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

There is great Uighur place here in Melbourne, fantastic handmade noodles but the start is the roast mutton which comes in uncharacteristically (for chinese food at least) large lumps and is deliciously spiced with lots of cumin.

Now its a challenge do I seek out 煎饼 for lunch or go and have uighur noodles?

http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/womenofchina/report/169984-1.htm

lol this article

http://i.imgur.com/AMompPx.jpg

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Port-San-Antonio-bans-food-truck-because-of-5288089.php

This was just a bad idea all around

After my grandfather had a few strokes and lost most of his speech, one of the only things he could still say, in a wheezy lifetime-smoker's growl, was "Huh. Jesus Christ."

I did a pretty good imitation of him when that image loaded.

"Yoder, who is not Asian"

y'don't say

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/the_kimchi_revolution_how_korean_american_chefs_are_changing_food_culture/

that was terrible

You may know him as the Iron Chef and master of Japanese cuisine, but chef Masaharu Morimoto has a new restaurant in NYC that blends Japanese with … (wait for it) … Mexican cuisine!

And yes, it's as delicious as it sounds.

Asian x Mexican seems to be getting more popular these days http://www.missioncantinany.com/

We had a favorite sushi joint in MEXICO that had fabulous fresh baja seafood served raw with really good sushi rice and chili/cilantro sauces and man I was super opposed to fusion sushi but that shit WORKED.

You have to remember that, in the States, we have an entirely different problem. As in, "I wanna go toxftugcd's for lunch." And there is always the khaki-panted square from the burbs who thinks toxftugcd's (or "authentic" anything) is code for gang / drug dealer front operation. In the drugged up eighties and nineties, it could well have been.

Being Italian, I used to recommend joints that real dagos eat at and white breads ask if they're going to see a real gangster. Bbbbut that's part of the experience, no?!?

Not really mad at YUM! Brands at all for trying this out but lol:

When I first heard that Yum! Brands, the parent company behind Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, was opening a bánh mì shop in Dallas, my reaction was muted. By that point, I wasn't even upset at the cultural appropriation-- I was already wearied from all of the pho sandwiches and pho burgers and pho not-phos. No, I figured if the shop ends up being kind of authentic and maybe turns some people onto Vietnamese food, then why not?

Banh Shop couldn't really be that bad, right?

And then Yum! did literally the worst thing they could realistically do: They stuck a communist star in their logo. Is Yum Brands just begging for busloads of elders from Little Saigon to loudly protest outside their new store for weeks?

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforkinit/2014/09/banh_shop_communist_star.php

The website itself is also a treat

http://banhshop.com/

http://i.imgur.com/mWJhumX.png

I mean don't get me wrong I'd try one of these out any day but lol @ americanizing a product meaning getting rid of the vegetables and adding more fat and sugar

never had this but damn i have had many terrible attempts at banh mi appropriation. hard as a rock baguette that gives you a jaw ache trying to chew, sickly sweet sauce slathered on, chunky raw vegetables sliding out everywhere because you can't even chew the damn thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world/asia/bad-thai-food-enter-a-robot-taster.html?_r=1

Not quite the right thread for this but

I need this machine (+ calibrated for Chinese food)

I would say it's really stupid to open up a Vietnamese chain in an area with a large Vietnamese population and a shit-ton of good, authentic joints... OTOH, Chipotle/etc..

I don't think the Vietnamese population is the target demographic for Banh Shop

none of those sandwiches sound like banh mi

From that NYT article on the robot testing Thai food. But it sounds like a dog tester would be helpful also:

Ingredients like fresh tamarind, Thai limes and galangal, an aromatic root similar to ginger, are not readily available overseas, and the substitution of inferior ingredients frequently yields a dish that a Bangkok gourmand might describe in the Thai vernacular as “food even a dog would not swallow.”

I don't think the Vietnamese population is the target demographic for Banh Shop

The really good banh mi shop across from one of my stores shut down to become Vietnamese-Italian fusion. IDGI

Yeah

There's probably a pretty decently sized non-Vietnamese / non-adventurous-white-foodie population who don't venture into the Vietnamese owned restaurants but who would probably go to Banh Shop, right?

I dunno, they might have to brand it with THEY'RE SANDWICHES underneath or something. I strongly suspect that the kind of person who wouldn't frequent a Vietnamese-owned shop doesn't have a clue what a banh mi is.

Looking at the address they're just off the SMU campus so there are enough rich kids who want to be adventurous but not too adventurous should make it all but impossible to completely fail.

