Mike’s Pastry – Boston, Massachusetts
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founder of the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century, called America the “Utopian product of a culturally and racially mixed “smelting pot.” Melting pot rapidly became one of the most frequently used metaphors for describing America. The term describes the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities, religions and cultures to form a new, ostensibly better community, a heterogeneous whole. Implicit in the term melting pot is the way ingredients in the pot combine so as to subord (but not lose entirely) their discrete identities, yielding a final product with a more uniform flavor and consistency, but which is distinctly different from the original components. It’s the reason Italian neighborhoods in America have some semblance to, but aren’t exactly like their tight-knit counterparts in the mother country. It’s the reason Italian food in America bears an unmistakable likeness to Italian food in the old country, while being discernibly different. It’s a tribute to the miracle of Democracy called America that entire cultures can integrate into the whole while retaining proud vestiges of their past. One such example is Boston’s North End, sometimes called “Little Italy,” a vibrant and thriving neighborhood replete with restaurants, most of them Italian. Boston’s…
