Hey look, that Asian bloke CAN make pasta!Hey do you ever peer into the kitchen or the dining room of an ethnic restaurant and wonder if the staff originate from the same country as the cuisine they serve? You often see the signs boasting ‘Authentic Thai’ or ‘Genuine Japanese’ but are likely to encounter some industrious people of Chinese or other Asian ethnicity predominating. I’ve heard first hand that many people are disparagingly dismissive of such eateries, deeming them not worthy because they do not apparently have the Bona fides to cook the food of their namesake cuisine because they are not from that country. Curiously, these same people usually won’t bat an eyelid though when they are not knee deep in Giuseppe’s or Pierres when they visit the posh new Italian or the hip French themed bistro and, but instead are served predominantly by Anglo’s. To me this is an ignorant view and inherently racist at its core.
You see there’s a kind of reverse cultural snobbism at play here. Take a white boy cooking sexy Thai or a Frenchman doing up to the minute Sth American and we all go, yea I geddit, ahead of the curve, they’ve funked it up, cherry picked the best bits and re-imagined the cuisine to make it more contemporary.
Conversely get some hard working Vietnamese people who decide to open a Tapas bar because it’s the food that they love and we collectively screw our faces up, thinking and in my opinion quite patronisingly, ‘What do they know about Tapas? And that they should ‘stick to what they know best’.
Equally how many ‘Modern Australian’ restaurants where black-Ninja clad Anglo chefs toss out Viet rice paper rolls that are as authentically Vietnamese as Wagyu beef is to a Subway roll.
I’ve written before about my theory on the diaspora of ethnic cuisines and their relationship with their adopted nation who were once their conquerors or colonists and the at times superior relationship we have over them. This often manifests in how little or how much we expect to pay for their food.
However this whole notion of Authenticity is really very problematic. Firstly, who or what determines the Real McCoy? Secondly there is no room for the notion that cuisines develop over time to embrace new foods and techniques. Thirdly and this might be the most contentious, is a cuisine stagnant or dead because it has not evolved? Look around the world to see how 1950’s Naples has influenced the notion of Italian eateries and then look how out of touch it is when compared to the modern Italian restaurants today. Of course there are some traditions that cling after all good dishes eventually come to their conclusion having been whittled over generations to arrive at their identifiable terminus.
Immigrants have always made use of what’s around them to try and replicate flavours from the old country and if this goes on long enough, eventually these modifications ‘become’ the cuisine. Just look at Malaysia as a perfect example where a style of cookery has embraced other influences and morphed into its own identity. So what would we consider the truly authentic tastes of say, Penang, Pre-Indian and pre Chinese? I’m not so sure.
Cuisine is always changing, like language and I think it’s becoming more difficult as the world shrinks to find anything really authentic, so anyone should be able to cook it.
You see there’s a kind of reverse cultural snobbism at play here. Take a white boy cooking sexy Thai or a Frenchman doing up to the minute Sth American and we all go, yea I geddit, ahead of the curve, they’ve funked it up, cherry picked the best bits and re-imagined the cuisine to make it more contemporary.
Conversely get some hard working Vietnamese people who decide to open a Tapas bar because it’s the food that they love and we collectively screw our faces up, thinking and in my opinion quite patronisingly, ‘What do they know about Tapas? And that they should ‘stick to what they know best’.
Equally how many ‘Modern Australian’ restaurants where black-Ninja clad Anglo chefs toss out Viet rice paper rolls that are as authentically Vietnamese as Wagyu beef is to a Subway roll.
I’ve written before about my theory on the diaspora of ethnic cuisines and their relationship with their adopted nation who were once their conquerors or colonists and the at times superior relationship we have over them. This often manifests in how little or how much we expect to pay for their food.
However this whole notion of Authenticity is really very problematic. Firstly, who or what determines the Real McCoy? Secondly there is no room for the notion that cuisines develop over time to embrace new foods and techniques. Thirdly and this might be the most contentious, is a cuisine stagnant or dead because it has not evolved? Look around the world to see how 1950’s Naples has influenced the notion of Italian eateries and then look how out of touch it is when compared to the modern Italian restaurants today. Of course there are some traditions that cling after all good dishes eventually come to their conclusion having been whittled over generations to arrive at their identifiable terminus.
