Paella comes from Valencia, Spain and began as a poor man’s food. In other words, Valencians scraped together local ingredients such as rice, tomato, garlic, vegetables, meat and seafood (though it was taboo to mix the proteins of land and sea) to make it. In 1840, the first printed recipe came about which detailed ingredients such as rabbit and snails. By this time, paella had become a Sunday tradition in Valencia wherein the men cooked over an open fire of orange tree branches and dried vines while their ladies were at church.

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The philly cheesesteak was invented in the 1930’s at a hot dog stand by the name of Pat’s. Pat himself decided to whip up a lunch for himself by thinly slicing ribeye steak, cooking it on a griddle with some onions and putting it on an Italian roll. A cabbie who stopped by Pat’s for lunch smelled the beef cooking and asked for the same lunch. After tasting the sandwich, he said, “Forget bout those hot dogs!

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Now known as a staple in Mexican cuisine (as well as brunch culture in SoCal and Texas), Chilaquiles goes all the way back to the Aztecs. In fact, the word “chilaquiles” comes from the Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan) language which means chile water. Over the centuries, chilaquiles has made its way through parts of Honduras, Guatemala, and of course, Mexico.

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This is a toughy. I ventured onto Quora, wove through Reddit threads, and stumbled all the way to the fifth Google search results page and there was not much to find on this dish. What I did find was that Honey Walnut Shrimp is believed to have come from Hong Kong but is now mostly popular in the US (California, in particular).

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Though many associate Tonkatsu with Japanese culture, it is the product of Western influence. During the Meiji period (1868 to 1912), Japan entered a “modernization” movement. In other words, the country began becoming Westernized and in came French and Italian influences. This says a lot about the name Tonkatsu as “katsu” comes from the Japanese word “katsuretto” (meaning cutlet), which could ultimately be tied to the French word “cotolette” or Italian word “cotoletta alla milanese.”

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Also known as pastel de tres leches, tres leches cake’s popularity can be traced back to the 1940s in Latin America. This is when Nestle began to print tres leches cake recipes on their condensed and evaporated milk cans. Some say the cake was inspired by other soaked cakes such as trifles and tiramisu, which had an impact in Mexico in the 19th century.

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Baby back ribs are defined on Webster as “meaty pork ribs cut from the lower back rib section.” But to uncover the history of baby back ribs, we need to dig into the origins of barbecue in the US. Many say the term barbecue came from the Spanish, who used the word “barbacoa” to identify the Caribbean natives’ way of slow-cooking meat over wood.

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