#6: Miso salmon burgers & yuzu cocktails: Collapsing Asian identity in the age of Asian infatuation
Author’s note: This first food essay for Ask a Hedonist went through many iterations. For many who know me, I’m the food lady. Food is a great vehicle for cultural analysis, and my career in restaurant marketing and experience with my political food blog (I still hold onto that period of niche internet fame) definitely fueled many debates about the culinary landscape. I feel equipped to write about this topic as someone intently observing its rapid evolution and as an Asian American with a foot in multiple cultures. Also, what’s more hedonistic than lucullan feasts? During Bacchanalia (the festival in honor of Bacchus, the god of wine and partying), in between rounds of dancing and sexual revelry they had to stop to indulge in good food, after all. I’d like to think some of those revelers paused to reflect upon the Human Project from time to time.
If you live in a metropolitan area in the United States and dine out semi-regularly, chances are you can easily navigate the menus of some of the most popular Asian cuisines. Namely: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese— and this is the case even if you’re dining at mostly “American” restaurants. Saag paneer, banh mi, and pad kee mao are as integrated into your vernacular as the lyrics to your favorite song at karaoke (another Asian cultural export). You don’t have to look far to find the likes of a miso salmon burger, general tso’s cauliflower, or yuzu cocktail in mainstream American cooking. The first major wave of Asian immigration to the U.S. was nearly two hundred years ago in the 19th century, so it’s unsurprising some Asian ingredients have found their way to fixture status on American tables.
Behind this cultural adoration, however, lies a paradox. While Asian exports like Korean skincare, yoga, anime, Bollywood, and many cuisines from across the continent are embraced, they are often removed from their cultural context and divorced from the people who created them. Asians in the West still battle the “perpetual foreigner” myth despite our long history here, despite the indelible cultural imprints we’ve made here.
We should be listening to the refrain of the movement to Stop Asian Hate in recent years— “Why don’t you love our people like you love our food?”
It’s been a long road to the time we’re in now, where sushi—literal raw fish and soy sauce over rice—is a typical weeknight meal for many Americans. We can trace this back to when post-WWII Japanese immigrants took sushi and made the more American friendly California roll, which didn’t have seaweed on the outside (considered inedible by many Americans at the time). Similarly, Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, drawn to restaurant work as a means for survival, adapted dishes like Hunanese fried chicken to suit local tastes. Watch the documentary The Search for General Tso for a great primer. The 2nd generation reshaped the presentation and audience of these cuisines and gave traditional dishes anglicized names and vegetarian alternatives, broadening the clientele.
We’ve now entered a time where Western palates are familiar enough with Asian flavors that chefs are melding culinary heritages more fluidly, creating 3rd culture identities and cuisines. It’s now less about assimilation and grafting “exotic” flavors onto core American dishes, and more about moving toward post-racial pluralism in food. Korean-American chef Roy Choi can turn kimchi topped short rib tacos into a huge street food craze while Mumbai-raised chef Floyd Cardoz can win Top Chef Masters with naan khatai spiced salmon. I have to shout out my friends at the restaurant The Monkey King, opened by two 2nd gen Brooklynites serving “third culture” Asian American food in Bushwick. Each new generation sees culture and identity as more fluid. While there is so much to celebrate with this advancement, the next phase of cross-cultural cooking warrants a thoughtful reckoning.
The list of non-Asian restaurateurs and chefs making Asian cuisine is long— some to great effect and others not so much. In this sphere there’s a debate with well-worn battle lines about who “owns” food traditions enough to peddle them. What’s the line between paying tribute to a cultural heritage and straight up appropriation? Some argue the right should be given only to those whose cultural background is rooted in the same place as the cuisine. By this logic, an ethnically Japanese person can reputably brew the country’s national beverage, but no one else. Should a Japanese-American person with no cultural context for sake have more authority by bloodline to brew it than a non-Japanese person who has carefully studied it? To answer yes can stifle innovation and creativity by locking out potential innovators and to answer no can ignore many unintended effects of co-opting another culture. The criteria is not so neat and straightforward.
The desire (mostly by 2nd/3rd gen immigrants) to safeguard their cultural heritage and cuisine is understandable. We have to reckon with how the food our immigrant families made was historically mocked as weird and smelly, maybe by the same people who now keep kimchi and fish sauce in their kitchen cabinets. Chef David Chang often laments how Asian ingredients are only viewed as legitimate and good (by the Western audience) now that white tastemakers deem them to be. These concerns around mockery and otherization remain well founded. Just a few years ago in 2019, a white woman opened a Chinese restaurant in New York’s West Village where she set out to serve “clean” Chinese food that wasn’t “too oily” and wouldn’t make people feel “bloated and icky.” With the name Lucky Lee’s, a logo with chopstick font, and decor with bamboo and jade, the whole enterprise reeked of arrogance, entitlement, and exoticism. She could’ve set out to create a healthy Chinese restaurant without bashing the original cuisine she is literally profiting off of. She should have used sensitivity in her language especially since Chinese restaurants have historically been labeled unsanitary and unhealthy. Did you know MSG got a bad rap because of xenophobia and flawed science? Instead, she labeled her restaurant superior to restaurants run by actual Asians and predictably, the internet fall out and lack of business forced her to shut down. We have to ask why so many in the West are taught that cultural foods from Asia, Africa, and South America are inherently unhealthy.
