

22

Chapter 3

Butte, Montana Foodways

“Letters from ‘ome”

~Cornish Miners

At the turn of the 19th century, Butte, Montana was a thriving small urban community

based on the mining industry. Immigrants created different communities depending on their

ethnic background, with neighborhoods representing their former countries (e.g., Meaderville for

the Italians, Cabbage Patch for the Irish). Butte was considered “a truly democratic community

where nationalities have shared and adopted each other’s customs and culinary habits, and have

continually joined together in celebration of each other’s holidays and religious observances.”97

This sharing, coupled with Butte’s history and mining culture, facilitated the development of

foodways. Each neighborhood and its restaurants had their own food customs, which expressed

the adaptation of foodways from their home country to Butte, Montana. To explain these

foodways, I will investigate Butte restaurants including: the Pekin Noodle Parlor (1), Pork Chop

Johns (5), Matt’s Place Drive-In (2), Lydia’s Supper Club (3), and Joe’s Pasty Shop (4). *Please

note that due to the scale of this map, Lydia’s Supper Club is located 4 miles further south on

Harrison Avenue compared to its placement on the map (See Figure 1).

When an individual eats at one of these restaurants, they participate in Butte’s culture

and history. Each of the five restaurants represents one of Butte’s immigrant cultures and its

integration into American culture. As family owned businesses, they have long been a part of

Butte’s history and community. The restaurants’ ties with the Butte community are strong: these

97

Butte's Heritage Cookbook. Ed. J. McGrath. 10th ed. Butte, MT: Butte-Silver Bow Bi-Centennial Commission. P.

VI

23

are the places that locals share with or recommend to friends, family, and visitors because of

what these restaurants and their food “say” about our community and our history. I selected these

five particular restaurants because they provide a living history of Butte and each is a foodway

that can still be experienced when eating a meal in Butte.

Figure 1: Butte, Montana Neighborhood Map: The map illustrates Butte, Montana after World War II,

where “The Hill” was expanded to create the area known as “The Flats.”98

Pekin Noodle Parlor

The Pekin Noodle Parlor was established by Hum Yow in 1911, and is located in

Uptown Butte near the corner of Galena and Main Street in a former Chinatown neighborhood,

which was called China Alley. This neighborhood housed many Chinese immigrants and their

98 Kearney, Pat. 1998. Butte Voices: Mining, Neighborhoods, People. Ed. McGlashan Z. B. Butte, MT: Skyhigh


24

businesses.99

Although China Alley is gone, there are three original buildings left in this

neighborhood: the Pekin Noodle Parlor restaurant and the Mai Wah and Wah Chong buildings.

The latter two housed various mercantile businesses and presently house a museum.100

This area

and these buildings tell the history of a thriving neighborhood and culture.101

Hum Yow’s

restaurant served many different dishes, but wet noodles (yateamein) and chop suey were the

customers’ favorites.102

Along with these dishes, the other advantage that Chinese noodle

parlors and restaurants had was that they delivered meals to customers’ homes and businesses.

Takeout and home delivery helped this type of restaurant to become popular in San Francisco

during the California Gold Rush where the first Chinese restaurant started in 1849. 103, 104

Chinese takeout was not a Chinese tradition, but was an adaptation to American life when

Chinese immigrants moved to America and started working in industrial manufacturing and on

railroads.105

Chinese food takeout started in the homes of Chinese immigrants who provided

working or homebound Chinese Americans meals, when they “couldn’t or chose not to cook.”106

These home restaurants adapted to their customer base. In 1849, a merchant named Norman

Asing opened the first restaurant (or chow chow) called “the Macao and Woosung” and charged

$1 for an all-you-can-eat buffet.”107

The Macao and Woosong and other Chinese restaurants

99 Stern, Michael and Jane Stern. 1994. “Two for the Road: Butte and Beyond, Montana’s Culinary Treasures.”

Gourmet Magazine. P. 56


Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. P. 179 101 Mai Wah Society. “Museum: Buildings.” www.maiwah.org (accessed March 2nd, 2013, 2013).

102 Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. 2011. Pekin Noodle Parlor: One Family, One Hundred Years. Butte, MT:

Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. P. 2

103 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-1941. Urbana and Chicago,

IL: University of Illinois Press. P. 8

104 Smith, Peter. “Food Think: Was Chop Suey the Greatest Culinary Joke Ever Played?” Smithsonian.

www.smithsonianmag.com (accessed March 3rd, 2013).

105 Bognar, Bobby. “Food Tech Television Episode: Chinese Take Out.” www.history.com (accessed March 2013).

106 “History Channel Television Episode: Chinese Food: A Brief History.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoIMHaXEYaM (accessed March 2013, 2013).

107 Smith, Peter. “Food Think: Was Chop Suey the Greatest Culinary Joke Ever Played?” Smithsonian.

www.smithsonianmag.com (accessed March 3rd, 2013).

http://www.history.com/

25

served a working male population, both Chinese and non-Chinese, who moved to San Francisco

in search of opportunity during the Gold Rush.108

As Chinese restaurants flourished, more

Chinese restaurants also began to offer private dining in the home, with Chinese waiters, food,

dishes, and utensils.109

After World War II, the Chinese American foodway continued to evolve in the United

States. The Fold-Pack Company sold a takeout box that was considered an adapted oyster pail

(See Figure 2).110

The pail was designed “with its Japanese-influenced origami folds”111

and

authentic Chinese characters. The pail “was a single piece of paper, creased into segments and

folded into a (more or less) leak-proof container secured with a dainty wire handle on top. The

supportive folds on the outside fastened with that same wire, created a flat interior surface over

which food could slide smoothly onto a plate” (See Figure 3).112

The box could even be unfolded

to become a flat plate. This new adapted pail or takeout box became the symbol of 20th

Century

Chinese restaurants. Its popularity was enhanced because of the cost effectiveness and durability

it offered to restaurants and customers.113

Together, delivery service and the new takeout box

helped reinforce the wave of popularity for Chinese American food.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoIMHaXEYaM (accessed March 2013). 109 “History Channel Television Episode: Chinese Food: A Brief History.”

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoIMHaXEYaM (accessed March 2013).

110 Lee, Jennifer. 2008. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. New York,

New York: Hachette Book Group. Chapter 9 P. 2

111 Greenbaum, Hilary and Dana Rubinstein. 2012. “Who Made That? The Chinese-Takeout Container is Uniquely

American.” New York Times Magazine, January 13, 2012.





26

Figure 2: Fold-Pak Box114

Figure 3: Fold-N-Pack Box Unfolded into Plate115

The Pekin Noodle Parlor, established in 1911, was one of the earliest Chinese restaurants

in Butte, Montana. 116

Hum Yow housed the restaurant in the Hum Yow & Company building

114 Hawthorne, Nick. 2013. Photo: Fold-N-Pack Box.

115 Hawthorne, Nick. 2013. Photo: Fold-N-Pack Box Unfolded into Plate.



27

and mercantile near the corner of Galena and Main Streets (See Figure 4).117

The building, at

that time, also housed a mercantile and a gambling establishment called the London Company.

The London Company provided games such as keno on the first floor, and was owned by Tam

Kwong Lee (relative to Yow), while the Pekin Noodle Parlor restaurant with a bar was on the

second floor. 118

,119

Before Hum Yow and Tam Lee established these businesses, their family

had emigrated from Canton, China and lived in America. The family had been business in

Montana for about 40 years before they settled in Butte. As the One Family, One Hundred Years

history booklet explains,

The Tam family came to Montana in the 1860s, almost 40 years before the opening of the

Pekin Noodle Parlor, which first appears in the city directory in 1911. The first family

member to come to the United States, whose name has been forgotten, delivered supplies

to the Chinese camps and communities in the west. By the late 1890s, his son came to

Butte and ran the Quong Fong Laundry on South Arizona, a business which stayed in

business well into the 1950s, even after the Tam family member had returned to China.120

After the Pekin Noodle Parlor and Hum Yow and Tam Lee established themselves and

their businesses, Tam decided to branch out into another business in 1942. The new business

was an herbal medicine shop called “Joe Tom’s Herbs,” as Tam had been a special herb doctor in

China.121

These business establishments had made enough money to help support their families

back in China and to help bring over family members from China to San Francisco or Butte.

Yum decided to send money to bring his nephew and Tam’s grandson, Ding K. Tam, to America

to start working with relatives in their respective businesses. 122

In 1947 as a teenage boy,

Ding—now Danny Wong—was given a different name due to a culturally biased first name and



118 Jordan, Robin. 2011. “Pekin Noodle Parlor Celebrates 100 Years.” Butte Weekly, July 6th, 2011. P. 1





121 Jordan, Robin. 2011. “Pekin Noodle Parlor Celebrates 100 Years.” Butte Weekly, July 6th, 2011. P. 1 122 Tam, Ding K. 2013. Interview with Author: Pekin Noodle Parlor.

28

a clerical error on the last name. He worked for his uncle, Hum Yow, in the Pekin Noodle Parlor,

learned how to run the business and also helped support his family in China. 123

Ding would

eventually take over the Pekin Noodle Parlor; however, there were some family business losses.

In 1952, the London Company had to close due to new gambling regulations and restrictions.124

Because Ding owned the restaurant, this allowed him to adapt and change the menu throughout

the years to include more spice and curry in existing family dishes.125

He married his wife

Sharon Chu in 1963 and they had five children who grew up in Butte.126

¸127

Today, Ding, who is

well into his late seventies, still runs the Pekin Noodle Parlor. The restaurant provides of Chinese

American dishes and a glimpse of the China Alley neighborhood history.