There's a popular manhattan sandwich shop with a few locations called Num Pang that is supposed to be Cambodian sandwiches and I think it's pretty clearly not and not supposed to be "authentic Cambodian" but more of that nu-food-truck style food, anyway it's pretty good and I eat there sometimes. Maybe this chain is just a bigger version of that sort of thing.

Or maybe, like Chipotles, Banh Shops will be in locations more convenient for white-collar workers to dine at? When I lived in Chicago area, yes I'd love to go to an authentic taqueria for lunch but closest one was 30 mins away whereas there were 3 Chipotles within 15 mins or less.

Possible. I eat at Tortilleria Nixtamal on the weekends whenever possible, but for lunch near work Chipotle is the only remotely "Mexican" thing, and I don't even think of it as Mexican, I just go there sometimes because it's reasonably fresh and tasty.

Looking at the address they're just off the SMU campus so there are enough rich kids who want to be adventurous but not too adventurous should make it all but impossible to completely fail.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, September 29, 2014 5:26 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

Locating ethnic restaurants within walking distance of college campuses works great ime

Food can be inauthentic and still be delicious.

Well, yeah

Like 5 years ago NA came on a thread to point that out, also when no one was saying otherwise. Go ahead and enjoy your inauthentic food, dude!

Looking at the address they're just off the SMU campus so there are enough rich kids who want to be adventurous but not too adventurous should make it all but impossible to completely fail.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, September 29, 2014 5:26 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

Locating ethnic restaurants within walking distance of college campuses works great ime

it should but man that is NOT the case up here in NH

thread gettin daingerous

num pang is bomb. their corn is particularly awesome.

i would eat the hell out of that banh shop food -- minus the aioli, because mayo is the devil's condiment and all that.

they make good/inauthentic banh mis at the mendocino farms mini-chain in los angeles, including an awesome lemongrass steak one. bring it on, i say.

Btw I guess I never posted the link to my anti-street harassment project and our official documents, so here you go finally!

http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/anti-street-harassment/

We are currently comprised of cisgendered women who consistently face street harassment. Our intention is to address the ways in which men harass women, queer, trans, and/or gender non-conforming people in our neighborhood’s public spaces. We understand that street harassment is a type of gendered and sexualized violence and that our work is one part of a larger movement to dismantle patriarchy’s effects on our lives. We seek to work in solidarity with individuals and organizations whose approach to violence works for and not against our values, our mission and our vision for the community we are working to transform.

Lol sorry wrong thread.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/15/354654440/in-the-world-of-chefs-asian-american-women-are-turning-up-the-heat

Get 'em

http://bittersoutherner.com/how-hot-chicken-really-happened#.Va2xpIvxRFK

this piece, about hot chicken in nashville, was prob way too long, and had the odd needless personal tangent, but it is p interesting how the story of a dish is also the story of segregation.

also made this white person want some hot chicken.

Rachel L. Martin, Ph.D. missed out on some key white ppl facts

One interesting footnote (which I guess is almost a “foodnote”) is that fair few people probably have heard of hot chicken but didn’t know why or what they were hearing about. On the album “Electr-O-Pura,” Yo La Tengo has not one, but two, songs with Hot Chicken in the title. Joe York’s got the classic, original second-track-on-the-cd, Hot Chicken as the soundtrack to his film. Now that I’ve had the dish I can say with some degree of groundedness that the song actually reflects the dish, at least to me. I’m not a music writer so forgive my foray into that realm but . . . the song really does have an affinity for the chicken . . . starts with a steady, catchy hook, builds gradually to something approaching but never quite overstepping into all out cacophony. Throughout the beat keeps going, and the music keeps rising and the song gets under your skin in a way that sticks. Think chicken-holism. It all makes sense—the band records in Nashville and they eat a lot of Prince’s hot chicken. Think hot chicken, eat hot chicken, listen to hot chicken.

http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/08/fox-all-white-bbq-pitmaster-list.html

https://www.instagram.com/p/_FNtikNP0U/

http://igcdn-photos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xft1/t51.2885-15/e35/12353344_1535210403437068_2045414289_n.jpg

God that's awful oh the humanity etc

Im guessing youre not britishes, just sayin? Chinese chip shop curry is a p specific type of british artificial curry sauce that you get either at a Chinese takeout with rice or chips, or from a chip shop with chips that doesn't really have another name.

^Also available in many non-Chinese takeaways as gravy for chips. Weirdly, this tastes a lot like katsu sauce.

'chinese'=sweet

incidentally i love it and it's one of the few things i make sure to eat when im visiting home

saw really good public television show about Asian American cuisine last night