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.
its about expectations. I grew up in California and have some specific expectations about Mexican food. they are different than if I was raised in Jalisco. I went to a “Mexican” restaurant in Budapest and their interpretation of Mexican food is VERRY different.
Mexico, like the vast majority of countries, has wildly different food styles by region city so anyone who immigrated elsewhere will start with their local style and then adapt it. In the US there are a ton of Mexican restaurants that vary significantly. I find it interesting how Americanized Chinese food is actually very consistent between restaurants compared to Mexican food.
I remember watching a video somewhere that touched upon this. IIRC, whenever a Chinese immigrant came to a city in the United States with a large Chinese population, such as San Francisco, they would seek out people from their hometown and would often be directed to benevolent societies. These societies help provide means for the immigrant to start looking after themselves, by offering different professions folks can jump into. Often times that would include providing recipes for dishes they could fix up at restaurants.
I think the video was a documentary about General Tso’s chicken.
Okay I made a quick pop in to Wikipedia just to check, and I can tell you that General Tsao and General Tso were different people. Several different people in fact, some fictional and others real, but they don’t overlap.
It’s “General Tso’s Chicken” and has been a NYT Crossword clue, which got me started with “in case you ever need it for a crossword clue,” because I know accurate spelling is not really necessary here.
San Francisco is known for its burritos, but elsewhere in the bay we have a bunch of taco trucks that will fill you up delicious, cheap, and for those of you with food allergies these trucks at least take them seriously. We have “street” tacos at least once a week.
Did you see there’s a national chain of Mexican restaurants that just shuttered their doors in the US after a failed expansion here? It was founded by two Australian men. I’m really curious what their interpretation is.
I dont think most Mexican food in the US is tex-mex. Fast food like taco bell isnt tex-mex, and most taco trucks and takeout places aren’t. The main category of restaurant that seems to be largely tex-mex are sit-down places with names like “El Mariachi” that cater to non-hispanic people and advertise the cheapness of their margaritas.
Where are you basing that off and what regions? Like, I grew up working around the Statesian southwest. I had a good friend (a Mexican immigrant) when I lived in Austin, TX and I would gripe to her about not finding “real” Mexican food. She took me to a few places and then I cooked her tacos to show her what I meant. East Mexico and West Mexico (according to my friend) use entirely different salsas because of different availability of easy fresh ingredients. So I grew up eating baja style tacos, white people enchilada casserole (my mom made a good recipe what can I say. The salsa is tomato and The Duck), while she grew up with lots of butter and molé. So now our eating comprehension quiz: Q1) Which is better? A1) Fuck you they’re both delicious, I just prefer baja style tacos because it’s what I grew up with. I like Oaxaca style better than that. Imagine thinking Mexico was merely one region and one culture. Q2) Which is more authentic? A2) see A1.
Tex-Mex is “actual” Mexican food, the cuisine formed from the Tejanos and is older than either Texas or Mexico. Mexico is a big place with lots of regional variation. Most Mexican food that Americans are familiar with is from or inspired by stuff near the border (which makes sense) with a mix from all over the country like mole, birria, and tequila.
Preach, Soggy. I was fortunate I had a good friend who was patient and taught me this shit. The internet is usually not that kind, but fuck being unkind.
It is wild how much local cultural food is am invention of the past couple hundred years.
I have a family recipe that goes back hundreds of years, it doesnt look anything like people would consider a cultural food from western Europe and even then it uses tomatoes so it literally can’t be truly old.
Heck look at how the world makes pancakes. They are all the same just somehow mixed up based on loose info or available ingredients.
Cooking a nice meal is a modern invention. Before it was just food to not kill you.
Every good Greek restaurant I’ve ever been to had a kitchen full of Mexican cooks. Most of my favorite Chinese takeout places were run by Koreans. Folks cook food.
I mean, yeah, but the head chef and owner, she is still greek. Unfortunately for them I married someone who is not attached to the restaurant except emotionally, like me. or else I might try to get the restaurant Prussian monarchy style
Many of the Greek-owned Italian restaurants and diners in my are being transferred to Albanians, but the language in the kitchens is invariably Spanish.
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”
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.
I love maki sushi, but I think uramaki sushi is pretty shit. It just so happens that uramaki sushi was invented by a Japanese chef trying to trick Americans into eating seaweed, which they thought was gross. But I love seaweed and I think uramaki ruins it by hiding it behind the rice. So I prefer authentic sushi.
“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.
“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.
its about expectations. I grew up in California and have some specific expectations about Mexican food. they are different than if I was raised in Jalisco. I went to a “Mexican” restaurant in Budapest and their interpretation of Mexican food is VERRY different.
Mexico, like the vast majority of countries, has wildly different food styles by region city so anyone who immigrated elsewhere will start with their local style and then adapt it. In the US there are a ton of Mexican restaurants that vary significantly. I find it interesting how Americanized Chinese food is actually very consistent between restaurants compared to Mexican food.