125 Tam, Ding K. 2013. Interview with Author: Pekin Noodle Parlor.

126 Tam, Ding K. 2013. Interview with Author: Pekin Noodle Parlor.



29

Figure 4: Pekin Noodle Parlor 128

The Pekin Noodle Parlor is a good example of a foodway adapted to a new environment.

The Chinese Foodways that were created in America embraced their Chinese heritage; however,

they adapted to the available ingredients and other cultures they were serving. The Chinese

restaurant owners and cooks embraced their home country’s ingredients for their main food

dishes, but due to the vast region that makes up China, and availability of items in America,

these ingredients varied. Most Chinese American restaurants used Cantonese style of cooking

and ingredients; however, the spicy ingredients from the territories of Szechuan and Hunan were

128 Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. 1970-1980. Image: Pekin Noodle Parlor. Butte, Montana.

30

also represented.129

Chop suey is a specific example of Chinese foodways and the Pekin Noodle

Parlor adapting to American culture. This meal includes vegetables, choice of meat (chicken,

beef, or pork), and noodles.130

How did this simple meal of leftover noodles, proteins, and

vegetables start in America? Surprisingly, there are several origin stories for this food. One

origin story explains it this way:

Chop suey, for example, got its start in 1850 when a bunch of hungry miners busted their

way into a chow-chow late at night and demanded to be fed. The chef just stirred all the

table scraps and leftovers he could find into a big mess and served it. The miners loved it.

When asked what it was, the chef replied, “chop sui” which means “garbage bits” in

Cantonese. The dish remained virtually unheard of in China until after World War II;

today, it’s advertised as American cuisine!131

Another origin story, recounted earlier in Chapter 2, states that:

According to Gold Rush folklore, a group of drunken American miners entered a Chinese

restaurant in San Francisco late one night, just as the shop was about to close. The owner,

in an effort to avoid a confrontation, decided to serve them. He quickly threw together a

handful of leftover table scraps to create the dish we now know as chop suey. 132

Both stories follow have the same story line of how this dish of leftovers was created.

During the San Francisco Gold Rush, miners and other laborers were in need of a good meal

after getting off of work. Chinatown, with its gambling establishments and other cultural

entrainment, provided a place for miners to relax and spend money. They were hungry and the

restaurant owners had to find a quick, easy, and cost-effective meal that they could give to the

miners to eat at the restaurant or as takeout. However, meals like chop suey and Chinese

restaurants did not become popular until 1896. This happened when Chinese Ambassador Li

129 Sanefuji, Noriko and Yu, Tim. “Collections: Cecilia Chiang and the Mandarin Restaurant.” Smithsonian Asian

Pacific American Center. http://apanews.si.edu (accessed August 2012).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoIMHaXEYaM (accessed March 2013).

131 “1849: First Chinese Restaurant in America.” http://www.uglychinesecanadian.com/?p=1623 (accessed August,

2012).

132 Chang, Iris. 2003. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York, New York: Penguin Books. P. 48

31

Hung Chang visited America and sparked American public interest in learning more about

China, which was an exotic and mysterious place to the American public at this time.

When Li visited the U.S. in August 1896, cheering Americans lined the streets hoping to

catch a glimpse of this important visitor and his famous yellow jacket. Children decorated

their bicycles with yellow streamers to catch the ambassador's attention. As the guest of

honor at grand feasts and elegant banquets, Li declined the fancy food and champagne

that was offered to him and ate only meals specially prepared by his personal chefs. In

reality, chop suey was probably not invented by Li Hung Chang's chefs, but America's

fascination with this royal visitor from Asia and his team of personal chefs gave rise to

new interest in Chinese cooking.133

After Ambassador Chang’s visit the next surge in Chinese food popularity would not

happen until after the First World War. During this time, Chinese restaurants adapted their

meals and other services, such as takeout, to draw in a new kind of customer—the

workingwomen who wanted a restaurant meal or a takeout meal for their family after a long day

at work.134

Chinese restaurant owners marketed their dishes and takeout in urban industrialized

areas, like New York City and San Francisco. Restaurants would put out fine quality meats like

duck and other specialty food items to draw in the customers after a long day at work, showing

that dinner can be easy and tasty if purchased from a restaurant, while giving relief for the

already tired worker.135

After World War I, came the glowing neon signs, which were stunning when all the signs

were on together, and drew in customers136

(Pekin’s sign was installed in 1916 and later added

neon to the existing sign137

). The neon signs and marketing reflected the nation’s prosperity and

133 Library of Congress. “Chop Suey was Invented, Fact or Fiction?” Library of Congress.

www.americaslibrary.gov (accessed March 3rd, 2013, 2013). P. 2

134 Zhao, Xiaojian. 2010. The New Chinese America: Class, Economy, and Social Hierarchy. Piscataway

Township, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. P. 81

135 Zhao, Xiaojian. 2010. The New Chinese America: Class, Economy, and Social Hierarchy. Piscataway

Township, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. P. 81

136 Lincoln, Marga. 2013. “All But Forgotten...Against Great Odds, Helena's Chinese Community Took Hold,

Endured, and Thrived.” Independent Record, February 18th, 2013. P. 2 137 Tam, Ding K. 2013. Interview with Author: Pekin Noodle Parlor.

32

a new fascination with authentic Chinese food, and generated a new surge of popularity for

Chinese takeout in the late 1950s.138

American’s across the United States wanted to learn how to

use chopsticks, eat fortune cookies, and experience new foods in local Chinatowns.139

This

cemented Chinese food, takeout, and culture into American culture.

As Chinese food became more popular, cooks further expanded the original ingredients

to adapt American resources and to make the meals more appealing to their customers.140

Restaurants also adapted by providing more beef and chicken proteins into their “authentic”

Chinese meals,141

such as chop suey, which could be made with the restaurant’s leftovers.142

This meal, along with takeout, demonstrates how the Chinese foodway traced a new path in

America. Chop suey, along with the “oyster box,” symbolizes a quick and easy takeout dish for

a customer-on-the-go. These adaptations from Chinese restaurant owners helped them establish

their business and a livelihood for their families, and shaped how Americans eat today. These

seemingly small adaptations are important to the American culture and symbolize the busy,

working American.

Pork Chop John’s

John Burkland started selling pork chop sandwiches from a wagon cart on the streets of

Uptown Butte in 1924.143

Butte’s Uptown, sometimes referred to as “The Hill,” was Butte’s

138 “History Channel Television Episode: Chinese Food: A Brief History”?”




140 “1849: First Chinese Restaurant in America.” http://www.uglychinesecanadian.com/?p=1623 (accessed August,

2012).






Contexts Center, UC Santa Barbara 1, no. 1: 1-24. P. 4 143 “Pork Chop Johns: Our History.” www.porkchopjohns.com (accessed August, 2012).

33

commerce and business district. It began in 1877 when Andrew Jackson Davis and Samuel

Houser built the First National Bank of Butte.144

After the First National Bank was built many

businesses, restaurants, hotels, and bars were established along the main streets of Uptown Butte,

notably along the streets of Broadway, Park, Galena, Mercury, Main and Montana. These

businesses were close to the mines and neighborhoods and gave the miners and their families a

range of different types of foods, clothing, and shelter like a microcosm of larger cities such as

San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.145

As Butte grew, so did the demand for restaurants. In

1932, John Burkland closed his cart wagon business and opened his restaurant, serving his

popular pork chop sandwich at the Doyle Hotel at the corner of Mercury and Main. 146

This

allowed Burkland to transition from a cart wagon to a brick-and-mortar location, but his

beginning with a cart wagon was important because of the American identity of on-the-go

consumers. The use of food wagon carts, also called street carts or luncheon cart wagons,

became popular in the late 1890s to early 1900s. These food cart wagons allowed the vendor to

push their food items, such as sandwiches and drinks, down the streets of urbanized locations

with industrial working areas and offices.147

Food wagon carts are considered the first form of

to-go, or fast food, for the industrial working class population.148

Many food cart wagons in

urban areas like Chicago had schedules to move their carts so they could be at certain locations

to feed steady customers. A clean cart and food that could be eaten out-of-hand brought

customers back. There were many opportunities for adaptation and innovation in running a food




Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. P. 89-118

146 Orizotti, Dan. 1996. Ann Cote Smith Essay Contest: John's Pork Chops. Butte Archives.

147 Tangires, Helen. 1990. “American Lunch Wagons.” Journal of American Culture 13, no. 2: 91-91-108. P. 91

148 Simopoulos, A. P. and R. V. Bhat. 2000. Street Food. Basel, Switzerland: S. Kager A.G. P. 2

34

cart wagon. 149

One such story traces back to industrial Chicago, Illinois and the surrounding

area. The story is about a pork tenderloin sandwich food cart wagon owned by Nick Freinstein

and his brother Jake. Jake lost his hands due to frostbite and found that he could use his now

handless arms to tenderize the pork chop into a patty.150

This story might be folklore, but it gives

the reader an understanding of the hard times and harsh climate of the industrial Midwest that

many food cart wagon owners and immigrants faced and how they adapted in search of

prosperity in America.

Pork Chop John’s restaurant history began when John Burkland immigrated along with

his brother Charles to the United States from Sweden in 1888.151

On May 16, 1894, John

Burkland was naturalized as an American Citizen in the District Court in Butte, Montana.152

John

and Charles made their home in Butte at, “325 South Main and were connected with Silver Bow

Livery & Feed Stable in 1886-1888.”153

In 1924, after years of working and living in Butte, John

started making deep-fried pork tenderloin sandwiches in his home and selling them on the streets

of Main and Mercury. 154

According to one version of the story, in 1932, John moved his

sandwich cart to a counter in the Doyle Building that provided a walk-up window and ten stools

for customers due to the high demand for his sandwiches (See Figure 5).155

Another version of

the story states that John’s food cart wagon was illegal, and county officials shut down his cart

business, so he purchased the location in the Doyle Building to continue selling his

sandwiches.156

According to Ed Orizotti, “John eventually sold his business to his son-in-law


Illinois. P. 160 150 Ellison, Jim. “Breaded Pork Tenderloin.” www.midnightsnack.wordpress.com (accessed August, 2012).

