Not only that, but chili peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes are native to the Americas and ended up spreading worldwide. Food would be boring if it didn’t get remixed.
10 Likes
The only reason to go to Wong Kei is to experience the legendary rudeness of the waiting staff. They really don’t give a shit.
It’s an absolute must for a visitor.
The food ain’t much though.
4 Likes
Taste in food is very personal.
1 Like
That’s like the famous House of Nanking in San Francisco. You’ll probably be seated with strangers, your silverware may or may not be clean, the impatient staff will barely talk to you, and you’re quite lucky if you get a glass of water to drink. The menus are barely readable and caked with old food and dirt, but they’re sort of a running joke; nobody uses them. Instead, you just say “chicken” or “pork” to the waiter, or maybe just nod your head when they come by, and they’ll bring you whatever the chef is making, and it will be wonderful.
2 Likes
What restaurant is she talking about in Malibu specifically? Nobu? Or someplace else?
In Wong Kei they shout at you. You eat too slowly. Hurry up! You’ve finished, go now!
It can be quite bracing but also refreshingly honest.
It’s smack bang in the centre of London with a huge passing trade. They really don’t care if they never see you again.
1 Like
You can’t say “Umami” without saying “Ooooh”
2 Likes
Some years ago my wife and I were taken to a Chinese restaurant by a half-Chinese friend. The food was fantastic, and very different to what we were used to (I’d love to say authentic, but I wouldn’t know). We went back a little while later. My wife looked at the standard menu and proudly asked for the ‘real’ menu. The waiter smiled and happily brought it. It was written entirely in Cantonese, which neither of us could read. We sheepishly asked for some help.
(The waiter was very helpful and we had another fantastic meal).
8 Likes
I haven’t done this exactly, but when faced with an incomprehensible menu, I point at something and just roll with it.
A possibly related fact is when I am lost as hell in foreign countries other white people ask me for directions. The look on their face when I break the news to them that I am lost too…
I attribute it to the Hitchhiker’s Guide mentality. “Don’t Panic”.
5 Likes
I keep wanting to try this, but fear making a fool of myself. Maybe I should just take a Sichuan cookbook and point to dishes I’d like.
2 Likes
Calvin Trillin has a laminated card with “I’ll have what he is having” in Chinese written on it.
6 Likes
I don’t head up Studio City way much, but if I do, I’ll make sure to check it out.
For now, it’s mainly reproducing the stuff my grandma made (like a delicious simmered kabocha squash with tuna that’s going to be a nice hearty bowl of warm yum when the weather cools a bit).
2 Likes
What about places where the only Asians for miles and miles around are the guys running the only Asian restaurant for miles and miles around?
4 Likes
We used to have something similar, in that the only Lebanese family within driving distance – rural Indiana – opened a restaurant, using (literally) grandma’s recipes. We went there religiously until they closed. I did try to find out why they closed, and where they went, but interestingly enough it wasn’t covered in local news at all. Hmmmmm…
6 Likes
I think that depends a bit. Sometimes it’s just branding. One of my favorite places to eat in Philly back in the day was at the time branded as “Pan Asian” and technically has food from all over Asia on the menu. But its a Malaysian restaurant, and all of the foods on the menu are common in Malaysia, and are made in their Malaysian versions. It just seems they were more approachable as “Pan Asian”, though they seem to have switched these days.
Tex-Mex also isn’t really a fusion in that sense (all food technically is). It originates with the cuisine and people left over from when Texas was Mexico. Basically it’s northern Mexican food from areas that aren’t in Mexico anymore.
The way we tend to insist its inauthentic or a bastardized version of foods from different parts of Mexico is a great example of the problem with “authenticity” as a concept in food. No cuisine or dish is stable over time, few have anything like a definitive recipe. Things are always adapted to what’s available in a particular place and time. That’s how culture works.
There’s nothing inauthentic about American Chinese food, its authentically Chinese American. And there’s been a pretty large push by Chinese Americans in the food scene to reclaim it and re-frame it as adaptations Chinese Americans made to their own food, and something worth while in its own right. Rather than as cheap crap thought up to sell to white folks. Which is how its usually discussed.
“Fusion” on the other hand is more of a marketing term cooked up by white restaurateurs to explain why this steak is covered in a half inch of wasabi and excuse bonkers shit like Thai Nachos. It tends to indicate little thought, and little understanding of the food ways you’re borrowing. Just “hey we put larb on these chips!”
6 Likes
Modern Tex-Mex is derived from Mexican food culture, with documented influences from completely non-Mexican food cultures. (Just as Mexican food was derived from Native American and Spanish food cultures.) The spices aren’t always the same, for one.
That’s not saying it’s not authentically itself, but it’s okay to say it’s not authentically identical or interchangeable with a different cuisine.
It’s okay to say they’re different. That’s not disrespectful. It would be kind of disrespectful to pretend it’s all the same thing with different names. That erases culture.
2 Likes
Very true. Sometimes it’s a bit of a task to figure out what to eat and what to avoid. I’ve been to plenty of places where one friend said “oh, that place is terrible” and another evangelized about it, and it turned out one had ordered their crappy, obligatory General Tso while another got their awesome, authentic dry-fried chicken or Sichuan fish, or discovered the chef is Vietnamese and their pho is amazing. So you have to ferret out their true specialty, and then you’re golden.
5 Likes
You just described food.
The Mexican food Tex-Mex developed from is not the Mexican food of Oaxaca or Veracruz. It’s the Mexican food of Texas. It’s all rooted in Tejano food, and even modern developments have been driven by Tejanos, more recently arrived Mexicans, and their close neighbors of various ethnicities. But we talk about it as some sort of bastardized non-Mexican food created by and for white people. As inauthentic because it isn’t what we understand to be general Mexican food from a different place, developing under different influences.
Cuisines are never stable, and do not exist in isolation. Something like tacos al pastor gets to be the height of authentic Mexican food. And yet it was only created in the past half century when vertical spits and doner kebab showed up in Mexico City along with Lebanese immigrants. Meanwhile flour tortillas which are a much older, bigger part of food in the northern parts of Mexico (particularly the parts that are now US states) are dismissed as not tortillas, not real, and not worthy.
There’s nothing wrong with saying its different. And that’s what I’m saying. Tex-Mex is not fake Mexican food, its different food.
But there is something wrong with saying it’s not valid in comparison to some other cuisine from some where else, or only exists because of white folks, or for the benefit of white folks. Its a different spin on it, but it’s still appropriation, and it still centers the story on white dudes. And given that we mostly have this pass fail take on authenticity with “ethnic food” it mostly seems to boil down to dismissing the cultures of immigrant groups.
You’re repeating what I said with different words.
I never said food cultures didn’t develop or change, or that one food culture is worse than another.
I said:
and then you corrected me by explaining how it was derived from Mexican food culture, with documented influences from completely non-Mexican food cultures.
The chili powder was changed to appeal to non-Mexican people. It’s okay to remember that. You’re not somehow honoring the original Tejano recipes by eliding the historical differences.
If you want to call modern Tex-Mex authentically modern Tex-Mex, no one’s going to stop you. It’s another thing when people argue it’s generic or a good representative of different food cultures.
An authentic Chicago-style pizza is a pizza, but it’s not an authentic New York-style pizza. Tex-Mex is a cuisine, but if a restaurant calls it authentic Mexican, they’re wrong. It’s not even authentic Tejano.
