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

yeah I love sevilla, have not been there for any truly blazing days, once in may and once in march I think, when the orange trees in town were in full fruit. beautiful. it does seem that everyone rolls around from tapas joint to tapas joint. my friend who has a family house in Galicia lives in Sevilla and took me around. Galicia's more my style, cooler weather, terrific seafood: all over spain you eat pulpo gallego but in Galicia you get a whole boiled octopus for like 8 euros, so fresh and great. in Santiago I don't remember seeing any fast food, but the tourists there are mostly pilgrims, it's so far out of the way otherwise.

haha - there's a mcdonalds in san sebastian old town - sitting there at the south end of one of the most densely packed 10-15 minute walks of amazing and cheap food in the world.

Every time I see the dumb Seamless ad on the A train that says "Let someone who can spell 'BabaGhanoush' make it" with Eastern/Moorish/Etc-styled illustration around it, I want to take a picture and post it to this thread.

that seems like such an arbitrary standard. like ppl have spell check and google.

Um, isn't 'BabaGhanoush' an Arabic word that can't be properly spelled in the Latin alphabet?

Well I only eat baba made by people who know the correct transliteration from Arabic into roman scrip following english language orthographic rules

I have enough trouble getting Arabic speakers to spell their own names the same way in Roman script twice, let alone food eaten in 20+ different countries.

i prefer baba ghannouj

there need to be more words with j at the end

are we sure we aren't talking about mutabbal

The spelling of which is sure to be immutable.

Aw nice

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/restaurants/the-authenticity-trap-of-mexican-food-in-america-7538626

good article. "In the armchair anthropologist game, Americans are the undisputed champs. The sheer conviction and depth of expertise in Mexican cuisine that these critics demonstrate is nothing short of impressive and intimidating."

liked Rachel Laudan's article on that and similar issues around industrial food: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/slow-food-artisanal-natural-preservatives/

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/22/471309991/when-chefs-become-famous-cooking-other-cultures-food

the intro is making me think i should cook korean food

maybe the other important question is why the white house decided to make mexican food for the president of mexico

good move, those people love that shit

imo in this situation and nearly always, it's not a question of whether any person can travel a region and learn its cuisine and preparation, it's a question of whether more prestige and monetary success comes to someone for preparing an "ethnic" cuisine as an outsider than as someone raised in that food culture

this is old but - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/asia/25chef.html?_r=0

that's like a really fucked up version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect

I wonder if nachos/tortilla chips fall into that, they're kind of a change-up on chilaquiles and other things ppl really only did with leftovers afaik

lol @ this review http://www.theinfatuation.com/new-york/reviews/kings-county-imperial

Aside from being an inviting, accommodating, and friendly place to enjoy a meal, complete with cushy, circular red booths complete with lazy susans, the secret sauce at Kings County Imperial is the soy. In true handcrafted Brooklyn fashion, they actually brew their own soy sauce, and use it in cooking almost all of their dishes. The sauce is sun-fermented in antique porcelain pots that sit in a Chinese field for 6-8 months, which allows the soy to maximize flavor, before it’s ultimately shipped in bulk to Brooklyn. Once it arrives at Kings County, they run it through a nitrogen line at the restaurant to prevent it from oxidizing too fast. It’s on tap at the bar, right next to the beers, and the negronis (also on tap, of course). On our last trip, we mentioned how good the sauce was to our server, who happened to be one of the owners, and ended up with a 15 minute education on soy. Surprisingly interesting stuff.

lol @ all this

also lol @ the idea that you would need tableside soy sauce for sichuanese cooking

is the sun in brooklyn not right somehow

the real estate required to give yer soy its suntan would be so $$$$$$$ in bklyn as to be prohibitive i think

detroit has a lot of empty fields

how's about rooftops in Brooklyn?

wait, is he saying this restaurant literally owns some fucking field in China just for the purpose of having a bunch of sauce-filled antique pots sit in the sun for six months?

lol that is the traditional way of making soy sauce, likely they just found a 'supplier' who is probably shipping them pearl river bridge behind their backs

Eating Chinese food in this city is generally an exercise in extremism. You can get gross and roll around Chinatown or Flushing. You can go big and have yourself an out of body spice experience at Mission Chinese or Han Dynasty. Or you can overload on delivery, which prevents anything productive from happening the day after. It's rare you find a hip, cool, fun Chinese restaurant free of meat sweats and MSG. Kings County Imperial may not be traditional Chinese, but it officially serves our favorite Chinese in New York City.