151 Flanagan, Bonnie. Butte Archive Paper Document: Charles Burkland.

152 Immigration and Naturalization Services. Form N-35. John A. Burklund. May 16th, 1894.

153 Flanagan, Bonnie. Butte Archive Paper document: Charles Burkland.

154 Orizotti, Ed. 2013. Interview with Author: Pork Chop John’s.

155 Orizotti, Amber. Essay for Dr. Loralee Davenport: Orizotti Family History. Butte Archives. P. 5

156 Orizotti, Dan. 1996. Ann Cote Smith Essay Contest: John's Pork Chops. Butte Archives. P. 1

http://www.midnightsnack.wordpress.com/

35

John Bernard (Bernie) Semmens in the 1940’s or 1950’s.”157

Bernie Semmens hired John

Orizotti to work at Pork Chop John’s at night, because he worked day shift at a grocery store

owned by his grandfather, Dan Piazzola.158

Bernie Semmens offered John Orizotti the

opportunity to purchase the restaurant and in 1969, and John Orizotti purchased the restaurant

from Bernie.159

The restaurant was eventually sold in the 1980s to John Orizotti’s sons, Ed and

Rick Orizotti, when John wanted to retire from the restaurant business.160

Today, Ed and Rick

continue using the John Burkland recipe, along with the building in which the pork chop

sandwich was created.

Figure 5: Artist rendition of the Doyle Hotel and Pork Chop John’s 161

157 Orizotti, Ed. 2013. Interview with Author: Pork Chop John’s. 158 Orizotti, Ed. 2013. Interview with Author: Pork Chop John’s.



161 Nansel, Judy. 1975. Artwork: Pork Chop John's. Butte, Montana.

36

Pork Chop John’s sandwich derives from both German and American foodways.

German foodways exerted an important influence on American food and culture.162

These

foodways came to the American Midwest with the large German population that immigrated

there.

In the nineteenth century the Germans were the largest ethnic group that immigrated to

America. They predominantly settled in the Midwestern states. Depending on their

settlement pattern, the social background, and religion, Germans practiced slightly

differentiating but clearly traditional eating and drinking habits.163

Germans brought over foods such as the frankfurter (aka wiener) and hamburger. Many

German foods were adapted to include American staples of meat and potatoes.164

One example

of German foodways variation or adaptation is the pork tenderloin sandwich, which is a form of

German schnitzel. Schnitzel is breaded meat that has been sliced thin and pounded. It was

adapted in the Midwest through urban Chicago as a food to be eaten out of the hand and

provided a new food to be sold and eaten at various cart wagon businesses. 165

This adaptation

of German foodways came about, once again, because of America consumers’ preferences for

fast food and a high-protein diet. In America, food carts were the first form of to-go or fast food

for the industrial working class population. 166

In urban areas like Chicago food that could be

eaten out-of-hand provided meals to the vast population of workers coming and going on the

streets. 167

Thus various sandwiches, including the pork chop sandwich, became popular in

America.

162 Ross, Britta. 2004. German American Foodways in the Midwest. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag. P. 2 163 Ross, Britta. 2004. German American Foodways in the Midwest. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag. P. 2

164 Ross, Britta. 2004. German American Foodways in the Midwest. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag. P. 2


Illinois.P. 160

166 Simopoulos, A. P. and R. V. Bhat. 200. Street Food. Basel, Switzerland: S. Kager A.G. P. 2


Illinois. P.160

37

The pork chop sandwich is an important example of German influence and American

adaptation. Beef and pork products were a luxury for workers in Germany and many Germans

used all the parts of the pig to make sausages and other meats.168

These German immigrants

adapted to American prosperity, and like the American cattle rancher, some German immigrant

farmers and ranchers controlled vast land resources. They had pig farms, potato fields, and other

crops to feed America’s growing public appetite.169

With this wealth of meats and various crops

came the adaptation of many German favorites, like the hamburger and hotdog, which are

embedded in American culture today.

German foodways had a large influence on American foodways, an influence we still see

today. These include the hamburger, hotdog (frankfurter or wiener), pork tenderloin sandwich,

and German-style beer. German foodways are so embedded in American culture, that some

historians ignorant of food history consider some of these German foods American, and not

German. The adaptation and integration of German foodways into America and the confusion

over German origins is a separate topic, and those questions will not be resolved here. The pork

chop sandwich originated in the Midwest and came to Butte, Montana with John Burkland.

However, there is no documentation of John Burkland traveling to the Midwest or stories of how

he brought the sandwich to Butte. This question of how the pork chop sandwich found its way to

Butte will be left unanswered in this thesis, but the importance of this food remains.

168 Goyan Kittler, Pamela, Kathryn P. Sucher, and Marcia Nelms. 2012. Food and Culture. Sixth ed. Belmont, CA:

Wagsworth: Cengage Learning. P. 173

169 Willard, Barbara E. 2002. “The American Story of Meat: Discursive Influences on Cultural Eating Practice.”

The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1: 105-105-118. P. 8

38

Matt’s Place Drive-In

Matt’s Place Drive-In restaurant opened in downtown Butte or what are called “The

Flats” in 1930. 170

“The Flats” was an area developed about 1910 because of the growing

population of Butte. Unlike “The Hill,” these new neighborhoods had yards and men and women

traveled to work by streetcars to get to “The Hill,” a more densely populated area.171

This new

environment, along with public mass transportation, allowed for a new kind of neighborhood.

“The Flats” created a development opportunity for new businesses, especially restaurants. This

adaptation to a new environment was a new era of growth in American culture and commerce.

Matt’s Place is currently one of Montana’s oldest drive-in diners and holds almost a hundred

years of history for Butte.172

Drive-in restaurant history began around the 1920s, when

automobiles began supplanting streetcars. Automobiles quickly developed additional luxuries

such as: upgrades of upholstery, glove compartments, and windows that moved up and down.173

The automobile fit in with the American ideal of freedom and allowed people to choose when

and where to go, which differed from the restrictive times and locations of public

transportation.174

Automobiles led to the modification of some food wagon carts and restaurants,

and created a demand for new restaurants that catered to this new form of customer, thus drive-in

dining began. Drive-in dining allowed customers to dine in their car instead of in the restaurant,

and also gave the customer an option of ordering and taking the meal in a paper bag “to go.” 175

Customers could order at a drive-in by parking and honking their horn; a “car hop” waitress

170 National Register of Historic Places: Matt’s Place Drive-In. October 1990. 171 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-1941. Urbana and Chicago, IL:

University of Illinois Press. P. 15

172 “Matt's Place Drive-In Butte, MT.” www.montanaeats.blogspot.com (August 2012).

173 Witzle, Michael Karl. 1994. The American Drive-In: History and Folklore of the Drive-In Restaurant in

American Car Culture. Osceola, Wisconsin: MBI Publishing Company. P. 23

174 Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Volume 1000. New York,

New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 16


York, New York: New York University. P. 81

http://www.montanaeats.blogspot.com/

39

would then come to take their order and later deliver it to the car.176

These new drive-in

restaurants, including Matt’s Place, established a unique new American foodway.

Matt’s Place Drive-In began when Matt and Betty Korne opened the restaurant in 1930 in

the Boulevard neighborhood on the “The Flats.” This restaurant was the first drive-in restaurant

in the state of Montana.177

This establishment was built on Rowe Road and provided an

excellent location for local motorists and public transportation passengers to stop off for a meal

(See Figures 6 and 7).178

Matt hired local young women to work as car hops, or as Matt called

them, “curb girls,” for his business. One in particular, Mae Laurence, would end up buying the

business and making it her own.179

In an interview, Mae’s daughter Robin Cockhill gave the

history of Matt’s and the story of her family’s business. She explained to me that after high

school her mother, Mae, went to beauty school and continued working for Matt as a carhop. She

had met Cockhill’s father Louis and they married in 1943. Mae had plans to buy a beauty shop

to support her family. However, Mae’s plan to buy a Boulder, Montana beauty shop ended after

the owner’s wedding was called off. Although, that business purchase did not work out, it gave

Mae and Louis the opportunity to purchase Matt’s Place from Matt Korne using a loan they

received from their family after their marriage. They realized their American Dream of owning a

business and having a home above Matt’s. Here they raised their family and continue to run

their business today. Sadly, before this interview took place, Mae Laurence passed away on

January 10, 2013 at the age of 100. Mae hired many family members who were in high school

and college. Matt’s not only provided a place for those in the community to eat, but a place for


York, New York: New York University. P. 81 177 McCormick, Andrea. 1980. “Drive-In Serves Up Morsels of Yesterday.” The Montana Standard, 7/27/1980.



179 McCormick, Andrea. 1980. “Drive-In Serves Up Morsels of Yesterday.” The Montana Standard, 7/27/1980.

40

other family members to earn money as they received an education.180

,181

Although Mae has

died, her family continues to run the business. Her daughter Robin and son-in-law Brad Cockhill

now own and operate Matt’s Place. The restaurant now near the I-90 and I-15 interchange, no

longer has curb girls, but still has the same décor, including the inside horseshoe style counter,

Matt’s neon sign outside, and a menu that keeps customers, old and new, coming to this historic

Montana restaurant.182

180 Cockhill, Robin. 2013. Interview with Author: Matt’s Place Drive-In. 181 “Obituary: Mae Laurence, 100.” Montana Standard, 1/12/ 2013. 182

McMillion, Scott. Fall 2007. “The Real Deal: Likely Montana’s First Drive-In, Matt’s Place in Butte Still

Serving Up Nostalgia the Old-Fashioned Way.” Food & Drink: Montana Quarterly. p. 137

41

Figure 6: Map of Butte, Montana Trolley Route in Blue:

Matt’s was located near the end of the trolley route on Montana Street.183

183 Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. 1916-November 1956, Republished 1957. Sanborn Maps: Map of Butte,

Montana. Butte, MT: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives.

