People from anywhere can cook authentic food from anywhere else as long as they know what they are doing, so this is bs
It reminded me of this asshole, who happened to be Italian, claiming that a professionally trained chef could not cook proper Italian food because he was Mexican
Even the concept of food being “authentic” or “inauthentic” is pretty dumb. Pretty much every food short of raw foraged ingredients is the result of cultural exchange.
You could argue that an Italian cooking with chilis or tomatoes is inauthentic and that the resulting food is more Mexican than it is Italian.
Extending the concept from ingredients to techniques, you could argue that every food that relies on the cold chain (refrigerated/frozen storage and transportation) is an American food because the cold chain was created by an American.
It’s less the who and more the branding. It’s funny that one has to have the right “look” to sell you the food of a nation, or customers will reject it. The sorts of comments you hear while working in a Chinese run Japanese restaurant in the US…
Like, they have this sushi bar at the HEB I used to shop at. Right next to the tortillary. The folk working the sushi counter are as Latino as I am weird. But you can get an 8 pack of nigiri or a 12 of maki for cheap and made right in front of you.
I have nearly every other gastro disease, but those never made me sick and tasted about what they cost, which was nice when I was broke and still needed sushi to properly maintain a healthy gut macrobiome
My absolute favorite sushi place for ages was a conveyor belt shop run by a family of jovial Mexican sushi chefs and one very stern Korean woman. Cheap, tasty, consistent, fresh. They profited through volume, but doing so was murder on their joints, so swapped to typical prices and seating. I’m just glad that food bigots are the minority in my new area.
People from anywhere can cook authentic food from anywhere else as long as they know what they are doing, so this is bs
It is a bit surreal to suggest your nation of birth or genetic lineage somehow influences your capacity to slap a piece of fish on some rice.
Also… if you want to get really anal about the history of the dish, narezushi originated in modern day Cambodia/Thailand, and first documented in ancient China around the 4th century. Meanwhile, the more modern techniques for preparing and serving sushi did originate in Tokyo in the 19th century, but spread like wildfire. Sushi restaurants were popping up in Los Angeles as early as 1906.
It reminded me of this asshole, who happened to be Italian, claiming that a professionally trained chef could not cook proper Italian food because he was Mexican
A professionally trained chief should be able to faithfully reproduce a litany of dishes from around the world.
Of course, there’s a lot of regional variation and conditions. I might suggest that you cannot reliably produce a Genovese sauce outside of Genova, simply because you don’t have the locally raised veal, for instance. But that’s not a problem unique to chefs of a particular national origin.
“Yeah, we’d love to hire you for the cook role here at Taco Time, unfortunately you’re not authentic Mexican so we can’t.” - something never said before by a hiring manager.
As a white guy I like to make Indian or Thai from scratch. Sometimes I have asked an Indian friend what spices they would start with in dishX and he’s said “you’re doing it from scratch? I just buy the premix packets at the grocery store”
“authentic” in terms of food and restaurant culture is just a dog whistle for “racist.”
Like please. I’m not in Italy, it’s not “authentic” it’s just Italian food. Food is a universal language and words added like “authentic” are just plain bigoted.
People from anywhere can cook authentic food from anywhere else as long as they know what they are doing, so this is bs
It reminded me of this asshole, who happened to be Italian, claiming that a professionally trained chef could not cook proper Italian food because he was Mexican
Even the concept of food being “authentic” or “inauthentic” is pretty dumb. Pretty much every food short of raw foraged ingredients is the result of cultural exchange.
You could argue that an Italian cooking with chilis or tomatoes is inauthentic and that the resulting food is more Mexican than it is Italian.
Extending the concept from ingredients to techniques, you could argue that every food that relies on the cold chain (refrigerated/frozen storage and transportation) is an American food because the cold chain was created by an American.
It’s less the who and more the branding. It’s funny that one has to have the right “look” to sell you the food of a nation, or customers will reject it. The sorts of comments you hear while working in a Chinese run Japanese restaurant in the US…
Like, they have this sushi bar at the HEB I used to shop at. Right next to the tortillary. The folk working the sushi counter are as Latino as I am weird. But you can get an 8 pack of nigiri or a 12 of maki for cheap and made right in front of you.
I have nearly every other gastro disease, but those never made me sick and tasted about what they cost, which was nice when I was broke and still needed sushi to properly maintain a healthy gut macrobiome
My absolute favorite sushi place for ages was a conveyor belt shop run by a family of jovial Mexican sushi chefs and one very stern Korean woman. Cheap, tasty, consistent, fresh. They profited through volume, but doing so was murder on their joints, so swapped to typical prices and seating. I’m just glad that food bigots are the minority in my new area.
It is a bit surreal to suggest your nation of birth or genetic lineage somehow influences your capacity to slap a piece of fish on some rice.
Also… if you want to get really anal about the history of the dish, narezushi originated in modern day Cambodia/Thailand, and first documented in ancient China around the 4th century. Meanwhile, the more modern techniques for preparing and serving sushi did originate in Tokyo in the 19th century, but spread like wildfire. Sushi restaurants were popping up in Los Angeles as early as 1906.
A professionally trained chief should be able to faithfully reproduce a litany of dishes from around the world.
Of course, there’s a lot of regional variation and conditions. I might suggest that you cannot reliably produce a Genovese sauce outside of Genova, simply because you don’t have the locally raised veal, for instance. But that’s not a problem unique to chefs of a particular national origin.
I don’t know that you’d even want to serve truely authentic food since you want to appeal to local tastes. See: Chinese Food in the USA.
Yeah i was just thinking specifically Chinese food. Authentic Chinese food is like chicken feet and scorpions on a stick and stuff.
Both of those specifically are also found in Mexico, funnily enough.
Eh. Chicken feet aren’t so bad. It’s kind of like pork trotters or whatever those jarred, pickled hooves are called.
What was bad when I got chicken feet was the sauce. Fucking awful.
For some reason, I took this comic to mean a Japanese restaurant that serves food from other East Asian cultures.
“Yeah, we’d love to hire you for the cook role here at Taco Time, unfortunately you’re not authentic Mexican so we can’t.” - something never said before by a hiring manager.
Well, that would be WILDLY illegal but I get your point
Yeah, food is food.
As a white guy I like to make Indian or Thai from scratch. Sometimes I have asked an Indian friend what spices they would start with in dishX and he’s said “you’re doing it from scratch? I just buy the premix packets at the grocery store”
So who is making the authentic Indian food?
“authentic” in terms of food and restaurant culture is just a dog whistle for “racist.”
Like please. I’m not in Italy, it’s not “authentic” it’s just Italian food. Food is a universal language and words added like “authentic” are just plain bigoted.
Most people take ‘authentic’ to mean ‘similar to what you’d find in the country of origin’. There’s nothing racist about it, it’s about expectations.
except when people criticize “authenticity” based upon who is in the kitchen. as in op.
There is a difference between criticism and jokes.