The Food was Strange and Off-Putting
American cuisine was strange and off-putting for some immigrants. One Italian immigrant, Orteste Teglia, went through Ellis Island in 1916 as a child. She recalled her disgust at trying oatmeal. She said, “We got oatmeal for breakfast, and I didn’t know what it was, with the brown sugar on it, you know. I couldn’t get myself to eat it. So I put it on the windowsill, let the birds eat it.” Carol Rapson described her grandmother’s confusing welcome to American cuisine to Smithsonian magazine. Rapson recalls Ellis Island staff giving her grandmother a banana. “She did not know what to do with it, as she had never seen a banana before. She watched, and when others peeled the banana, she did the same.” Her husband wasn’t so lucky; someone convinced him to eat the yellow skin and throw away the middle as a prank.