42

Figure 7: Matt’s Place Drive-In 184

Matt’s Place Drive-In menu is a great example of the hamburger joint as a unique

American foodway that provided consumers with a meal high in protein, fats, and a sugary

dessert. The menu consists primarily of hamburgers, French fries, soda pop, homemade ice

cream, and milkshakes, and all menu items can be ordered, “to go” (See Figure 8). The

hamburger, as discussed in the earlier chapter, became popular after the 1904 World’s Fair. This

high-protein sandwich has become a sort of patriotic symbol to the American people and their

lifestyle of eating on-the-go.

Although beef is produced and consumed throughout the world, it has a special place in

United States’ history and culture. The cowboy remains a potent symbol of the American

West and the open land once required for cattle grazing.185

In the early years and today, beef symbolized the American cattle rancher using vast land

resources to create food for America’s rapidly growing population. 186

Beef and the hamburger

184 Stern, Michael. Image: Matt's Place Drive-In. www.roadfood.com (accessed March 2013).

185 Addlesperger, Elisa. 2007. “Beef.” Journal of Agricultural & Food Information 8, no. 4: 11-11-19. P. 11

http://www.roadfood.com/

43

provided sustenance and like the luxury automobile became a symbol of mass consumption and

the middle-class "good life" in America.”187

The American hamburger integrated a German

foodway and adapted it to American culture. This adaptation and modification of a protein

sandwich embodies the identity of the “good life” of American middle-class consumers, who

enjoyed what other cultures regarded as luxury items. Other examples of American foodways on

the Matt’s Place menu are homemade ice cream and milkshakes. This is the ultimate

combination dining experience for the American consumer, to drink a dessert, e.g., a milkshake,

with a meal. This drink shaped the American “balance” of a meal rich in sugar and fat, with the

milkshake consumed with a hamburger or grilled cheese sandwich. 188

Desserts, like the

milkshake, were considered a part of the American “square meal.”189

This drinkable dessert was

undergoing modification during the same time drive-ins were being established. Steve

Poplawski had started using a blender to whip the milk blend to make it seem lighter, and Ivan

“Pop” Coulson started adding ice cream to the malt, milk, and flavor mix at Walgreens.190

This

automation and modification of the milkshake mix allowed this popular beverage to be made

outside of the malt shops and in restaurants and drive-ins such as Matt’s. Although ice cream and

milkshakes were not consumed with every meal, they became a sort of luxury item that the

American middle class and working class could afford.


The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1: 105-105-118. P. 8

187 Parsons, James J. “The Scourge of Cows.” Whole Earth Review. cascourses.uoregon.edu (accessed Feb 2013).

188 Kessler, David A. 2009. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. New

York, New York: Rodale, Inc. P. 84

189 Levenstein, Harvey A. 1993. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York,

New York: Oxford University Press. P. 91

190 Ried, Adam. 2009. Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. P. 14-15

44

Figure 8: Matt’s Place Drive-In Menu 191

The American drive-in restaurant embraced the American identity of consumption of

luxury items and food on-the-go. Matt’s Place Drive-In provides one location in which this

foodway developed in American culture. This restaurant still provides the customer a nostalgic

glimpse to the 1930s when the average middle class and working class American adapted to new

technology—the exciting adventure of automobile driving. Drive-ins, and this nostalgic time

period, are portrayed in popular American movies such as Grease and television shows like

Happy Days. Although this foodway adaptation began only sixty-plus years ago, it illustrates

how the American culture has developed.

Lydia’s Supper Club

In 1946, around the same time Matt’s Place Drive-In was established, Lydia’s Supper

Club opened for business, at the end of Harrison Avenue. At this time, the restaurant location

was considered the outer edge of “The Flats” and the beginning of Harding Way (Highway U.S.

191 “Matt's Place Drive-In Butte, MT.” www.montanaeats.blogspot.com (August 2012).

http://www.montanaeats.blogspot.com/

45

10).192

Lydia’s, at that time called the Casino, had been purchased by Lydia Micheletti who

renamed the restaurant after herself.

Lydia’s provides a living food history for the buried Meaderville neighborhood.

Meaderville, Butte’s Italian American neighborhood, vanished with expansion of open pit

mining by the Anaconda Company beginning in 1955. The Anaconda Company sacrificed this

and other neighborhoods to expand their open pit mining business, forcing locals to vacate their

neighborhoods. The Berkeley Pit, as this open pit mining operation was called, created a massive

hole. After mining ceased it filled with water, creating a toxic mining lake called the Berkley Pit

or “the pit” by locals.193

Although Meaderville and its restaurants no longer exist, Lydia’s is an

example of an Italian American foodway and the American roadhouse. Roadhouses today are

commonly thought of as southern barbeque restaurants with a particular kind of music (jazz or

rock-n-roll were mentioned in some articles); however, roadhouses began as a way to eat an

affordable meal out and to drink alcoholic beverages during Prohibition.194

American

roadhouses gave customers a “great night out: a good dinner, some dancing, and entertainment”

(e.g., dancing, music, magician, comedian, and gambling).195

Prohibition caused most

roadhouses locations to be near the city limits, because of the restaurants’ illegal activities.196

Customers often traveled away from home to nearby cities to enjoy their night out at a

roadhouse. According to Mary Murphy “couples would drive over from Anaconda (to Butte) to

eat, drink, and dance in the Meaderville clubs, for a dollar they could get a chicken dinner and

192 Micheletti, David. 2013. Interview with Author: Lydia's Supper Club.

193 “Main Street Uptown Butte. Restaurants.” http://www.mainstreetbutte.org/food.htm (accessed August, 2012).

194 Davis, Timothy C. Spring 2003. “Pigging Out.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3, no. 2: 11-

11-13. P. 12

195 Lacey, Robert. 1991. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. P. 98

196 Clark, Larry D. 2009. “"Can't Someone Find Him a Stimulant?": The Treatment of Prohibition on the American

Stage, 1920-1933.” Prohibition on the American Stage: 122-122-147. P. 130

http://www.mainstreetbutte.org/food.htm

46

two highballs; the third, by custom, on the house.” 197

Couples also chose roadhouses because

most let women drink,

Prohibition’s new speakeasies, nightclubs, and roadhouses catered to couples and

sanctioned and encouraged drinking for women. Young women who ventured into these

new institutions knew they were crossing a divide between an old set of assumptions

about behavior and morality and a new code they were creating.198

Allowing women into roadhouses was an important example of how women’s roles

changed outside of the home during this time. This adaptation, which took some time before

society fully accepted it, allowed women to go outside of their homes to dance, drink, and enjoy

a meal. Before Prohibition, it was considered risqué and it went against what proper ladies

should do when going out on the town.

Roadhouses provided meals, drinks, and entertainment. This type of establishment

became a unique type of restaurant, thanks in part, to the legal restrictions on alcohol during

Prohibition. Roadhouses were a novel adaptation that characterizes the era, and they are featured

in American movies including A League of Their Own and The Wild One. Roadhouses still exist

across America; however, the Texas Roadhouses and other barbeque roadhouse restaurants

provide a misleading idea of original roadhouses: a meal, an alcoholic drink, and entertainment

for a reasonable price for anyone who could drive there.

Lydia’s Supper Club’s history is a story of immigration, employment at a young age, and

a woman owning her own family business that has been handed down for generations. Lydia

Micheletti, who was born in February 1910, was raised in Italy and moved to America in 1920 to

join her father with her mother and sisters.199

When Lydia was 13, she took a job at an eating

197 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-1941. Urbana and Chicago, IL:


198 Murphy, Mary. June, 1994. “Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in Butte,

Montana.” American Quarterly 48, no. 2: 174-174-194. P. 188


47

and gambling establishment owned by Mike Solat. 200

Solat’s business was like many businesses

in Meaderville at that time: a neighborhood restaurant known for serving Italian American meals

with chicken and pasta, and with added benefits such as gambling and drinking grappa and

homemade wines.201

Lydia went on to learn the cooking and restaurant management trade, and

gained recognition in the community as an exceptional worker. Before Lydia owned her own

business, she worked at many Meaderville establishments, including the White Front, La

Campana, El Travatore, Spanish Village, and the Rocky Mountain Café.202

After many years of

success working in the restaurant business, she went into business for herself with famous boxer

Sunny O’Day, at a restaurant called Savoy in Meaderville sometime between the late 1930s

through the mid-1940s. 203

In 1946, Lydia bought the Casino from Albina Sylvain, along with

many antipasti and salad dressing recipes that are a guarded secret and still used at Lydia’s by

the Michelleti family and restaurant staff (See Figure 9).204

Throughout the years, Lydia205

would go on to employ most of her family. She eventually retired in 1973 and handed the

business over to her brother David Micheletti, Sr.206

David ran the business for many years and

taught his son David Jr. and grandchildren, Toni Micheletti-Marquez and Nicco Micheletti, how

to run the business.207

In 2009, after David Sr.’ death, Dave, Toni, and Nicco along with their

200 Ciabattari, Andrea. 1976. “Lydia Recalls Busy Years at Stove.” Montana Standard, July 27, 1976.






205 Lydia Michelleti would also employ Italian immigrants. One example of this is Prospero Dante Bonanini (born

in 1920), who was a POW at the Panama Canal for eight months and Fort Missoula for four years as an Italian

merchant marine before World War II. Prostero would eventually become an American citizen, join the American

Army during World War II, in 1952 Pospero would marry his wife Maria from Italy, and learn to become a chef

from the Butte Business College. Lydia hired Postero as a chef and became his daughter’s godmother. Thus,

Postero named his daughter Lydia Bonanini (now Janosko) in honor of Lydia Micheletti.