Immigrants have always made use of what’s around them to try and replicate flavours from the old country and if this goes on long enough, eventually these modifications ‘become’ the cuisine. Just look at Malaysia as a perfect example where a style of cookery has embraced other influences and morphed into its own identity. So what would we consider the truly authentic tastes of say, Penang, Pre-Indian and pre Chinese? I’m not so sure.
Cuisine is always changing, like language and I think it’s becoming more difficult as the world shrinks to find anything really authentic, so anyone should be able to cook it.
6 comments:
I have certain expectations of what Chinese and Vietnamese food should be, as this is what I have grown up eating so I know the food it like.
I acknowledge that due to migration, food/cuisines have evolved overtime and I'm ok with that as long as it tastes good and some thought has been put into the process of developing the dish and how the ingredients come together.
What I don't like is when dishes appear to be bastardised in that certain ingredients are in it that don't fit in.
Oh so here ya are you fakka Macedonian sounding Steve Cumper. Who doya think you are writing this crap. You saying I'm not authentically Greek Cypriot mate? You saying that to me?
Ah, Steve, as usual, we tend to agree. I think you've seen my (very long) post on authenticity?
I think the examples you've cited are interesting - the times when people want the white guy's Thai instead of Thai people's Thai, or Anglo guy's Italian, but wouldn't trust an Indian chef with it. The first, I think, is a food snobbery thing - perhaps some racism, but more than anything it's a celebrity chef phenomenon where one accrues cultural capital by insisting on haute cuisine. The second is probably as much parochialism as racism, though either may be the issue. That is, one's view can be so narrow that one thinks that everything comes from one's own culture. Lisa Heldke (an American philosopher) wrote about this in her book 'Exotic Appetites' - there's a cringeworthy story where she admits to being astonished to find Thai food in Ireland - like, 'what? it's not just Americans who eat ethnic food?'
But as I've written in my post, I reckon the interesting things about authenticity are less 'what is it' than 'why do we demand it or perform it'? Cultural capital is a really big part of why, as is identity maintenance for migrants.
Hello B A and thanks for commenting-I really get what you say here as hate the bastardization of dishes too.
Kaleemera George-Thanks for taking the time from your very busy schedule and meetings with Bill Shorten to stop by.
G'day Tammois-yep your post did spark the brushfire for what was a a hotch potch of parched and decidedly combustible thoughts on the subject.
I take your point on the identity supposition validating the need for authenticity as I aslo believe this contributes to cultural borders being vigilantly guarded to the detriment of embracing contempory ammendments, cuisine included. This not only makes the cultur distinct and highly visible but also underscores difference and in some cases is cause for a dynamic tension, positive and negative.
I used to put emphasis on my perceived authenticity of dishes. And then I grew up and looked around me. I was a dumb food snob.
Examining popular 'national' dishes it is apparent that every family in that nation or locale has their own recipe for a similar dish that has evolved from personal taste, circumstances and available ingredients. Each one of those versions is authentic.
If you remove the dish from its country of origin, does that immediately render it inauthentic? Perhaps, but as long as I enjoy eating it, I don't much care who made it or where it came from originally. It's the produce, care and attention that matters.
For me food is more about eating seasonally and ethically, so the produce leads the choice of dish. The recipe for me is simply there to make the best of the featured produce.
But there is a generation who have been raised eating bland supermarket food and consequently seek recipes in order to just have something tasty to eat. I think in this instance the desire to eat something 'authentic' might gain cachet within the their hierachy of choices.
For me, the appeal of traditional recipes is that it links me to the "homeland". Having grown up mostly in Australia and not having the fortune to spend a lot of time getting to know my culture, food has always been the primary way that I feel connected to my heritage.
Of course, every recipe in the world has variation according to geography or family, but there are always some similarities that tie them together. For example, every single "baechu kimchi" recipe from a Korean family will use Korean red pepper (chilli) powder. When we first immigrated to Australia, my mother tells me that this was very difficult to find and she tried substituting it with other chilli powders, but that resulted in an end product that looked, smelt and tasted "wrong". It may have tasted fine to someone who did not know any better but it was not the taste that my mother had learnt from my grandmother etc.
Of course cuisines can "modernize" and develop - you will find that many families do this! Even my mother has made some slight changes to the recipes that she learnt from her mother, but I honestly believe that anyone attempting to mix it up with a traditional recipe should first get an understanding of the dish and it's history and cultural significance.
After all, isn't this why history is taught? So we can understand where we come from?
Post a Comment