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

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.

it's pure concentrated superfood

Anyone have an Uzbek or sim central asian rec in Queens? I went to the one everyone knows (Cheburechnaya) and was pretty let down.

This is sort of interesting:

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

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Friday, April 1, 2016 9:25 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So we actually wound up doing this with some friends in the neighborhood -- they'll deliver the food to you for a minimum of 10 people plus a delivery fee. We did the menu with jackfruit salad, veggie momos, hummus, chari bari (meatballs) and hashwe (chicken rice pilaf). It came to a little over $20/person all in, and the food was very very good, although the quantity they provided wasn't really enough for the amount of people somehow (may have been because a lot of people had small kids who we assumed would just eat chicken nuggets and some wound up eating some of the food). Although the food was from different cuisines, they worked together reasonably well based on the menu they put together. It was fairly simple (not in a bad way) home-cooked tasting food, sort of like getting a sampler from five different good hole-in-the-wall joints or taxi stands.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ethnic-restaurants-food-safety-racism_us_5706984be4b0a506064e771d?bmx6ywbrpijp2e29

As The Atlantic’s CityLab reported last fall, the food served at so-called “ethnic” restaurants — typically referring to cuisines such as Chinese, Mexican or Middle Eastern, but not so much Italian or French — is more often blamed for suspected food poisoning than restaurants that are white-owned.

A separate analysis published by Slate in 2014 found that more Yelp users claimed they had gotten food poisoning from Asian restaurants than from any other type of cuisine.

Hawaiian poke place opened yesterday but I'm nervous about landlocked, affordable (Chipotle-esque) raw fish.