Janosko, Lydia. 2013. Interview with Author: Lydia Micheletti.



48

spouses, Larry Marquez (Toni’s husband) and Megan Micheletti (Nicco’s wife) continued to run

Lydia’s Supper Club.208

Lydia’s (Figure 9) provides a glimpse into the former Italian American

neighborhood of Meaderville and one of the historically prominent foodways of Butte.

Figure 9: Lydia’s Supper Club 209

Lydia’s menu and antipasti starter provided both Italian and American foodways to their

customers. The main menu had Italian roots with chicken cacciatore, veal birds (a dish of

chicken, pheasant or game bird wrapped in veal), along with ravioli and spaghetti dishes. These

dishes provided not only traditional Italian ingredients (pasta, sauce, olive oil, and cheeses), but

incorporated the American staple of meat.210

This adaptation of adding more proteins not only

changed Italian American dishes, but also the menu itself. As Andrea Ciabattari explains in her

article about Lydia, “although Lydia has cooked her special chicken cacciatore and Italian veal

bird, she said, ‘people love plain steak and chicken’.”211

This adaptation of Italian food was

influenced by two different cultural ideals of the American meal and American industrial


209 Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. 1977. Image: Lydia's Supper Club. Butte, Montana.

210 Diner, Hasia R. 2001. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration .



49

workingman. The ideal American meal was the “square meal”: a salad, protein, potatoes,

vegetables, and dessert.212

Lydia’s provided a salad with a large assortment of antipasti, which

consisted of “sweet potato salad, pickled beets, salami, and cheese appetizers,”213

a protein, such

as chicken, steak, or seafood; a choice of various potatoes or pasta dishes; vegetable side; and a

cup of spumoni or vanilla ice cream at the end of the meal. Thus was Italian food adapted to the

American ideal of a “square meal.”

Meaderville was a neighborhood where miners and other Butte residents went to relax,

eat a meal, drink, and spend their money gambling. It included establishments such as the Savoy

owned by Lydia and Sonny O’Day. As Sonny said, “It was the policy of ACM (Anaconda

Company) to keep the miners happy, keep’em broke, keep’em working.”214

Miners consumed many calories to sustain their manual labor jobs. It was believed that

meat was an important easily staple for hardworking American men. Meat became a tradition of

the American male worker; it “represented concepts such as rugged individualism and manifest

destiny.”215

These two concepts of the square meal and the rugged American working male

changed what immigrants ate. This new diet was cheap, meat was abundant, working hours were

short, and miners earned union-scale wages. Lydia’s Supper Club still holds onto this cultural

ideal of the “square meal” for the workingman and is a good example of how Italian American

restaurants adapted and created lasting businesses in communities across America.

Lydia’s still provides customers an appealing serving of Italian American history and

food. This type of restaurant provides an affordable, yet seemingly extravagant meal with drinks

212 Levenstein, Harvey A. 1993. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York,

New York: Oxford University Press. P. 91 213 Ciabattari, Andrea. 1976. “Lydia Recalls Busy Years at Stove.” Montana Standard, July 27, 1976.

214 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-1941. Urbana and Chicago, IL:



The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1: 105-105-118. P. 3-4

50

and entertainment. It evolved from how Americans and immigrants ate and drank during

Prohibition times. It also provides an explanation of why American meals are so large, as

American Industrial “progress” and working-class lifestyles made for larger meals. Though

interesting, this issue is beyond the scope of this thesis. However, this work shows how

immigrants adapted and changed their eating and food cultural norms as they worked and

prospered in the American land of opportunity.

Joe’s Pasty Shop

Joe’s Pasty Shop was established in 1947, during the same post World War II era of

suburban expansion as Matt’s Place Drive-In and Lydia’s Supper Club. Like Lydia’s and Matt’s,

Joe’s was located on “The Flats” on Grand Avenue, providing this growing and thriving area

with a restaurant. “The Flats” growth after WW II was influenced by returning servicemen and

the establishment of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act or GI Bill in 1944.216

The GI Bill

provided veterans’ opportunities, previously reserved for wealthy Americans, to receive college

education, buy a home, and open a business—all ways to fulfill the American Dream.217

The GI

Bill stimulated growth in America, and can be seen in Butte, Montana with the development and

expansion of businesses such as Joe’s Pasty Shop on “The Flats.”

Joe’s Pasty Shop is not the only Butte, Montana restaurant that serves Cornish pasties.

However, Joe’s Pasty Shop illustrates the rich history of Butte and the families who established

and still own this shop. Pasties came to America with Cornish miners seeking work after layoffs

in their home country. They were attracted to new mining jobs found in various American

216 Hodgson, Godfrey. 2005. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon–What Happened and Why.

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. P. 53

217 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “The GI Bill's History.” www.gibill.va.gov (accessed April 2013, 2013).

http://www.gibill.va.gov/

51

states.218

“Cousin Jacks,” as the Cornish were called, were from Cornwall, England.219

They

were skilled underground, hard rock miners and found jobs in mining communities across

America.220

Some immigrated to the Michigan Copper Range. It was there that William Clark

(one of Butte’s Copper Kings) persuaded them to move and work in his mines in Butte during

the 1880s.221

The Cornish222

brought pasty making with them to Butte and it provided a good

hearty meal for the hard work that had to be done below the surface.223

The “Cousin Jack’s”

wives, called “Cousin Jinnies” or “Cousin Jennies,” created these traditional half-moon pies with

thick side crusts and packed them in miners’ dinner pails. To many, pasties were a reminder of

their home country. The Cornish said that pasties were a “letter from ‘ome”224

and described

them as:

Huge, with a lush crust that cleaves into see-through flakes if you rub it in your fingers,

each pasty weighs at least a couple pounds and is loaded with a mouth-watering, onion-

scented mélange of coarse-cut beef and little chunks of potato. Not only are they simple

delicious foods, easily eaten out-of-hand, they are an edible tradition–an authentic taste of

the West’s mining history.225

Once the Cornish brought pasties to Butte, they were soon adopted by miners from other

nationalities because they were easily eaten out of hand. Each family modified the pasty using


Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. P. 134 219 Kearney, Pat. 1998. Butte Voices: Mining, Neighborhoods, People. Ed. McGlashan, Z. B. Butte, MT: Skyhigh

Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. P. 133-134

220 Many sources report that pasties were developed by Cornish coal miners. This is not true as there is no coal in

Cornwall. Cornwall Calling. “Cornish Mines and Mining History in Cornwall.” www.cornwall-

calling.co.uk/mines.htm (accessed April 2013, 2013).


Communications-Artcraft Printers of Butte. . 133-134

222 In the European common market, “Cornish Pasty” is a protected name and can only be labeled as such if it is

made in Cornwall. Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: United Kingdom. November 2008.

PECIFICATION COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 510/2006 on Protected Geographical Indications and

Protected Designations of Origin: "Cornish Pasty.” Official Journal of the European Union: 1-6. P. 2-5



224 Hamburger, Philip. 1962. “Notes for a Gazetter: XXXVII~Butte, Mont.” The New Yorker. P. 3



52

what they had in the pantry and according to personal taste. Wives might use different cuts of

beef (skirt, flank, and loin), parsley, carrots, rutabagas, or turnips.226

Some nationalities even

claimed the pasty as their own, like the rivals and historic homeland enemies to the Cornish, the

Irish.227

The Cornish and Irish continued their grudge match even after moving to Butte.

Sometimes fights broke out in the mines, but most fighting occurred in Butte’s bars.228

The Irish

version of the Cornish pasty uses beef, potatoes, and onion, but adds rutabagas as well.229

One

thing that remained the same was the piecrust and thick side crimped handle, which, “the miners

would hold that edge and eat the pasty, then throw away the crust because their fingers were

covered with arsenic.”230

Today, the Cornish pasty has been adapted for sit-down meals versus

the traditional eaten-out-of-hand meal packed in miners’ dinner pail. Joe’s pasty serves the

Cornish pasty topped with gravy or catsup, and coleslaw on the side. This meal is filling and an

edible historical reminder of American mining culture.

Joe Novak established Joe’s Pasty Shop in 1947 after his sons returned from World War

II.231

Novak started the business as a corner bar, and added the pasty so customers would not

have to leave the bar to go home to eat (See Figure 10).232

As Joe’s bar business declined, his

restaurant business grew.233

In 1979, Jim and Linda Young purchased Joe’s Pasty Shop from the

Novak family. 234

The Young family continued to run the restaurant as the Novak family left it,


P. 15

227 Emmons, David M. The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925. Ed. Daniels

R., Dolan J.P., and Vecoli R.J. Urbana, IL and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. P. 239

228 Murphy, Mary. 1997. Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte 1914-1941. Urbana and Chicago,

IL: University of Illinois Press. P. 47


P. 89

230 Evans, Andrew. “Covellite.” digitalnomad.nationalgeographic.com (accessed March 10th, 2013, 2013). Much

of Butte’s copper ore had a high arsenic content.

