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

No, I just figured the most obvious connection to elephants for an English pub would be through the colonization of India.

To do this to cuisine, then, would be for the colonising power to appropriate, and claim the profits from selling, the colonised peoples’ cuisine, making it impossible for the colonised people to profit off their own cuisine in the same way.

- from Lace Dagger's Harlot piece, linked upthread by sleeve

The phrase "in the same way" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence, and LD is primarily talking about access to "fine dining" designation, with associated prestige, attention, and perhaps investment/expansion opportunity. But where simple ability to profit is concerned, I've never seen any indication that culinary colonialism makes it harder for people serving their own cuisines to attract customers or turn a profit. Quite the opposite. The colonialists seem to follow where taste-making early adopters go first: bahn mi and pho joints for cheap lunch in cities with large Vietnamese populations, for instance. Newspaper articles get written and gentrified, white-owned outposts of the cuisine then start showing up in hip neighborhoods where the real thing has no presence, usually with slick signage and clever names. When this initial interest reaches a certain level, "fine dining" takes its stab. From what I've seen, the resulting expansion of consumer interest lifts all boats, from the small neighborhood shops that attracted foodies in the first place to the white linen trend-hoppers that came later.

Of course, that's just my perception. Like LD, I'm not basing it on anything but secondhand observation. Would love to see some hard data or serious investigation. Agree that "fine dining" is a deeply racist construct. And fuck "Saffron Colonial" in the eye.

From what I've seen, the resulting expansion of consumer interest lifts all boats

lol

Elephant and Castle is a little area of London, though.

Named after a pub; the pub name came before the area.

there are loads of places in london that say "a celebration of the days of the old raj" etc. though some are run by indians.

fine dining is hardly inherently racist - personally couldn't gaf about it but plenty of fine dining restaurants are just doing variations of french or italian or euro cuisine. it's surely on the wane though. nobody you'd ever actually meet goes to these stupid megachef restaurants and there are many many informal and high end restaurants in every major city which would never use the term "fine dining" to describe what they do, but still attract people with money. for that matter, most of these places aren't clumsily racist either.

ime most of the ultra-expensive places mentioned itt are like those hotel restaurants where the ultra-rich go. in london they're prob frequented by oil billionaires, at least given nobody else lives in a 5-star hotel or wants to eat there and the residential areas they're in are all millionaire dormitories.

it doesn't end up surprising me that the copywriting to sell food to people who don't carry notes or coins and buy £10,000 vertu phones in diamante louis vutton covers is gauche and awful and offensive. the food is prob awful too.

there is plenty of blatant racism itt, but the perception and value and status of dishes and foodstuffs is always changing, even within a given culture. oysters and lobsters used to be seen as peasant food. pork belly, offal, mackerel, short rib, so many trad cheaper cuts becoming expensive based on chefs and how they cook them.

in one of the fuschia dunlop book she talks about (afair) twice cooked chard becoming a big hit in fine dining restaurants in china, when it started as a dish for people who couldn't afford pork.

i mean racist in that "fineness" is inextricably linked with the values of the dominant (white) culture in an exclusionary way. to the point where, while the kitchen & cleanup crews of many/most upscale restaurants are racially/ethnically mixed, the visible floor staff tends to be white. "it's what the customers prefer."

"From what I've seen, the resulting expansion of consumer interest lifts all boats"

lol

if this isn't true, do you have a good source for data/investigation? i'm basing what i say on a couple decades of life in seattle, casually watching foodie culture colonize a variety of "ethnic" cuisines. from what i could tell, interest booms tended to broaden the city's appetite for the fashionable food in question regardless of the source. this at least seemed to increase patronage at older, more "authentic" places as well as the newer, gentrified joints. like the ramen boom of 2010-12 was exploited most visibly by white entrepreneurs, but established places in the ID were slammed, too.

I'm not an expert but I get the impression that French high cooking is still sort of the filter through which the food in every "fine" restaurant passees, even if it's an "innovative ethio-cambodian fusion" restaurant or whatever. Like french cuisine sort of supplies the majority of technques and building blocks and presentation standards even if the flavors and ingredients come from elsewhere, and I think this winds up true whether the chef/owner is a white person or a person of the same nationality/background as the food (but trained in french-influenced culinary schools or restaurants).

for some reason I just had a nostalgia attack and really miss giant robot magazine's food features

This is sort of interesting:

http://eatoffbeat.com/who-we-are/

A Vietnamese man in my city is opening a Hawaiian Poke place that's described as Chipotle-esque and will be selling primarily to white and Latino people.

