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

Can't we all just not get along, but yknow, nicer

I'm regretting the "you ppl" but I think I may have escaped that one

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/91/e2/d8/91e2d87e127ebf22055e5a81b8c39278.jpg

dayo have you ever read chopsticks & marrow? the dude has steered me to some good places in the past but there's sometimes a veneer of othering or essentialization to his quick summations of food traditions etc. it's not quite to the level of "i went to this place and we were the only white people in there" but maybe it's the next level?

if you think this is just about making white ppl feeling 'guilty' when they go to an 'ethnic' restaurant or w/e that's a pretty blatant misreading and u can suck an egg. that means u, aimless

wtf? I don't think I've used the word restaurant in this thread, let alone the words ethnic or guilty.

Ey symbol I know a p good Chinese place in Dublin fyi & btw just sayin

I'm still trying to figure out why places w/thai menus are really into adding a sushi bar lately. I guess maybe it's a good profit center? I could use some sort of thai cuisine inspired sushi roll but that never happens

Yr white. Invent one, make millions.

nobody makes millions in the restaurant game unless they run one of those really expensive places or has franchises all over

I was kind of thinking about whether some places capitalize on a pan-european thing for menu formation and the only real point would be every type of restaurant offering some kind of pizza

i think the money quote from the edouardo jordan piece is at the end which shakes conveniently omitted:

Name a black chef who’s won an award besides Marcus Samuelsson. It’s a celebrity show, culinary politics. I did a little research and I’m going through everything that I can possibly find, and there are maybe one or two minority chefs recognized by the James Beard Foundation a year, if that. It’s pretty fucking sad. I want to have a say in this. I want to stir it up. But I don’t know: Is that their problem or my problem? Or our problem?

wtf? I don't think I've used the word restaurant in this thread, let alone the words ethnic or guilty.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, March 7, 2016 7:47 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

aimless, i say this to you as warmly and sincerely as i possibly can: please enjoy your freeze-dried kimchi.

Ey symbol I know a p good Chinese place in Dublin fyi & btw just sayin

― Ecomigrant gnomics (darraghmac), Monday, March 7, 2016 7:48 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

when i come to visit i'm counting on you to bringing me to some chinese-owned restaurants ay

I'm still trying to figure out why places w/thai menus are really into adding a sushi bar lately. I guess maybe it's a good profit center? I could use some sort of thai cuisine inspired sushi roll but that never happens

― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, March 7, 2016 7:51 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah most 'pan-asian' joints not in cities will advertise that they do everything - pho, thai, sushi, chinese, whatever the white people there want. it's a different phenomenon than actual organic fusion restaurants, like indian chinese or jamaican chinese restaurants etc. etc.

i think it's probably worth a hard look into the phenomenon of pan-asian restaurants and their impact but that's a discussion i'd want to have with other asian americans, not white ppl.

dayo have you ever read chopsticks & marrow? the dude has steered me to some good places in the past but there's sometimes a veneer of othering or essentialization to his quick summations of food traditions etc. it's not quite to the level of "i went to this place and we were the only white people in there" but maybe it's the next level?

― adam, Monday, March 7, 2016 7:47 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i've come across it a few times but the guy comes off as too much like max falkowitz. tbh i don't mind that much as long as it drives traffic towards the restaurants he reviews. but reading through his reviews is a chore and a slog. it also generally bugs me when non-chinese people have Very Strong Opinions about where the best, say, xiao long bao or pulled noodles or w/e are in the city.

i much prefer a site like eating in translation http://www.eatingintranslation.com/ - descriptive without making too many assumptions or superlative comparisons.

despite its unfortunate name, eataku (lol) also is like that

eating in translation is fantastic. i appreciate the dude's obsession with bygone signage.

idk eataku.

max falkowitz is a clown

i actually dig ligaya mishan even tho her reviews bring the fuckin eye of nytimes reader mordor down upon every place she writes abt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michelin_starred_restaurants#United_States

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/dining/la-chine-review.html

pete wells, hear hear:

The egg was one of the first things I ate at La Chine, which opened in November inside the Waldorf Astoria, specializing in Chinese food made with finesse and an eye for beauty. This could get interesting, I thought. In fact, the rest of the meal and the two that followed did get interesting, in ways that those of us who love the cuisines of China wish would happen more often in New York.

Downtown Manhattan, Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn are rich in Chinese restaurants. Their cooking can range from filling to thrilling, but it rarely aspires to climb the slopes of creativity. Ingredients are generally good but not stellar, limited as they are by the prices these restaurants can charge. Unlike many cities in Asia, New York has not historically had a broad base of people willing to spend a lot on Chinese food.

...

But at the risk of undermining my populist credentials, I’d suggest New York could use more Chinese restaurants that are as expensive as our most ambitious French and Italian places. Those restaurants could use more ingredients worth splurging on, and restaurateurs determined to lure talented chefs from China.

not a perfect review but given the platform and the thrust of the message, i give it a pass

i actually dig ligaya mishan even tho her reviews bring the fuckin eye of nytimes reader mordor down upon every place she writes abt

― adam, Monday, March 7, 2016 8:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah ligaya mishan is great too. apparently she has a MFA in poetry which explains how, uh, purple-y some of the writing gets

not owned and operated by white ppl

I don't think this fits the description of a single restaurant in SF tbh

― Οὖτις, Monday, March 7, 2016 6:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is interesting to me because i visited SF last summer and i just looked up some of the restaurants i remember us going to and all of them are minority-owned. and this isn't even including the ones we visited in chinatown

i guess my feeling is that white ppl owned "ethnic" restaurants are 1) not as good as authentic ones owned by a member of that culture and 2) probably more a symptom of wealth inequality between whites and non-whites as anything else. it's textbook capitalism -- the rich profiting from the work and ideas of the less well-off

probably because your partner has good taste because she's not [redacted]

at the risk of exploding a clusterfuck in my face, i'll share some thoughts engendered by the quoted bits, not as criticism of the quoted material, but as further observations in tangential directions.