I remember watching a video somewhere that touched upon this. IIRC, whenever a Chinese immigrant came to a city in the United States with a large Chinese population, such as San Francisco, they would seek out people from their hometown and would often be directed to benevolent societies. These societies help provide means for the immigrant to start looking after themselves, by offering different professions folks can jump into. Often times that would include providing recipes for dishes they could fix up at restaurants.
I think the video was a documentary about General Tso’s chicken.
-editted for accuracy-
Okay I made a quick pop in to Wikipedia just to check, and I can tell you that General Tsao and General Tso were different people. Several different people in fact, some fictional and others real, but they don’t overlap.
It’s “General Tso’s Chicken” and has been a NYT Crossword clue, which got me started with “in case you ever need it for a crossword clue,” because I know accurate spelling is not really necessary here.
I mean spelling Chinese names in romaji (romachi?) is a crapshoot to begin with. The only consistent English spelling in “General Tzo” is “General”
I agree which is why I checked Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tsao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso
The list for Tsao includes a fictional character, but the chicken recipe is associated with Tso.
Much appreciated! Accuracy is important
I am well aware of the regional differences in Mexican food (why I used Jalisco as an example).
shit, California was a part of mexico for a a few decades and we definitely have some local variants (CA Burrito is so good)
San Francisco is known for its burritos, but elsewhere in the bay we have a bunch of taco trucks that will fill you up delicious, cheap, and for those of you with food allergies these trucks at least take them seriously. We have “street” tacos at least once a week.
Modern Mission-style burritos, with rice and beans on the inside, were invented in California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_burrito
Did you see there’s a national chain of Mexican restaurants that just shuttered their doors in the US after a failed expansion here? It was founded by two Australian men. I’m really curious what their interpretation is.
Very different to what you experience in the USA? or very different to what you’d experience in Mexico?
Most Mexican food in the USA is TexMex which is inspired, but fairly different, from actual Mexican food… same with Chinese food
I dont think most Mexican food in the US is tex-mex. Fast food like taco bell isnt tex-mex, and most taco trucks and takeout places aren’t. The main category of restaurant that seems to be largely tex-mex are sit-down places with names like “El Mariachi” that cater to non-hispanic people and advertise the cheapness of their margaritas.
Where are you basing that off and what regions? Like, I grew up working around the Statesian southwest. I had a good friend (a Mexican immigrant) when I lived in Austin, TX and I would gripe to her about not finding “real” Mexican food. She took me to a few places and then I cooked her tacos to show her what I meant. East Mexico and West Mexico (according to my friend) use entirely different salsas because of different availability of easy fresh ingredients. So I grew up eating baja style tacos, white people enchilada casserole (my mom made a good recipe what can I say. The salsa is tomato and The Duck), while she grew up with lots of butter and molé. So now our eating comprehension quiz: Q1) Which is better? A1) Fuck you they’re both delicious, I just prefer baja style tacos because it’s what I grew up with. I like Oaxaca style better than that. Imagine thinking Mexico was merely one region and one culture. Q2) Which is more authentic? A2) see A1.
Tex-Mex is “actual” Mexican food, the cuisine formed from the Tejanos and is older than either Texas or Mexico. Mexico is a big place with lots of regional variation. Most Mexican food that Americans are familiar with is from or inspired by stuff near the border (which makes sense) with a mix from all over the country like mole, birria, and tequila.
Preach, Soggy. I was fortunate I had a good friend who was patient and taught me this shit. The internet is usually not that kind, but fuck being unkind.
It is wild how much local cultural food is am invention of the past couple hundred years.
I have a family recipe that goes back hundreds of years, it doesnt look anything like people would consider a cultural food from western Europe and even then it uses tomatoes so it literally can’t be truly old.
Heck look at how the world makes pancakes. They are all the same just somehow mixed up based on loose info or available ingredients.
Cooking a nice meal is a modern invention. Before it was just food to not kill you.
Every good Greek restaurant I’ve ever been to had a kitchen full of Mexican cooks. Most of my favorite Chinese takeout places were run by Koreans. Folks cook food.
I mean, yeah, but the head chef and owner, she is still greek. Unfortunately for them I married someone who is not attached to the restaurant except emotionally, like me. or else I might try to get the restaurant Prussian monarchy style
Many of the Greek-owned Italian restaurants and diners in my are being transferred to Albanians, but the language in the kitchens is invariably Spanish.
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?
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.
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.
Both of those specifically are also found in Mexico, funnily enough.
I love maki sushi, but I think uramaki sushi is pretty shit. It just so happens that uramaki sushi was invented by a Japanese chef trying to trick Americans into eating seaweed, which they thought was gross. But I love seaweed and I think uramaki ruins it by hiding it behind the rice. So I prefer authentic sushi.
I’m just happy when they don’t add a ton of sugar to sushi. seriously, what the hell is that?
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
“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.