Lolled at "justified"

I was in LA recently and was a bit puzzled by all the "Poke Bowl" chains I saw. I guess it's like a raw fish salad? I'd never seen one in NJ before.

tuna poke is all over the place, already pretty dispersed here

skeptical about eating raw tuna that far from the ocean

most places it's flash frozen, even if served on the coasts. it's not like anyone is catching tuna just off the coast of california or w/e. comes from the same distributors whether in oregon or the midwest.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/sushi-fresh-from-the-deep-the-deep-freeze.html?referer=&_r=0

"so hot right now"
http://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/poke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3uXw6sRzDI

ya went to a couple of poke places when it was all the hype

kind of garbage to be honest

even the premium fish cuts are just okay

seafood definitely tastes different/better/worse in certain cities of north america

i don't want to watch that eater video can you just tell me whats wrong with it

That video is very sweet. Uzbek food tends to get stereotyped as barbecued or soupy mutton and plov but it's much broader than that, even if it's not always represented that way at restaurants. There is a huge Russian, Turkish and Persian influence but two of the classic dishes - manti and lagmon are very similar to (and partly derived from) jiaozi and lamian. It's super-meat heavy so i will almost always go for Armenian / Georgian / Azeri instead but it's cool to see it has an outpost in NY.

there's def a few restaurants i've been meaning to try in the south south part of brooklyn, like bensonhurt or brighton beach

nothing was wrong with it! this food isn't just about white ppl doing bad things its also about appreesh for immigrant food culture xp to adam

in that case i appreciate uzbek food tho i can't eat it all the time.

tandir rokhat on coney island ave in gravesend-ish (one of the best food neighborhoods in nyc imo) has the best samsas i've ever had. really some of the best meat pies of any type. unbelievably good. definitely go here.

i ate at taste of samarkand in middle village the other week, it was delightful, the lagman with DUMPLINGS! (ravioli per the menu) was astonishing.

my wife and in-laws rep for a place in the diamond district called taam tav but i have yet to eat there myself. they however are very trustworthy.

I've never had Uzbek food but there are two Uzbeki restos in Paris, think I will try to go

in Marseille there is a huge Armenian population (like the 3rd largest, after LA and of course Armenia itself) so I've eaten Armenian a bunch, lots of corner-type shops in Marseille are run by Armenians so you get your usual soft drinks etc along with terrific flatbreads, DUMPLINGS! !!! and the like

Uzbek food tends to get stereotyped as barbecued or soupy mutton and plov

Yes, and? I mean these are perfectly wonderful things to be!

Everyone go to Varenichnaya ASAP.

If you can go to Tandir Rokhat, you can go like half a mile further to Varenichnaya.

But maybe I'm just won over by their lamb kabobs and their lagmon. Which I can no longer eat bc of the wheat noodles, but I can steer other people toward eating it and then sip the broth.

or get a samsa at tandir rokhat (which is not a sit down place) on the way to varenichnaya

Ahhhh the fine art of compromise that leads to eating more DUMPLINGS!.

http://www.bkmag.com/2016/03/24/williamsburg-chinese-restaurant/

lmao

They may not be Asian like most of the new wave of chefs making headlines, but Grinker and Young are devoted disciples of Chinese cuisine. After attending the New England Culinary Institute, they cooked in a renowned Chinese restaurant in Vermont

i lol'd at that too, also at the comparison of the decor to an opium den

also this tone-deaf gem

That for us is the realization of the vision because Chinese food used to be considered something that was gross—you do it sitting in front of the TV because you’re starving or whatever and then you wouldn’t want to do it for another month—but this is the opposite.

thank goodness these white ppl are saving chinese food

Ok that is amazing

uzbek is in my top 5 favorite cuisines

god, stupid people exist. worrying.

Uzbek bread /is/ really really good. But yes I find it hard to eat at Central Asian restaurants b/c in my experience it’s so meat heavy. I remember going to one Kazakh restaurant and I had to order only from the appetizers.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/09/472568085/why-hunting-down-authentic-ethnic-food-is-a-loaded-proposition

really need to get a copy of this book

"But that's very different from the authenticity we demand from "ethnic" cuisine. In that case, Ray says, what we really want is a replica, "a true copy of our expectations" — some platonic ideal of what a dish should taste like. It's a definition of authenticity that can trap the immigrant cook in very narrow expectations."

feel like the book must push this further, because this is pretty empty without a discussion of what "our" expectations are, and how they're shaped. I thought the point that "ethnic" food (ooh I hate that term) is expected to be cheap was a good point and a step in this direction.

to me talk of "authentic" food can often be cashed out as "I want to make sure what I'm eating isn't a bullshit take on it". we want to avoid being conned by a corny or inferior version of the cuisine. in 2016 people seeking out "exotic" foods know how often cooks design food for mainstream appeal, and "foodies" worry that their experience of this food, the experience that will shape their future experiences of it, will be mediocre.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-next-big-thing-in-american-regional-cooking-humble-appalachia/2016/03/28/77da176a-f06d-11e5-89c3-a647fcce95e0_story.html

obliquely related to this thread

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/race-art-and-essentialism

my takeaway from that is that both of those dudes should probably stick to writing only about white ppl from now on

http://gothamist.com/2016/04/09/desi_poutine.php

sign me up

oh mama

appropriating this Irish staple imo

http://www.macarisratoath.com/cms_admin/gallery/upimg/1361547803_561703_449576815101679_1109837085_n.jpg

yeah, was gonna say...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/manhattans-latest-purveyor-of-matcha-1458834300

two white dudes open a matcha cafe in manhattan

I didn't realize matcha was on trend, I just thought it was tea.