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

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"?

There is an unbelievable number of Chinese restaurants in Bangladash. I'd estimate they make up about 75% of all restaurants in Dhaka and virtually all of the non-chain places. No real pretence at authenticity and I'm pretty sure almost no Chinese chefs but it's interesting to see how it has been bastardised by a non-Western culture.

It's tough to nail down what people should mean when they refer to 'Indian food' as it is so heavily regionalised but I have always thought that Anglo-Asian hybrid cuisine is a legit strand in itself, though probably distinct from 'Indian food in Britain'.

how's the bangladeshi take on chinese food?

but I have always thought that Anglo-Asian hybrid cuisine is a legit strand in itself, though probably distinct from 'Indian food in Britain'.

i went here and enjoyed it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/dining/hungry-city-mr-curry-saltie-williamsburg-brooklyn.html

otm about "indian food" not being a monolithic thing, i should have qualified. there was a fun conversation when another colleague whose contract was ending went out to lunch with a group and half of them were unimpressed because they went to her favorite indian restaurant that has more northern-style cooking, which they considered kind of bland

my friend of course looked at me and said "i bet you'd really like it"

burned!

has anyone been to danny bowien's taco joint, speaking of fusion and tangled food politics

adam - lauhound is also good in that it's heavy on pics and light on commmentary http://www.lauhound.com/

young white dudes wearing striped shirts should just stay home and eat mac & cheese or whatever

or just starve and die

― brotato chip (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 7 March 2016 22:07 Bookmark

what kind of stripes

Xps lots of cumin and coriander, emphasis on noodles over rice, often very sweet, fewer fresh vegetables, lots of fried / sizzling dishes, too much pineapple...

That restaurant looks interesting dayo!

Xp, my father went to one of the most highly rated Goan restaurants in London a couple of years ago, which is apparently pretty authentic, and ended up having to ask for piles of fresh chillis on the side mid-way through the meal as it was too bland to enjoy.

"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"

this is true of a lot of cookbooks too: you buy a thai or italian or indian cookbook, and what you're learning is more the "festive" foods than day to day foods.

that's not so much true of french cookbooks in english because there are so many of them now, but it's true of most french restaurants in the usa at least.

adam - lauhound is also good in that it's heavy on pics and light on commmentary http://www.lauhound.com/

this is good!

mh -- i've been to mission cantina (but not mission chinese) and his approach is so OTT postmodern that he sidesteps a lot of the authenticity/appropriation debate. this is in stark contrast to the kings county imperial joint that has stoked so much rage in this thread--those dudes just blunder into those debates head on and completely clueless, less "rapture" and more graceland.

the most offensive posts itt are the ones demonizing tripe.

crispy fried intestines, you'll always be the fries intestines of my heart.

fried is also a word, autocorrect, which you recognized once in that sentence. Get it together

British Indian cuisine is venerable now at 250+ yrs old, and I'm sure both it and the composite cuisines its based on have undergone a few mutations over that time

I always thought the meaty/kebabish character of trad curry houses here was to some extent due to the immigrants who were making it - more north Indian/Bengali/Punjabi and often Muslim

britain has had curry longer than fish & chips iirc

Friends of that background always tell me their families eat mostly dal and rice/vegetarian diet at home, and that the food served in Indian/stealth-Bangladeshi restaurants is "wedding reception food".

this thread does a really good job of making me hungry as hell

btw by "nice" restaurants i didn't mean michelin-starred, > $40/plate places (which i very rarely go to). just vaguely "nice," interior-designed, professional-looking-menu-type places. which, i admit, can run the gamut. but in chicago and madison, for examples, there are tons of such places owned by latinos, asians, etc. etc. etc.

i know nothing about the upper echelon of dining, because i'm not a hardcore foodie and i have no money to eat at such places.

props to Portugal re fish&chips & curry

in the UK I think most/all of the Michelin star Indian & Chinese restaurants are run and owned by British Indian/Chinese ppl

Actual appropriation so

asian cuisine has always been a big blind spot for michelin - i don't think started awarding stars in hong kong until within the past couple of years, to say nothing of the mainland

interesting. though i can't imagine that there were many of the sort of restaurants that michelin reviews in the PRC before the late 1990s.

one of the SF Bay Area michelin restaurants is Asian fusion, run by a chef from .... The French Laundry. I haven't been to either, though I went to the one in Los Gatos with my parents because my dad was given a gift certificate there as a retirement present.

Achieving what is deemed good taste in something is a very interesting state. It would seem to be purely socially defined.

one of my bff's just got back from visiting Portland and she said all the Asian food there ranged from tolerable to awful

and this is kinda relevant to the issue:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/The-Bay-Area-s-Burmese-food-boom-6251404.php

And yet, the great majority of Portlanders can eat at such restaurants and not have the slightest inkling that they are exhibiting wretchedly bad taste by enjoying the food there. It is a puzzlement.

probably because so many of them are white ppl who only know white ppl food? apparently the donuts there were amazing though

Fwiw on Friday I'll be in SF and I'm going to a decidedly "nice" Thai restaurant run by a Thai woman which looks amazing.

which one?

