immigrant & ethnic food cultures, white ppl & appropriation, foodies

there's no class in america, remember

there's no class in america / whoa-oh / everybody live with the elephant bar

from the haute dish page:

Haute Dish is the first local restaurant for the Millennial Generation and it's as important as any we've got

oh hi i want to murder you

http://www.wwd.com/eye/food/tao-downtown-opens-in-the-meatpacking-district-7211530?module=Eye-hero

gross

yeesh

we really just need that picture at the top of the page to draw our conclusions

Scamardella stumbled upon the dish at a restaurant in Hong Kong. After begging the kitchen staff for the recipe, he finally broke them down by bribing them with a round of beers. Although this method wasn’t the norm, the chef was able to procure a trove of recipes, as well as some skilled help. During his travels, Scamardella recruited a handful of chefs from China, Singapore and Japan to move to New York and cook for Tao.

“They are all living in a house in Staten Island now. We brought everybody back,” Scamardella said, chuckling, before underscoring that Tao, which has a Midtown location in New York and one in Las Vegas, “has always been a restaurant first.”
O_O

"...and you know how Jesse was working for Todd there towards the end? That's how we roll with the Staten Island house, except we got a lot of guard dogs too."

Grrrrrrrrrross.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/craving-the-other

Really good piece

When I go to contemporary Asian restaurants, like Wolfgang Puck’s now-shuttered 20.21 in Minneapolis and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market in New York City, it seems the entrées are always in the $16–$35 range and the only identifiable person of color in the kitchen is the dishwasher. The menus usually include little blurbs about how the chefs used to backpack in the steaming jungles of the Far East (undoubtedly stuffing all the herbs and spices they could fit into said backpacks along the way, for research purposes), and were so inspired by the smiling faces of the very generous natives—of which there are plenty of tasteful black-and-white photos on the walls, by the way—and the hospitality, oh, the hospitality, that they decided the best way to really crystallize that life-changing experience was to go back home and sterilize the cuisine they experienced by putting some microcilantro on that $20 curry to really make it worthy of the everyday American sophisticate. American chefs like to talk fancy talk about “elevating” or “refining” third-world cuisines, a rhetoric that brings to mind the mission civilisatrice that Europe took on to justify violent takeovers of those same cuisines’ countries of origin. In their publicity materials, Spice Market uses explicitly objectifying language to describe the culture they’re appropriating: “A timeless paean to Southeast Asian sensuality, Spice Market titillates Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s piquant elevations of the region’s street cuisine.” The positioning of Western aesthetics as superior, or higher, than all the rest is, at its bottom line, an expression of the idea that no culture has value unless it has been “improved” by the Western Midas touch. If a dish hasn’t been eaten or reimagined by a white person, does it really exist?

Also vibed much with descriptions of growing up an immigrant

I wanted the straightforward, prefabricated snacks that I saw on television: Bagel Bites, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets. When my grandmother babysat me, she would make tiny concessions, preparing rice bowls with chopped turkey cold cuts for me while everyone else got caramelized pork. I would make my own Bagel Bites by toasting a normal-size bagel and topping it with Chinese sausage and a dash of Sriracha. My favorite snack was a weird kind of fusion: a slice of nutrient-void Wonder Bread sprinkled with a few dashes of Maggi sauce, an ultraplain proto–banh mi that I came up with while rummaging through my grandmother’s pantry. In our food-centric family, I was the barbarian who demanded twisted simulacra of my grandmother’s masterpieces, perverted so far beyond the pungent, saucy originals that they looked like the national cuisine of a country that didn’t exist.

...

All of this makes the experiences of the immigrant’s Americanized children particularly head scratching. We’re appreciated for our usefulness in giving our foodie friends a window into the off-menu life of our cuisines, but the interest usually stops there. When I tell white Americans about the Maggi-and-margarine sandwiches and cold-cut rice bowls that I used to eat, they tend to wrinkle their noses and wonder aloud why I would reject my grandmother’s incredible, authentic Vietnamese food for such bastardizations. What I don’t tell them is, “It’s because I wanted to be like you.”

Brought back memories of my packed school lunches

We'd go to Pathmark and load up on cold cuts

My dad would make these really thick cold cut sandwiches. About an inch thick of honey ham or w/e and lettuce and white bread and both slices slathered in mayo. The lettuce would be wrinkly and soggy and the bread mushy because the mayo would have permeated everything

Those sandwiches were not made with a love or understanding of American cuisine

Also remember coming home every day and my dad making two hot dogs, boiled, heavy on the ketchup, ate while watching GI Joe and X-men and all the other after-school cartoons

wolfgang puck invented food (foodie mansplaining)

also, my dad just did this to me re my thanksgiving dish.

i always blame boomers for everything annoying, but i'm gonna call this a primarily boomer problem?

if you wanted to go to an asian restaurant in minneapolis why would you go to wolfgang puck's?!