Kings County Imperial is owned by a pair of non-Chinese Chinese food enthusiasts who wanted to share their passion for Chinese flavors with the world, even though they weren’t necessarily brought up with them. We’re glad they did. This is Chinese food that won’t put you in a coma afterwards - you could maybe even eat more than once in a single week.

"chinese food? muah. having to deal with chinese people? scary and terrible. being able to eat chinese food without having to deal with chinese food? *kisses fingers* muah"

i just pictured the entire nation of china being in a coma because of their food

You can get gross and roll around Chinatown or Flushing. lol what

jesus

i pulled up a few other reviews and they're all: "this is a new paradigm in chinese-american food-- there are no fortune cookies, no tubs of msg! here's market-driven chinese that highlights regional flavors: kung pao chicken, mu shu pork, and dan dan noodles." the reception is so weird and the restaurant looks fucked, soy sauce on tap just the beginning.

sorry it should say being able to eat chinese food without having to deal with chinese people? lol

“There aren’t a lot of places that aren’t exploring non-fusiony, authentic Chinese flavors presented in a new way, with people who will guide you through the experience. Because it’s such a foreign way of dining,” Grinker says. “And that’s super exciting to me.”

“The art of Chinese cooking relies so heavily on the heat that comes out of that Wok,” she says. “So it’s that heat and that carbon steel Wok and the flashing of the oil on the back of it that creates this big flame—it’s called the wok chi, or life of the Wok—that kind of gives the food this flavor that is almost impossible to reproduce.” Hence why people don’t really try making Chinese food at home, and either go out or order in to get their fix.

also u won't have soy sauce on tap at home.

speak for yourself

*sips big mug of soy sauce*

mm it's good

yeah i have a small field for making soy sauce on my windowsill

but really soy sauce def goes stale but isn't one of the bonuses of dining at a restaurant that they go through basics like that so quickly it's always fresh? sheesh

my neighbors keep complaining about my local fish sauce operation but the neighborhood cats are chill w/it

i've never heard of stale soy sauce lol

white people at it again

http://bedfordandbowery.com/2016/03/get-that-griddle-sizzle-at-mr-bing-chinese-crepe-pop-up-at-bowery-station/

But it wasn’t until recently that he learned the optimal recipe, after tasting the wares from upwards of 40 jianbing carts. Once he settled on his favorite one, he paid the “master chef” to teach him her secrets of sauces and seasonings.

if your whitebread midwestern family makes stir fry in a 70s-style electric wok (lol) once every couple months and the soy sauce bottle is a couple years old it gets pretty lame

i would have no problem with years old soy sauce

Though he insists his bings are otherwise authentic, Goldberg says Mr Bing’s is a “cleaner, healthier and more fun” jian bing than what he ate in Beijing. The 38-year-old Columbia graduate actually had a business plan written for a Mr. Bing shop since 2001, when he was studying for a masters degree at the university. But then he got a little busy.

anytime white people say their take is "cleaner" and "healthier" that's some dog whistle for "chinese people are gross and unsanitary"

otm

i dont understand how it's "more fun"

uh that is, you are otm, not the gross undercurrent in that statement xp

20 years ago I made stir fry somewhat regularly and when I saw a gallon can of soy sauce at Smart and Final I bought it. That can lasted several years (I slacked off on the stir fry) and I swear it got better as it aged.