David Page, author of Food Americana

Creator of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and author of Food Americana, David Page is a long-time journalist (2 decades, foreign and domestic, with ABC News and NBC News) who transitioned to food television, and then books.

He’s gone all around the country capturing the stories behind the people and places in the foods and now, he compiled all that into a book called Food Americana. 

The Americanization of the Food

David says that since America is a country of immigrants, pretty much everything eaten here has come from someplace else. Even something as supposedly red-blooded American as a hamburger came from Hamburg, Germany. So there is pretty much nothing that just sprang up as American food. Another example could be lobster, which is indigenous to North America, when the explorers and settlers got here, and they first saw lobster that did not look like dinner, they had to learn what to do with lobster from the Native Americans who had been eating it for quite some time along with oysters.

What did David learn about food?

After having done Diners, David had the fervent belief that there are some remarkable people throughout the country who put their heart and soul into homemaking real food. David says that behind good food is people who really care about making good food. To succeed in the hospitality industry, David says, you have to have been born wanting to please people. Because the chances are they’re not gonna get rich.  And the concept of peeling a bushel of potatoes every day to make your fries fresh isn't going to seem like a lot of fun unless you really care that you make good fries, which David added, requires cooking them twice. 

About his investigative reporter and journalist background

David that getting the facts right is the absolute most for his work. “Factual doesn’t mean dry,” he says. His biggest standard is to avoid getting the facts wrong and he claims that in food writing that can be very tough because there are legends that are now fact, such as the allegation that a very, very good hamburger restaurant New Haven, Louise lunch made the first hamburger and there's no proof the Louise lunch made the first hamburger.

His show pitch 

When David left the world of network TV and opened his own production company, he started proposing shows for various networks with no success. He started as a subcontractor and found that he had to work his way up to be a contractor himself so he started pitching to the networks himself. He said he was remarkably unsuccessful. Finally, he started pitching to The Food Network, where he talked to an executive. It was a late Thursday or Friday afternoon when after rejecting most of his pitches, the executive asked “Haven you got anything else about diners?” and he said that he was currently developing Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. 

That one caught her attention. She asked him to have something sent to her desk on Monday. The only problem? David had just come up with the name out of nowhere in the phone, he had no show in development! He spent the weekend making phone calls, wrote the pitch for Monday, and was asked to do a one-hour special called Diners, drive-ins, and dives. And this eventually became a series. A rather lucky turn of events for David! 

Book vs. Show 

For David, some of the key differences between a book and a show lie in how the elements for storytelling are presented. For example, in a show, you are creating an experience where the audience feels as if they’re hanging with someone they enjoy hanging out with. For his show, his host was a naturally talented TV performed who got into the rhythm of things really fast. Other aspects of audiovisual storytelling include immersing the audience in the experience, making them hear the sizzle as the burger hits the grill.

This is all different when you’re writing of course, when it comes to nonfictional writing you have to find a way to tell the story from another human being’s point of view. So the challenge is not having pictures and being able to describe everything in an engaging, non-repetitive way. In writing, you have to carefully use the right words to make food appealing, and most importantly: you have to tell the right stories. 

If anything, David is a great example of how perseverance and passion for what you do can and will take you very far in life. It was his determination to succeed that drove him to the place he is today, and most surely will lead him even farther in life.