Notice the adjective 'contemporary'

oh wait i only read the first post! sorry.
i'll read the whole thing before i have anything else to say.

If I want to go to an Asian restaurant that's michelin rated and run by Asian dudes I think my options are pretty much limited to sushi places in NYC

'doctor, my arm hurts when i do this…'

Asian food is generally not associated with haute cuisine here in the States

People want it to be cheap and dingy and in the Chinatown or other ethnic community ghetto

j. what are your top 5 asian themed restaurants that are zagat or michelin rated and where you wouldn't mind dropping 50 bucks per person on

also fwiw at my school we have different cafeteria options for the different campuses because there are more jibarito eaters over here, more tamale customers over there, etc.

to contrast, lately i have found myself annoyed at the presence of the perception of a latino monoculture in political discourse, etc.

michelin's ratings are mostly due to french people only liking french and japanese things

Yeah the perception of a monoculture among communities of color is a big problem

I'm perpetually worried that East Asian perspectives dominate the Asian American discourse

the whole idea of spending $50 per person on a meal is dumb to me, asian or no

the number of non-japanese east asian restaurants in london with 'haute cuisine'* type reps that aren't asian fusion is.....pretty small

* another stupid term but it vaguely correlates to something like the expense spared in procuring and cooking the food, as well as all sorts of other nonsense that is needed to get multiple michelin stars

I only ever went to the brunch at 20.21 but how the fuck was it an asian restaurant?

Probably because it marketed itself as Asian Fusion? Look it says it right there on the Yelp page http://www.yelp.com/biz/20-21-minneapolis

ah, looks like their dinner menu was pan-asian fusion, but still... I'm not sure you can say a fusion cuisine and a native one are comparable

sry, x-post

Well if you bothered to read the article you would see she's not making that point, nitwit

I'm agreeing! I think the people who try to pretend most chef fusion shit is anything other than the upscale version of applebees having "asian"-flavored wings or whatever are seriously deluded.

It can taste nice, to me Panda Express is to Wolfgang Puck's fusion as Golden Corral is to an expensive steakhouse with ala carte baked potatoes

“A timeless paean to Southeast Asian sensuality, Spice Market titillates Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s piquant elevations of the region’s street cuisine.” The positioning of Western aesthetics as superior, or higher, than all the rest is, at its bottom line, an expression of the idea that no culture has value unless it has been “improved” by the Western Midas touch. If a dish hasn’t been eaten or reimagined by a white person, does it really exist?

is it not possible the ingredients might be better? i mean, no guarantee, plenty of cheating everywhere, but it's often true if you're paying more for food more time has been spent on sourcing the ingredients. there are certain factors here that aren't just opinions, but other faintly snobby ideas like provenance or the happiness of the animal.

i mean it's awkward language above, sure, but arguably that par is just claiming high-end restaurant methods to be superior to street vendor ones? same high-end restaurants also do their takes on burgers or whatever else.

it's interesting that the process works the other way around with "authentic" - there are all sorts of weird associations when people talk about authentic asian food, or authentic indian food.

"is it not possible the ingredients might be better?"

I always interpreted this as meaning "it's not the neck, or the foot or tail of the animal so it's cool for whites ppl" vs. "we kill bespoke swine for your bunz"

You're mostly paying for the fact that the chef was CIA trained or w/e and that the restaurant is located in a part of town that has a bunch of other hip restaurants in it and it was reviewed by Peter Wells

You're paying $10 for french fries with truffle oil regardless of where the fries are 'sourced'

Also a $50/head meal to me involves booze and Service, neither of which I would think of when mentioning a Puck restaurant or Spice Market

I always interpreted this as meaning "it's not the neck, or the foot or tail of the animal so it's cool for whites ppl" vs. "we kill bespoke swine for your bunz"

maybe 20 years ago.

xpost - true about fries, not true about meat.

btw the 20.21 brunch had this on the buffet line, truly the height of asian fusion
http://www.food.com/recipe/asian-ramen-coleslaw-180352

Minneapolis had good Vietnamese food 20 years before most places in Europe (and arguably America, including the West Coast).