Kin Khao

i'm off to get some lao food y'all

lol that's a hotel restaurant!

lol that's a hotel restaurant!

it is literally in a hotel.

I can live with that.

i've never been there ... not making fun of you for eating at a hotel restaurant ... it's just funny in context of authenticity/appropriation narratives, as I associate eating at the hotel restaurant with "things unadventurous white tourists do"

i get that but there are definitely instances of good restaurants happening to be in hotels

no doubt! it's just a stereotype.

ate at a hotel Chinese restaurant in Brno once and urgently regretted it. one of those in retrospect very bad ideas.

re:sarahell Your bff has probably eaten at more Portland area Asian food restaurants than I have, since on average I eat a restaurant meal about twice a year.

fwiw, Portland never had much of a "Chinatown" compared to many other west coast cities, so our Chinese restaurant scene has always been impoverished. But we did get a pretty large influx of southeast Asian immigrants in the 70s and early 80s, and we now have quite a few Vietnamese restaurants owned and operated by Vietnamese. We also have a good-sized representation of south Asians who mostly came to work in the high tech industry, which has instigated the appearance of some Indian restaurants.

But, if, as a Portlander, I am condemned to be served blandified and mongrelized Asian food adapted to white ppl's ignorant palates whenever I pay for a meal in a local Asian restaurant, even if the owners of the restaurant are Asian immigrants who know how to make food that better conforms to the original culture's idea of what tastes good, then wouldn't it make more sense to pity me for paying good money to eat slop, than to say I am to blame for ruining the food? How am I going to learn, if I am never exposed to the "real" thing, and how am I going to be exposed, if the owners choose to serve me slop? It's a vicious cycle.

Lol you're not doing anything wrong. IDC what you like. In fact you should tip 25-50% as long as you're eating at an asian-owned restaurant

FYI Portland never had much of a 'chinatown' because chinese immigrants were driven out http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%2015/15.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_riot_of_1886

From another Wikipedia article:

Chinese Massacre Cove is an area along the Snake River in Wallowa County, Oregon, United States. It is located in the Wallowa–Whitman National Forest and the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, upriver from the Snake's confluence with the Imnaha River. In May of 1887, it was the location of the Hells Canyon Massacre, where thirty-four Chinese gold miners were ambushed and murdered.[

I think there are a lot of signifiers of familiarity or comfort that are taken for granted that some people don't wrap their heads around when it comes to seeking out restaurants. I was going through some Yelp reviews (the savages!) of local places and there are a number of comments about specific customs or signifiers in the dining experience I don't really care about that people seem to take as given quantities and find fault with restaurants that deviate from their norms.

On the other hand, a local favorite Vietnamese place recently reopened after a fire and I haven't even tried to visit because it's completely packed to the point they've had to close several days after running out of food. And it's been weeks. But every article about the place has a handful of "why do people go here, dish X is not as good as it is at these other three restaurants" comments which are probably true, but completely ignores the fact that this place is either a neighborhood destination or pretty much comfort food for many people because of their long standing.

To change the subject from Oregon's horrible treatment of minorities, the major reason I rarely eat at restaurants isn't so much a lack of funds as a lack of interest. I am usually able to prepare and eat better food at home, so I do.

I have not mastered Asian cuisine, though I wish I could magically acquire the ability - without putting in the necessary labor or having to buy all the proper utensils and specialty ingredients. The few dishes I make that vaguely resemble Asian food are deeply inauthentic and don't pretend to be anything but an assemblage of tasty ingredients put on a plate. Their only real virtue is that the ingredients are fresh and taste good together.

there are hotel restaurants and hotel restaurants. there’s the restaurant at the holiday inn in jamestown, new york that serves their hamburgers at room temperature. then there’s the boutique hotel that hires a world-class chef to develop a "concept."

i skipped the lao for lunch because it was out of my way and got hot pot. although i always feel bad eating at hot pot places because they give me 500% more food than i can possibly eat. so i end up feeling full while there’s still a huge stack of stuff on my plate that hasn’t even gone in the pot. but what i did eat was yummy.

number of comments about specific customs or signifiers in the dining experience I don't really care about that people seem to take as given quantities and find fault with restaurants that deviate from their norms.

there’s a subset of Yelp reviews by people who seem to expect an insance level of obeisance from waitstaff that just boggles my mind. those reviews are usually pretty easy to spot (they often have a /lot/ of paragraph breaks, words in ALL CAPS, etc.) and skip over.

another takeaway from yelp: groupon can be really bad for your business