231 Laity, Tom and Karen Laity. 2013. Interview with Author: Joe’s Pasty Shop.




53

continuing a tradition of peeling potatoes in the cellar of the restaurant. 235

In 1993, after 14

years of running Joe’s Pasty Shop, the Youngs sold the restaurant to Tom and Karen Laity.236

Tom, a Butte native, and his wife Karen, a Three Forks native, moved back to Butte after Tom

retired as a Safeway store manager in Whitefish, Montana, where he worked for 20 years.237

Tom and Karen remodeled the restaurant and made it more efficient by adding sinks to the food

preparation back room. They brought in food wholesale, and purchased potatoes and onions pre-

chopped.238

Although they modernized the process, they continued the tradition of hiring local

Butte students to work in the kitchen and wait on customers and also continued to provide a

home-style dining experience. Karen states that the customers have “their own bar stools for

coffee” and some feel that going to Joe’s for a mid-day meal is like “coming home for lunch.”239

Tom and Karen have had some Novak family members work for them at the restaurant. This

dynamic keeps the Novak family history alive in the restaurant. Although this pasty shop is one

of many local restaurants with the traditional Cornish pasty on the menu, it provides a rich

history of Butte mining food on “The Flats.”






54

Figure 10: Joe’s Pasty Shop Entrance 240

The pasty is an interesting example of a foodway. Although the pasty is Cornish in

origin, it was claimed by other nationalities as a distinctive American mining culture meal. Some

mining communities even believe the pasty is exclusive to their location. Mining communities

that have pasties include: Butte and Anaconda, Montana; Bangor, Pen Argly, and Wind Gap,

Pennsylvania; Mineral Point, Wisconsin; Iron Range of Minnesota, and Calumet in Upper

Peninsula Michigan.241

The Upper Peninsula Michigan is especially notable given the

connection to Butte through migrant Cornish miners. The pasty became an icon of the Michigan

“Copper Country” years before the pasty came to Butte.242

However, instead of the Irish

claiming the pasty as their own (as they did in Butte), it was the Michigan Finnish who claimed

240 Novak Family. 1947-1959. Image: Joe's Pasty Shop. Butte, Montana.

241 Cornish Pasty Company. “The Cornish Pasty: American Pasty.” www.cornishpasties.org.uk (accessed

November 2012, 2012).

242 Domm, Robert W. 2006. Backroads of Michigan: Your Guide to Michigan’s Most Scenic Backroad Adventures.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Voyaguer Press. P. 45

55

the pasty originated in Finnish culture.243

As Yvonne and William Lockwood retell the Finnish

pasty folklore, the Finnish population exploded in the 1880s in Michigan, and many of the new

Finnish countrymen saw Finnish immigrants, who had been living in America for decades,

making Cornish pasties, so they believed that their countrymen had created them.244

However,

the pasty is also similar to Finnish kalakukko, a pie filled with meat, fish, vegetable, and other

items available in the garden or pantry.245

Upper Peninsula Finnish ingredients in a pasty did not

vary from the Cornish pasty, from the barley flour in the crust, beef, potatoes, onions, carrots,

and/or rutabagas in the filling,246

and was larger in size compared to the traditional Finnish

kalakukko.247

To further this cultural confusion over the Finnish version of the pasty, some

academic and non-academic articles refer to kalakukko as a fish pasty.248

Finnish pasties do

closely resemble Cornish pasties. In both cases, an immigrant community adopted traditional

food to make themselves comfortable in their new home. This case of pasties in Butte and the

Upper Michigan Peninsula helps us understand how immigrants created new communities and

distinctive foodways.

Pasties are just one example of a distinctive cultural food and a Cornish American

foodway. Compared with Italian American or Chinese American foodways, pasties filled a

smaller, more specialized niche as a foodway that came to America and connected mining

communities from Upper Michigan Peninsula to Butte. Although, the pasty is Cornish, it fit well







246 Gabaccia, Donna R. 1998. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge,

Massachucetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. P. 108

247 Sokolov, Raymond A. 1979. Fading Feast: A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional Foods. Jaffrey,

New Hampshire: David R. Godine. P. 66

248 Hagfors, Irma. 2003. “The Translation of Culture-Bound Elements into Finnish in the Post-War Period.” Meta:

Translators' Journal, 48, no. 1-2: 115-115-127. P. 123

56

with other mining cultures in America because it was a full meal that could be eaten out-of-hand

by working miners. The pasty provides an edible history, one where a meal went into the mines

with Cornish miner and came to surface to appear on our dinner tables.

57

Chapter 4

Food as Communication

“There is No Sincerer Love than the Love of Food.”

~George Bernard Shaw

Food as Communication

When immigrants traveled to America, they had to learn to communicate to other cultures

through verbal and nonverbal forms in order to examine and comprehend their new

environment.249

“Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced,

maintained, repaired, and transformed.”250

Immigrants communicated nonverbally through their

culture’s food.251

Food, as form of communication, assisted in shaping intercultural relationships

in American society. These interactions formed what is called “food as communication.”

Cultural meaning, class, social group, and identity can be communicated using food as signs or

codes.252

The study of signs and codes to communicate is called semiotics.253

Food and its

cultural signs illustrate “what we eat, how we eat it, and with whom.”254

Food communication

signs, which are found in people’s cultural habits or rituals include: which foods a person eats,

how a person eats, how people share food, how food is prepared, and what a person will and will

249 Mabrey, Paul. “Introduction to Food Communication.” www.sites.jmu.edu/foodcomm/ (accessed 3/2013).

250 Carey, James. 1992. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York, New York:

Routledge. P. 23

251 Leach, Edmund. 1976. Culture and Communication: An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in

Social Anthropology. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. P. 10

252 Food as Communication/Communication as Food. 2011. Ed. Janet Cramer, Carlnita Greene, and Lynn Walters.

New York, New York: Peter Lang Publishing. P. XI

253 Chandler, Daniel. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics. 2nd ed. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 3 254 Harris, P., D. Lyon, and S. McLaughlin. 2005. The Meaning of Food. CT: The Globe Pequot Press. P. 61

58

not eat.255

Food cultural habits and food signs can be grouped into four categories including:

production, distribution, preparation, and consumption.256

Communication with food not only

reflects the person and their culture’s identity, but supports people’s understanding of

individuals, their culture, and their cultural signs.257

In this chapter, I will use semiotics to analyze five Butte, Montana foodways, explore

cultural change through foodways, and provide a conclusion to this thesis. This analysis will

provide an understanding of how food, culture, and American identity combine into a coherent

narrative.

Food as Sign

In analyzing the five foodways in Butte, Montana, I will utilize the Peircean model of

signs. “Signs are anything which ‘stands for’ something else and can take the form of words,

images, sounds, gestures, and objects.”258

The Peircean model of signs is a triad (See Figure 11):

1. Sign or Representamen: “the form which the sign takes.”259

2. Interpretant: “not an interpreter but rather the sense made of the sign.”260

3. Object: “something beyond the sign which it refers.”261

The triadic model can be represented through the use of the triangle and the descriptions

representing the sign, interpertant, and object. This model will be the basis of my analysis of

255 Food as Communication/Communication as Food. 2011. . Ed. Janet Cramer, Carlnita Greene, and Lynn

Walters. New York, New York: Peter Lang Publishing. P. XI-XII

256 Fonte, Maria. 1991. “Symbolic and Social Aspects in the Working of Food

System.” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. 1: 116-116-125.

257 Food as Communication/Communication as Food. 2011. . Ed. Janet Cramer, Carlnita Greene, and Lynn

Walters. New York, New York: Peter Lang Publishing. P. XII

258 Chandler, Daniel. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics. 2nd ed. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 2


260 Chandler, Daniel. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics. 2nd ed. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 29 261 Chandler, Daniel. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics. 2nd ed. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 29

59

each of the five Butte, Montana foodways and offer a visual view of my analysis. An example of

a triadic diagram of the Peircian Model would appear as follows:

Figure 11: The Peircean Model262


60

Pekin Noodle Parlor

Figure 12: Interpretant: Chinese Takeout, A Cheap, Fast Meal

263

Chop suey is an example of how Chinese culture adapted to the new environment in

America. This dish embraces the history of the Chinese immigrant restaurant- owner feeding

San Francisco miners and manufacturers who needed a quick meal. At the same time, the

restaurant owners needed an economical meal that fed their customers and got their customers on

their way quickly. When viewing the Peircean triad for the food, chop suey, each point of the

263 *I am using a visual icon as an object, since I cannot put a bowl of noodles in front of

you. Image: Chop Suey. www.hotinarea.com (accessed 03/2013, 2013).

61

triangle provides meaning and stands in relationship to the others (See Figure 12). On the lower

left hand side corner, the sign, in the form of the word (written or spoken) “chop suey,” is

given.264

This word stands for the actual object (lower right hand corner), here represented by an

image.265

The top point of the triangle represents the interpretant, which is “the sense made of the

sign.”266

The interpretant in this case, is our idea about Chinese takeout and a quick, inexpensive

meal.267

The word “chop suey” and the object icon for chop suey have meanings tied to Chinese

American foodways. The takeout option originated when Chinese immigrant families, who

wanted to help other Chinese immigrants, looked for a way to accommodate those who could

not, or did not want to cook. In the beginning, chop suey was the primary takeout item so the

words became connected. This adaptation of takeout with chop suey would become a pivotal part

of the American “on-the-go” culture, with the takeout container the modified oyster box

becoming a staple at every Chinese American and American restaurant.

Signs communicate meaning about difference. With each sign comes the absence of its

opposite. As Umberto Eco explains, “A cultural unit ‘exists’ and is recognized insofar as there

exists another one with is opposed to it. It is the relationship between the various terms of a

system of cultural units which subtracts from each one of the terms what is conveyed by

others.”268

This is due to the baggage that the interpretant brings to understanding the sign (e.g.

you think of love and also automatically think of hate).