Nakh, I'm thinking about the Sichuan chew-with-a-view place in the Shard and Bar Shu etc as haute. As more Chinese money moves into London, more fancy Chinese regional cuisine. London's Vietnamese community are at the point in their establishment here, where they'll start opening fancier restaurants than, say, Viet Grill. In another 10 years, London will probably have about five fancyish Somali places and a couple of dozen Persian.

Agreed UGH at rich wannabe-chef bros who bring a bunch of recipes back and don't involve the people who came up with the cuisine in their business.

xpost to LG, provenance of ingredients is important, as is animal welfare. It's not snobby to want to minimise people's impact on environment or to work towards better animal welfare.

anyway like, there is no way anyone, not even foodies, would claim these places are authentic. authenticity is fetishized hugely by foodies with prob just as many awkward racial issues as the idea of the high-end ethnic restaurant staffed by white superchefs. seems that'd be an interesting angle to come at this from too.

puck & co should be burned at the stake if they really have some sort of tourist narrative printed in their menus, imo

like literally our ideas about authenticity in things seem to have some weird obsession with the idea that the unsanitised is holy - even when we're actually eating something, putting it into our bodies - dirty equals real.

by our i guess i mean white people

You're paying $10 for french fries with truffle oil regardless of where the fries are 'sourced'
totally
it is a waste of money on top of everything, that's extra gross on top of gross. i don't even like going to restaurants that are that expensive. no matter how tasty the food is, it is always totally overpriced and guess what -- that brand name potato tastes like a potato.

i still kinda think the appropriating celebrity chef is a boomer man thing.

She never claims that those restaurants are claiming to be authentic! She's just pointing out that they are using Asian cuisines to lend themselves a little different-than-our-neighbors gloss - and that most people would be fine with paying higher prices for this 'refined' or 'reimagined' asian cuisine but would turn up their noses at paying similar prices at an actual Asian restaurant

Do you mean a restaurant with an Asian chef, or a diff definition of actual Asian restaurant? In London I think there are quite a lot of high-end Asian restaurants with Asian chefs.

I feel like the idea of a high-end restaurant has sort of boxes to tick that are nothing to do with food anyway, esp the higher up you go. Like probably even the price when you get to the really formal places.

Did any of you read Eddie Huang's memoir? Interested in what you guys think of it if so.

Anyway for all my repressed ire I actually think Andy Ricker is a cool dude, this was a good interview

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/2013/10/pok_pok_ny_andy_ricker.php

You took an online reviewer to task for expecting free rice. Tell me about that.
This speaks to a much bigger problem: People view Asian food as a cheap commodity food. It should be plentiful and cheap and you should get free shit with it. And that's in our mindset because people who have sold Asian food in our country are just trying to survive. But we all live in the same economic reality. You're keeping your food cost below 30 percent, so if you're charging $7 for a giant plate of food, something has to give: labor, rent, or food. Most places aren't going to be buying natural meats, organic vegetables, top-grade seafood, or even top-grade rice. We don't make a big deal about it, but we use all-natural meat and high-quality ingredients, and we pay a fair living wage to employees. High-quality jasmine rice from Thailand costs more than $1 a pound, and you have to be careful in how you prepare it. We don't charge that much money for our food, so I don't feel bad about charging $2 or $3 for rice. And to top it off, in Asia, you pay for rice. Free rice is an American invention.

Talk to me about authenticity. Does it matter?
We don't use authentic, and we don't use traditional; those words are not in the literature. In my new cookbook, there's an essay on the absurdity of authenticity. Most Thai restaurants call themselves traditional, authentic Thai--to me, that means what you get in an American Thai restaurant. I like that food. Everyone likes that food. It's fucking delicious. But if you call yourself traditional or authentic, you're putting yourself in a position to piss people off.

Do you mean a restaurant with an Asian chef, or a diff definition of actual Asian restaurant? In London I think there are quite a lot of high-end Asian restaurants with Asian chefs.

I feel like the idea of a high-end restaurant has sort of boxes to tick that are nothing to do with food anyway, esp the higher up you go. Like probably even the price when you get to the really formal places.

― Legitimate space tale (LocalGarda), Monday, November 25, 2013 10:52 AM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark

Thinking more of restaurants where the clientele are primarily Asian. There are a bunch of places out in Flushing like this where you probably couldn't get away for less than $30 a head and the food is great

Minneapolis had good Vietnamese food 20 years before most places in Europe (and arguably America, including the West Coast).

― hatcat marnell (suzy), Monday, November 25, 2013 7:45 AM (8 minutes ago)

http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Everything-You-Know-Is-Wrong-250x364.jpg

the best vietnamese in london is haute cuisine by quality just not decorated or presented thusly etc