white ppl owned "ethnic" restaurants are 1) not as good as authentic ones owned by a member of that culture

Authenticity, especially in the realm of food, is a thorny category, because people who are accepted as belonging to the same culture and who share the same ethnicity may drastically change what they eat and how they prepare it over the course of a few generations. If the Chinese begin drinking wine made from grapes with some regularity, as they seem to be experimenting with these days, will wine become authentic Chinese food in 50 years?

probably because your partner has good taste

Achieving what is deemed good taste in something is a very interesting state. It would seem to be purely socially defined. Would it even be possible to have "good taste" in the absence of shared and accepted canonical reference points? What about people to whom those reference points are not available; are they condemned always to have "bad" taste? What would that mean for their lives?

And the closer you examine what "good taste" consists of, the more permutations, refinements and gradations there are, until you reach a rarified pinnacle occupied only by a rarified few, who still have been known to quarrel over the final few exquisite distinctions.

aimless, i say this to you as warmly and sincerely as i possibly can: please enjoy your freeze-dried kimchi.

thank you dayo. that is very gracious of you. I certainly hope to.

Redacted has a v specific ilx meaning imo and I lolled

A friend has a great idea for an Irish Potato Famine theme restaurant. The starters will be all based on wizened potatos, but then you get on a little boat which brings you across a moat to a US style burger joint, to symbolise the emigration and new life that resulted from the famine.
-- DV (dirtyvica...), July 18th, 2005 7:51 PM

most ethnic restaurants, including posh ones, that I've gone to, have been owned by people from the country the cuisine comes from.

i guess i don't expect much besides vulgarity from bloated megachefs - the entire luxury industry is unsubtle and off-putting, i don't think many people are impressed by it, or interested in it. like wolfgang puck or someone - think his london restaurant is at the mandarin oriental hotel, but prob best not to widen this discussion to luxury health spas.

as for people like ricker or bowen, seems there's inauthenticity there front and centre, it's part of the appeal. but to me the idea of a traditional Chinese or Indian restaurant run by white people is p strange and unlikely - I guess America may be different, are there really normal mid-priced ethnic restaurants opened and run by white people?

how does fuschia dunlop figure into all this, i like her :/

have you been for Mexican food in London lately garda

also lots of vaguely hip vaguely middle eastern stuff that looks pretty white the past couple years, also I kind of want to make a claim that the vogue for barbecue is kinda iffy on this level. But more iffy on so many others, so.

american-style barbecue is panracial

i think fuschia dunlop is fine! she's done the work, gone to actual cooking school in china and she writes respectfully about the food and what she learned. at least from what i've read. also she's a http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/8600450PU_zps0btgyi0e.jpg

but to me the idea of a traditional Chinese or Indian restaurant run by white people is p strange and unlikely - I guess America may be different, are there really normal mid-priced ethnic restaurants opened and run by white people?

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 3:48 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i wouldn't say its the majority but there are definitely a few examples in nyc.

there's http://kingscoimperial.com/, run by this person: https://www.instagram.com/tracyjanenz/

there's the aforementioned andy ricker and his thai restaurant pok pok

just heard of a new thai restaurant opening in the east village run by these guys

http://i.imgur.com/6LSWJnm.jpg

Best Irish breakfast in Dublin is in a French cafe run by Chinese people it's a glorious thing

and of course tao, which is like an infection spreading across america at this point, is run by this guy

http://i.imgur.com/tQ5mayN.jpg

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

I don't get the tennis ball ref?

most ethnic restaurants, including posh ones, that I've gone to, have been owned by people from the country the cuisine comes from.

me too, and i'm american ¯\(°_o)/¯

tbh, i think big city dwellers who habitually eat at "nice places" have a rather rarefied sphere of concerns

http://i.imgur.com/z7zx875.jpg

tbh, i think big city dwellers who habitually eat at "nice places" have a rather rarefied sphere of concerns

― leet gentlemen's club (contenderizer), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 8:21 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

big cities happen to be where a lot of immigrants congregate.

lol @ bluegrass soy sauce

hey soybeans are a top commodity in kentucky though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJa1_u-VLE

omg I am dumb

american-style barbecue is panracial

― adam, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 7:46 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

if you fall on the 'idc when white ppl open ethnic restaurants' side then i would hope that when u come to nyc u check out tyson ho's bbq spot arrogant swine

http://i.imgur.com/JXTZa76.jpg

welp i've been reading his serious eats posts about it for twenty minutes now

龜,

What are your thoughts on Maggi sauce/seasoning?

ARB

arrogant swine is good and that dude is chill af

ARB,

dont' have much experience with Maggi! from googling it seems to have gotten to where it is because of colonialism. but if the people of those countries enjoy it that's great. thanks,

龜

constantly reminded by coworkers how american/british approximations of "indian food" really aren't indian food -- it's as if the savory, disproportionately meaty parts of the cuisine made the cut and a lot of the day-to-day food isn't represented

which is too bad, because indian snacks tend to be pretty good and i love snacks. thankfully my coworker brought back snacks yesterday.

has anyone seen that michael pollan series "cooked"?