An example of the opposite of Chinese American chop suey and its interpretant, takeout,

would be steak and potatoes at an American style restaurant. While Chinese American cooking

is done on a wok, this meal is prepared by an “American” cook on a grill and embodies the



268 Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. P. 73-83

62

image of the American rancher and his cattle. Steak and potatoes are eaten with a steak knife and

a fork at the restaurant, and not as a take-home meal. Chinese American meals are eaten with

chopsticks and put into takeaway boxes with Chinese writing on the outside. Steak and potatoes

are considered a “square meal” after the addition of the traditional vegetables and dessert, which

accompanied the meal and was consumed at the table. In contrast to the American meal of steak

and potatoes as separate items, chop suey has noodles, vegetables, and meat mixed together with

a fortune cookie as your dessert at the end. The steak and potatoes meal is a “real” American

meal and reflects American identity, while chop suey and takeout reflect an “exotic” dining

experience, eaten on-the-go.

Pork Chop John’s

Figure 13: Interpretant: Industrial Urban America269

269 *I am using a visual icon as an object, since I cannot put a pork chop sandwhich in front of you. Image: Pork

Chop Sandwich. www.justapinch.com (accessed 03/2013, 2013).

63

The pork chop sandwich is the adaptation of German schnitzel combined with the

Midwestern American innovation of using local proteins like pork and a bun, to make an on-the

go sandwich. The pork chop-on-a-bun gave the customer a meal that they could eat in-hand and

had the protein and calories needed to keep up with the energy demand of working industrial

jobs, which were available at the time. This sandwich was initially established in the urban

industrial setting of Chicago, where local wagon cart venders sold the pork chop sandwich.

Workers, who needed a fast meal at lunch or wanted to grab a meal for their family on their way

home, could do so quickly from these carts.

The triad for the sign pork chop sandwich follows the same format used for chop suey.

In the left hand corner, the sign of the word “pork chop” is given (See Figure 13).270

This word

signifies the object (lower right hand corner), here represented by an image of a pork chop

sandwich.271

The top point of the triangle is the interpretant, which is the sense or idea arising

from the sign and object. In this case, the interpretant is Industrial Urban America. The pork

chop sandwich became part of Industrial Urban American history, where factory workers and

miners produced products and/or resources in mass for the American public to consume.

Industrial American culture consisted of workers who labored hard for their wages while at the

same time, needing to obtain fast and inexpensive meals for themselves and their families, in

keeping with the culture of America’s mobile lifestyle.

The opposite of the pork chop sandwich and Industrial America is Japanese sushi. Sushi

represents the distinction in classes. Middle-to-higher class Americans can afford exotic

Japanese sushi, with its high cost, special chefs, and imported ingredients. Lower-to-middle class



64

people choose the pork chop sandwich. Sushi is a Japanese meal consisting of rice, seaweed, and

raw or cooked fish made in different varieties, carefully prepared by special chefs, and eaten in at

a restaurant. This meal is handmade for the customer fresh, and can be eaten with chopsticks. In

contrast, pork chop sandwich is made from pigs raised on farms in the United States, cooked and

served as a quick and cost-effective meal.

Matt’s Place Drive-In

Figure 14: American Car Culture

272

The American hamburger is another adaptation of German foodways combined with

American on-the-go culture. The hamburger, with the addition of the bun, was introduced during

the 1904 World’s Fair and was presented to the public as a food that could be eaten out-of-hand.

272 *I am using a visual icon as an object, since I cannot put a hamburger in front of you.

Image: Hamburger.

65

This simple meal of protein, lettuce, tomato, and condiments (sometimes cheese), was the staple

meal at American restaurants called drive-ins. These drive-in restaurants served the customer

curbside with different variations of the hamburger, such as: cheese, bacon, and chili, along with

French fries and milkshakes.

In the left hand corner of the triad, the sign of the word “hamburger” is given (See Figure

14).273

This sign or word gives meaning to the object (lower right hand corner), here represented

by an image.274

The top point of the triad or triangle is the interpretant, which is the meaning tied

to both the sign and object icon of American hamburger. In this case, the interpretant would be

American car culture, where mobile consumers want fast cheap food.

The American meal, with its high concentration of sugar and fats, was introduced through

the advent of drive-in restaurants, catering to customers who owned cars. America’s fascination

with cars began after 1910 with Ford’s Model-T. Cars gave Americans the ability to be free

from scheduled public transportation and to leave home at a moment’s notice. The ability to go

anywhere at any time shaped American car culture and cemented hamburgers and drive-in

restaurants into American culture.

The opposite of the American hamburger is the home cooked meal. The home cooked

meal is made at home by a family member using purchased produce and proteins. This meal

may or may not have a homemade dessert, unlike the milkshakes that were provided at the drive-

in. The home cooked meal embodies the idea of dining together at home on a modest,

inexpensive, healthy meal with your family, while drive-ins embrace eating fast food that came

to be known as “junk food.”



66

The home cooked meal versus the American hamburger is also an illustration of the

difference in social class and economics. The American hamburger originally embodied a kind

of luxury—having money to spend on gas and junk foods. Whereas the American home cooked

meal embodied inexpensive home cooking that saved money on transportation and food.

Lydia’s Supper Club

Figure 15: Celebration Meal

275

Italian foodways, along with Butte mining culture, produced meals such as Lydia’s

carbohydrate-loaded meal consisting of large quantities of pasta, potatoes, and/or breads. It

began with an antipasti meal starter with ravioli, spaghetti, breadsticks, and French fries. The

275 *I am using a visual icon as an object, since I cannot put a bowl of pasta in front of

you. Image: Pasta. www.thecafesucrefarine.com (accessed 03/2013, 2013).

67

carbohydrate-loaded starter was accompanied by meats, cheeses, and a salad combined with the

entrée and dessert. This heavy carbohydrate meal, which is still served today at Lydia’s, is large;

however, when it originated, it was an affordable meal served at a fancy restaurant, which

presented customers (many of whom were working class miners) with a full course and a full

evening of visiting and celebrating.

In the triad for the symbol of an Italian meal, the left hand corner is the sign of the word

“Italian meal” (See Figure 15).276

This sign or word gives meaning to the object (lower right

hand corner), represented here with a photograph.277

The top point of the triad or triangle is the

interpretant, which gives a sense of the meanings tied to both the sign and object icon of a

carbohydrate loaded meal often associated with celebration.

In Butte, Lydia’s became the restaurant where people celebrated special occasions such

as birthdays and anniversaries. It was affordable to bring the whole family to a “fancy”

restaurant with large portions.

The opposite of the Italian sit-down meal at Lydia’s could be a buffet. The buffet also

embodies a large inexpensive meal, that is premade and served cafeteria style and consisting of

items such as soup, salad, proteins, pasta, potatoes, desserts, and a non-alcoholic beverage. Here,

the person chooses which food items present in the buffet to eat. Instead of table service with

family style offerings and large portions, people can make unlimited trips to the buffet line.

This large inexpensive and quick meal is typically served in an unadorned cafeteria

setting in contrast to the special food preparation and offerings at a well decorated restaurant

include alcoholic beverages, menu selections, a meal cooked to order, eating antipasti and salad

while waiting for your meal to arrive, and having a dessert of your choosing.



68

Lydia’s allowed working class families to afford a “fancy” meal and to enjoy the “good

life” for a night, in contrast to the inexpensive factory-like “routine” of a buffet line.

Joe’s Pasty Shop

Figure 16: The Pasty278

The last triad I will explore is the sign for the pasty foodway. In the left-hand corner, the

word sign “pasty” (See Figure 16).279

The object (lower right hand corner) is represented by a

photograph.280

The top point of the triad or triangle is the interpretant, with its meaning tied both

to the sign and object. This meal was eaten by underground miners, who, due to their occupation

and lack of access to soap and water, did so with dirty hands. The Cornish pasty was a modest

278 *I am using a visual icon as an object, since I cannot put a pasty in front of you. Image:

Pasty. www.rangebuzz.com (accessed 03/2013, 2013).


http://www.rangebuzz.com/

69

meal of piecrust, meat, and potato, originating with Cornish hard rock miners. Underground

mining did not allow for many luxuries, such as heating up your meal, washing your hands, or

using utensils. Therefore the pasty was ideal meal for the miners because it could be served hot

or cold and was easily eaten out-of-hand, due to the “handle” that had been fashioned out of the

outer piecrust edge, when it was prepared by Cornish mothers, wives, and daughters. This

piecrust handle was then thrown away after finishing the meal, along with dirt and toxic

materials on the miner’s hands.

The pasty’s opposite is a gourmet meal, such as pheasant-under-glass. This meal,

perhaps consumed by the wealthy mine owners, was made at an expensive French restaurant by a

trained chef. The pheasant under glass meal is in sharp contrast to the pasty because it must be

cooked with skill, eaten with utensils, and one must gently remove the glass top. This gourmet

meal symbolizes differences in social class and cultural identity. Where the Cornish miners

enjoyed homemade food, eaten out-of- hand, served underground at any temperature; the

wealthy mine owners enjoyed their fancy meal, eaten properly at the table, served under glass,

and above ground.

The pasty is the most semiotically-interesting of the five examples. Food is a form of

communication. The pasty has strong symbolic power in the mining city of Butte, Montana. It

became a sign or token in Butte, Montana because of its origins in mining culture and labor

history. The pasty is the sign of a man working hard underground and needing a filling meal to

sustain the work that provides for his family. This relationship is deeply woven into Butte’s

community and culture. The pasty also represents the socio-political power of Butte, which long

dominated Montana politics because of the city’s mining wealth. Butte, unlike other cities in

Montana, was an industrial city more like Chicago than “cow towns” such as Bozeman and

70

Billings. The mining culture of industrial age Butte was also a union culture with a working class

solidarity not found in other Montana cities. To eat a pasty is to express solidarity with working

class culture and with the gritty life of an underground, hard rock miner.

