Have you ever seen that programme called, er, I think Drive-Ins, Diners, Dives or something like that with three Ds anyway? I only saw it when I moved here so maybe it's not well known, but the basic premise is that strange looking guy with bleached hair drives around the US stopping at restaurants that are deemed to fit the above description - they visit various towns and pick visit the ones that are most legendary or succesful in each case. And by the end of each programme I pretty much feel sick - It's not that the programme itself is bad, or even that the food that they cover is not good (or at least tasty); it's just that they seem to focus on the richest, fattiest and greasiest dishes in the most ludicrously unhealthy restaurants they can find. Each one often looks good (well, some do and some don't of course, but certainly there are plenty of places I would no doubt visit regularly if I lived within striking distance) but cumulatively the effect is so overwhelming... after half an hour the viewer is left with the impression that the US is drowning in deep frying batter and populated by eating maniacs who only pause from stuffing their face to waddle from one all-you-can-eat ghee-butter-fried lasagne place to the next. You see the chefs doing their speciality sauces and rubs and so on and then they make something that you think looks great - and then they put it in-between two slices of deep fried bread and spread clotted cream all over it or something. It's just MORE of everything. Especially sandwiches, I remember seeing one "meat special" and it had, I dunno chicken and pork and ham and bacon and beef and pastrami... it's entirely about more, there is no way that you can differentiate what you're tasting in something like that, it's there simply to be have every type of meat in it or whatever. Like in Cosmopolis where he buys the most expensive flat in the world simply to have done so... the number you pay is what you're paying for... you pay more to have paid more because it's a bigger number.
Of course, I understand that that is not American food culture in total, but it does seem to be a very real seam that does run through it. I'm not sure how big it is but I reckon too big. I mean I know this is all obvious and we read about it all the time but seeing it celebrated is, like I said, truly overwhelming.