Justin A. Nystrom, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture
Justin A. Nystrom, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture, Athens (ga), University of Georgia Press, 2018, pp. 234, $ 26.95.
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1«One of the greatest challenges facing anyone writing about the history of New Orleans is to crawl out from under the weight of the city’s cultural mythology and try, however imperfectly, to accurately recreate the past», Justin Nystrom observes in Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture (p. 56). New Orleans is steeped in cultural mythology, especially in the area of cuisine and foodways. Nystrom’s book is a corrective and a welcome addition to food history, immigration history and to the urban history of New Orleans. For decades, historians and foodies have traced the rise and dominance in New Orleans of Creole cuisine, generally defined as a combination of African, French and Spanish cuisines. Nystrom effectively argues for the inclusion of Sicilian habits and foods into the history of Creole New Orleans, given the many culinary and commercial contributions of Sicilian Americans in New Orleans from the mid-1830s through the 1970s. The time span of this study is ambitious, but Nystrom confidently manages an array of evidence drawn from court records, advertisements, menus, photographs, maps, and oral histories. The result is a thoroughly absorbing study of a longstanding community that has been underrepresented in the both the history of Creole cuisine and the history of New Orleans.Nystrom’s book is also a study of food and immigration, chronicling the many ways immigrants become involved in food industries and commercial ventures, not only shaping the local economy and culture, but also contributing to the dizzying array of culinary styles and cultures emblematic of American foodways. In turn, the many activities surrounding food, its acquisition, preparation and consumption, profoundly affected the fortunes and livelihoods of Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans. Nystrom’s book convincingly details the reciprocal relationship between immigrants and food, and how this evolving relationship sometimes collided with another fabled history for Sicilian Americans, namely the history of organized crime and vendettas. Nystrom skillfully dissembles simplistic notions about Sicilian Americans, delving into the range of their social and economic backgrounds as well as the diversity of their commercial pursuits in the city. In order to restore this lost history, Nystrom relies on memories gleaned from oral histories he and others conducted for Loyola University, Tulane University and the East Jefferson Parish Library. The last three chapters in particular are filled with rich details that provide the reader with a full sense of the vibrancy of Sicilian food culture, as well as what it was like to manage a business, to work, and to eat in the Sicilian section of the French Quarter.
2The book consists of seven chapters and an introduction. Chapters one and two deal with the early decades (1830-1900) of Sicilians in New Orleans. Wealthier Sicilians who came to New Orleans found success in the city’s steam-driven economy, investing in citrus and steamships. Had it not been for the Sicily lemon, Nystrom argues, Italian immigration to the United States «would have unfolded differently» (p. 23). Radically different economic prospects awaited Sicilian peasants, initially considered by planters as suitable workers for contract labor in the sugar cane fields. Given the demands of labor and lack of opportunities in contract work, it is not surprising that Sicilian immigrants found better opportunities in stores, saloons and in truck farming. In chapter two, Nystrom describes the early contributions of Sicilian immigrants to New Orleans restaurant culture, highlighting the impact of Sicilians from the island of Ustica. Immigrants foraged and sold local oysters, fish, turtles and wild game. Sicilians ran oyster saloons, in-home catering outfits, and restaurants, all of which were popular with diners seeking entertainment, alcohol and gambling outlets in the city. Despite these contributions to food shipping and retail outlets, Nystrom argues that it would not be until the twentieth century that Sicilian Americans were recognized for contributing to the city’s culinary traditions (p. 58). Public awareness and recognition of these contributions were however accompanied by social and political tensions. Chapter three takes on the topic of intracultural violence between established elites and more recent immigrants in New Orleans. Rooted merchants in fact attempted to suppress the sometimes-violent activities of more recent immigrants while also investing and supporting the booming macaroni production business of the 1890s. The actions of a Sicilian elite transformed the Lower French Quarter into a hub for industrial food production. The involvement of the Americanized elites in pasta production projected «the image of Sicilian immigrants as champions of American capitalistic progress» (p. 9). Yet many of the families associated with the city’s food industries participated in horrific violence, or as Nystrom refers to, «extralegal vigilantism» (p. 74), to settle scores, intimidate specific targets and demonstrate a strategic fearlessness to rivals.
3Positive imagery conjuring food and family intermingled with a perception of clannish and criminal Italians who did business in their own way. Nystrom calls this a «curiously enduring duality of cultural perception» (p. 87) of Sicilians, one not entirely rejected by immigrants. Italian entrepreneurs marketed this mixture of food and criminality, not only with regard to pasta production but also related to New Orleans restaurant culture, with retail outlets selling alcohol, so-called typical Italian dishes (what Nystrom calls red gravy) and jazz. Chapter four details how Sicilian Americans were able to profit from an image generated by cultural tension for the curious and the regular patrons who ventured to Bourbon Street for entertainment, alcohol, and a specific type of Italian cuisine. Whereas earlier immigrants foraged, prepared and sold a variety of dishes, by World War I Sicilian Americans made spaghetti the emblematic dish associated with Italians and Italian Americans. A rich and varied food culture dependent on local ingredients and transformed by Sicilian immigrants gave way to a more homogenous vision of Italian cuisine, built on a foundation of pasta and tomato sauce. Chapter five reconstructs the French Quarter as a site of Sicilian memory prior to World War ii. Stressing how the Sicilian neighborhood and the history of the food distribution empire have been obscured over time, Nystrom resurrects, in rich detail, the businesses, foods and customers of the Sicilian French Quarter during the first half of the twentieth century. Nystrom deftly uses a variety of sources to describe not just the famous dishes (like muffuletta and cannoli) and institutions, but all types of foods and the memories they evoked: complex sandwiches, Lenten specials, fragrant breads and dishes made with imported Italian foods. Chapter six focuses on the grocery store, a site of sociability, Italian culinary identity and ongoing creativity in preparing, marketing and selling a wide variety of foods. The descriptions of the many grocery stores in post-war New Orleans, told mostly from the customers’ perspective are not only engaging and lively, but also reflect Nystrom’s self-conscious need to preserve and record this largely forgotten history. Chapter seven describes Sicilian-run restaurants and the details here may seem more familiar to those who have read works about Italian American foodways (works by Simone Cinotto, Donna Gabaccia and Elizabeth Zanoni) and how specific Italian American foods became popular. The chapter describes the eventual demise of Sicilian American restaurants, which may have inherited a rich legacy of entrepreneurial and marketing skills from earlier oyster saloons and red gravy jazz restaurants, but which failed to meet the changing expectations of diners in the 1980s (p. 182).
4The rise of the celebrity chef and of Creole cuisine as a combination of French, Spanish and African cuisines eclipsed the varied contributions of Sicilian Americans to New Orleans food history. Nystrom excavates and presents this forgotten history in compelling fashion, through a well-documented and necessary history of the lives, businesses, legacies, and memories of Sicilian Americans in New Orleans.
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Carol Helstosky, « Justin A. Nystrom, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture », Altreitalie, 63 | 2021, 130-132.
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Carol Helstosky, « Justin A. Nystrom, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture », Altreitalie [En ligne], 63 | Luglio-dicembre 2021, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2023, consulté le 17 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/altreitalie/394 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/altreitalie.394
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