The 20 best American eats have been announced leaving critics hungry for more: Bless your heart

You can bet things are about to get weird when the “best of” list you’ve just clicked on comes with a disclaimer up top — seems the decision makers behind CNN Travel’s new collection of the absolute best eats in the US of A could smell a controversy cooking from a mile away.“Americans have come up with a lot of incredible foods.Does this list satisfy your appetite? Or have we frankly left out one of your favorites?”The apparent swipe at the hot dog — which is not included in the frequently baffling selection of supposedly legendary dishes — gives you a glimpse at where we’re headed.

Fry bread, a survival food with a poignant backstory that seems to be pushed forward by well-meaning food scribes more frequently than it is actually consumed outside of the Southwest — earns a seat at the elite table.But no pizza, a fave in all fifty states and most likely all of the territories, too? Disgraziad!Mission burritos, an obscure drunk food beloved mostly by people who do a lot of drinking in San Francisco and environs — they’re praised to the skies.Tex-Mex, or even tacos? Nowhere to be found.

Talk about loco.“America is called a melting pot – and that’s certainly true of its food,” the list’s brief introduction explains helpfully, for those in the back who weren’t paying attention.We’re told that to be included, Americans didn’t have to have come up with the actual dish, a qualifier that might have helped explain the absence of the aforementioned iconic eats.But no — in fact, readers are assured that this list celebrates our capacity for turning favorites from other countries into our own, often sending the “reformulated food back out into the wider world.” That’s certainly the case for American barbecue, something that landed on these shores in colonial times — and has been evolving ever since.

So why is that the first food on the list — while fried chicken, another thing we’ve more than made our own, is nowh...