The pasty is not just a pasty in Montana, it is a “Butte pasty.” This is because this meal

as a sign has come to represent Butte’s mining culture throughout the state. Because of the

pasty’s cultural importance, it even evolved into a mini version, called the cocktail pasty, which

is a staple at cultural celebrations ranging from funeral wakes to weddings. In the Irish Catholic

community of Butte, the pasty is practically as important as the ritual of the Eucharist. The pasty

is the taste of Butte and is symbolic not only of the cultures that immigrated here, but of the

families that continue their traditions in the community. In conclusion, the structural signs and

symbols for reading the pasty can be applied to all of the foodways considered in this thesis.

Semiotic analysis helps us understand what these foodways represent and how they were shaped

by the foodways of Industrial America.

Loss of Cultural Symbolism-Identity Politics

In American culture today, mass media has created new forms of popular culture. Food-

related popular culture speaks to “the global proliferation of food venues reflecting a growing

prosperity and changing consumption patterns and pop culture.”281

Foods in popular culture

affect each other through changing the network of beliefs and trends that alter our food habits.282

This global proliferation of popular food culture has caused much of the cultural meaning and

symbolism of food to be lost. As Mary Henderson explains, “Foods, which in the past were

associated with national ethnic groups, have been slowly losing this type of symbolism, as the

281 Fedorak, Shirley. 2009. Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of


282 Rodriguez, Judith C. “Popular Culture, Food and...” www.diet.com (accessed November 2012, 2012).

71

national food habits have become increasingly more all-embracing.”283

Because of this loss,

food has become more a commodity in American popular culture rather than a symbol of historic

foodways. Americans and consumers worldwide buy food as a commodity for its symbolic

consumer value. 284

The symbolic value is equated with associated marketing logos, which

present the consumer with a symbol representing uniform, mass produced fast food.

One example of commoditized food is the McDonald’s restaurant chain. The McDonald’s

logo, its golden arches, is recognized around the world.285

The sign of McDonald’s golden arches

is more important than the food itself. American logos have become a way for people in America

and other countries to decipher and understand American culture through its food.286

McDonald’s logo, along with other global American company logos (e.g., KFC, Subway);

signify American prosperity and the ideal that to consume food at these restaurants means to

become part of America and its popular culture. China is an example of this as explained by

Shaobo Xie, “low income people in the city and poor people from the country, while dining at

McDonald’s, feel momentarily fulfilled that they are sitting together with members of middle

and upper classes and that they are enhanced in status and self-esteem.”287

The consumption of food as a form of mass media entertainment has erased many

cultural exchanges through foodways that developed in the late1800s. Foodways are a reminder

of how intercultural exchanges were shared. The mass media/entertainment aspect of popular

culture, in which restaurants market themselves to consumers, has largely replaced intercultural

283 Henderson, Mary. 2011. “Food as Communication in American Culture.” Today's Speech 18, no. 3: 3-3-8. P. 7 284 Fowles, Jib. 1996. Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. P. 99


Littlefield Publishers. P.150


Littlefield Publishers. P. 148 287 Xie, Shaobo. 2008. “Anxities of Modernity: A Semiotic Analysis of Globalization Images in China.” Semiotica

170 ¼. 153-168. P. 159

72

interaction. In this way, popular consumer culture globally dominates people’s food choices,

because consumers want to buy or eat what is popular now.

This thesis thus serves as a kind of foodway obituary, a modernist’s look at how cultural

foodways were shared. Although historical foodways are being replaced by food as a mass

marketed commodity, the five restaurants discussed in this thesis serve as living reminders of

19th

and 20th

century America. These restaurants are a nostalgic but semiotically rich track (e.g.,

indexical sign) of a once prosperous mining city, Butte, Montana.

73

Chapter 5

Conclusion and Recommendations

“I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it

becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”

~Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

Conclusion

Butte, Montana’s foodways demonstrate ethnic adaptations to American culture. They

serve as a connection to the past, and link us to culture, history, and communication through

food. Foodways “travel through time and space and have significance in cultural interaction.”288

Food was and still is a way to pass down traditions and stories from generation to the next. Food

recipes serve as a vessel for time and space travel, which a family member can carry to present

and future generations of their friends and family. Family sharing of food history and exploring

food as a cultural path has slowed as a cultural custom, eclipsed by American popular culture

mass media entertainment. This entertainment sells American culture as a commodity that has

become an international symbol.

Food as a commodity provides a basis for a conversation about local versus global when

exploring international food brands symbols. Localization is when commodities and

communication are adapted to fit into a certain area’s culture.289

The opposite, globalization, is

when commodities and communication patterns are impressed upon other countries.

Globalization is promoted by technology such as the Internet and international trade

288 Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking. 2007. Ed. Sidney C. H. Cheung and Chee Beng

Tran. New York, New York: Routledge. P. 183

289 Singh, Nitish. 2012. Localization Strategies for Global E-business. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge

University Press. P. 124

74

agreements.290

When food globalization happens, everything about food—location, production,

preparation, and communication—becomes industrialized and standardized. The American way

of eating is generalized and stereotyped into logos rather than a sharing of culture.291

This

version of globalization strips the cultural experience of an individual’s day-to-day life and

homogenizes multi-cultural differences into one American identity.292

However, even with

American identity politics, there is hybrid localization/globalization across the world. The places

where commodities originated are a part of the global conversation.293

Examples of the cultural

hybrid, localization/globalization, can be found in local restaurants, markets, and stores but is

also shared globally through the Internet (e.g., www.madeinmontanausa.com).294

Thus, cultural

sharing on a local and global scale provides a balance to American popular culture and brands

that are like weeds crowding out multi-cultural patterns in America.

Although traditional foodways are dying out in some American communities, they still

show how American identity was shaped in the Industrial Age. The American Industrial

Revolution brought many cultures to the new land of prosperity, America. In their migration and

settlement, newcomers shared their countries’ customs and foods with other cultures and formed

communities that have become cities and towns across the United States.

Butte, Montana is an example of an American industrial city. Immigrants from Europe

and China, along with industrial mining and smelting, shaped this little city into a unique and

enduring form.

290 Gannon, Martin J. 2008. Paradoxes of Culture and Globalization. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage

Publications. P. 4

291 Lin, Marina. 2008. “Localizing Sans Cliches: Web Localization Without Resorting to Sterotypes.” Intercultural

Communication. February. P. 15

292 Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. P. 106

293 Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham,

North Carolina: Duke University Press. . P. 43

294 Montana Department of Commerce. “Made in Montana.” www.madeinmontanausa.com/ (accessed June 2013,

2013).

http://www.madeinmontanausa.com/


75

Recommendations for Further Research

Research is a process and, in that process, time runs out. Time ran short on this thesis. As

my thesis chair says, “Nothing is ever finished, but there are due dates.”295

Food history and

family histories were left with gaps, which became evident during the research and/or the writing

process. My research would have benefited from more time spent researching the individual

restaurants’ foodway histories. One foodway in particular that needs further research is the pork

chop sandwich and how the pathway led to Butte, Montana. Lastly, further examination of the

origins of American food popular culture and communication would expand the evolution of

foodways in relation to mass media.

Questions for future exploration include:

How and when did popular culture come to be dominated by industrial production and

mass marketing by a few food brands?

How did American consumers adapt to canned and other processed foods as

commodities?

How did communication in American neighborhoods and popular culture affect food as

traditional recipes were translated into English (e.g., Julia Child’s translation of French

recipes into English)?

How did these recipe translations happen in community neighborhoods where people did

not speak the other’s language? Was this primarily through non-verbal communication?

Did families use bilingual immigrants to communicate these traditional recipes?

Why did standard cultural recipe books like Julia Child’s translation of French recipes

into English become so popular? Was this due to the environment of cultures and

intercultural communication that happened in America?

Answers to these questions and others will serve to further our understanding of

American foodways and culture. I hope one day that these questions are answered, and I hope

295

Munday, Pat. 2013. Butte, Montana.

76

one day to read the answers. Those answers will lead to more questions related to foodways,

food as cultural habits, and food as communication.

Things I Would Change

As George Bernard Shaw once stated, “There is No Sincerer Love than the Love of

Food.”296

Even with my sincere love of food and passion for understanding foodways, there are

things I would have done differently to have bettered my thesis. The first change I would have

made concerns the interviews I conducted with restaurant owners. My questions for this thesis

would have changed if I had first completed the literature review on foodways, Butte history, and

food as communication. However, I did get much vital information, such as small details from

owners of restaurants on the various locations they had lived before they owned the restaurant, as

well as more information on restaurant artifact details.

The second change would be to have interviewed Mae Laurence before her death.

Laurence passed away and along with her, some history of Butte foodways was lost. Her

daughter, Robin, did give me important information that Mae could have provided (which I am

very grateful for). Mae was a Butte character (see Figure 17) and I would have liked to preserve

and a pass her experience to future generations. Her legacy remains.

296 Shaw, George Bernard. 1903. Man and Superman: Act One.

77

Figure 17: In Memory of Mae Laurence.

297

Third, I would have liked more time. There never is enough time when doing research

and reading history. I enjoyed every moment with the foodways of the Pekin Noodle Parlor,

Pork Chop John’s, Matt’s Place Drive-In, Lydia’s Supper Club, and Joe’s Pasty Shop. Many

other foodways and stories did not fit the scope of this paper and time limitations. I hope

someone will be able to continue to research the topic and find out more about Butte, Montana’s

mining and food history.

297

Laurence Family Photo. ~1945. Image: Mae Laurence with daughter Robin Cockhill.

78

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