Another grievance from some purists is that our cultures are being mined for elements to literally spice up an otherwise bland dish, without regard to history, without crediting the originators. Problematic fave (my problematic fave, I love her) recipe developer Alison Roman really stepped in it when her recipe for a stew made with chickpeas, turmeric, and ginger became an internet sensation, and she simply called it “The Stew” something she came up with without paying any homage to what many argued was essentially Indian dahl. Not only was there cultural erasure at play here, but systemic advantages that allowed Alison Roman, a white woman with a big platform, to reap awards that many people of color without her privilege or access could not. This debacle prompted the New York Times to nix her column, and they’ve adjusted the description of the recipe on their website to a stew that evokes those “found in South India and parts of the Caribbean.” By all accounts her career has recovered, and you can consider me one of her many fans. Stewgate did highlight the problem with representing yourself as an authority without either researching the nuances of a cuisine or at least crediting the inspiration for these recipes. We should reflect on how established privilege can unconsciously otherize marginalized groups in insidious ways.
I regularly encounter restaurateurs taking Asian ingredients out of their cultural context to exoticize their menu. In fact I just deleted a paragraph in this post railing against one such business owner, because I think we might be becoming friends and they might read this post. If you think this is you, hi— I will probably call it out the next time we talk about your menu!
This is all to say— it’s personal for me. The West’s love affair with Asian cuisine feels like a fleeting and convenient trend that flattens vastly diverse culinary traditions into a monolith, much like is done with Asian people. It is convenient for self-proclaimed food connoisseurs🤮 to have a superficial understanding of Asian food, thinking vastly different cuisines, like Japanese and Thai food, are similar enough to be on the same menu. This reflects the same view that Japanese and Thai people might as well share the same culture in their eyes. I can’t tell you how many times someone’s said some version of “So are you Filipino or Korean?” to me. I’ll cop to delighting in the fact that someone this uninformed will likely have never heard of Myanmar, and can’t pull out their favorite line: “Oh I know all about your culture because I’ve tried name-your-dish!” Some well traveled people will still group cultures into one homogenous heap. Sneaky! Of course coming from a place of curiosity is acceptable, but I’m calling out those who come from a place of arrogance and all knowing.
This homogenization is rarely applied to European and Western cuisines. White Americans and their European ancestors will stress the importance of homage and provenance when it comes to regional specialties throughout Europe. A sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if produced in the Champagne wine region under the rules of the appellation. Wine, cheese, and olive oil will earn specific authenticity labels based on the terroir the ingredients were sourced from. Forget about ever conflating Greek and Italian food, or French and German food. If we can embrace how much Europeans care about preserving their culinary identities and distinguishing themselves from their neighbors, we should challenge this tendency to oversimplify and homogenize Asian cuisine and Asian people. Collapsing cultures strips them of their rich backgrounds that lend deeper meaning, both of the culture and of their people.
Lastly, going back to contending with chefs who represent the cuisines of cultures other than their own. How can they honor global cuisines without exploiting them? I really believe we should not stifle innovation by policing who gets to interpret a cuisine. Some of the most genius food creations were made by chefs utilizing ingredients not native to their own heritage. As chefs & restaurateurs participate in culinary traditions outside their lived experience, their many considerations should include:
Are they motivated by true curiosity and appreciation, or entitlement to another culture’s cuisine?
Do they understand the economic structures that lock out access and opportunity for less privileged groups?
Have they introspected on how their own background informs how they engage with this culture and cuisine?
Have they thoroughly researched the history, ingredients, and culture around the dishes they’re making?
Are they crediting the originators who laid the groundwork for future chefs to succeed in making these dishes?
As I wrote earlier, the criteria is not so neat and straightforward, but a great litmus test for determining if a chef is being respectful and not just hopping on a trend or appropriating is if a group of people from that culture would enjoy the food. One great recent example is Jerald Head, chef/owner of Mắm in Chinatown, who cooks food from Hanoi to a huge audience of Vietnamese customers who love his restaurant.
Delicious food should speak for itself, and a thriving food culture stays dynamic through outside influence and innovation. We can make space for those who want to honor traditions as much as we can make space for novel interpreters. The dialogue benefits all when more voices converge at the table.
Who qualifies as an “authority” is as complicated and layered as the phenomena of culture itself – where no litmus test overrides the fact that we live in a global, pluralistic society, and there’s no turning back from here.