Unraveling Culinary Appropriation Part I
When is it Appropriate?
I have been wanting to write about culinary appropriation for a long time now. I think about it often, I talk about it often, I see it happen way too often. Culinary appropriation is a tricky slippery slope that can have its threshold crossed in a multitude of ways. Last year so many people and businesses were put on blast for appropriating cultural foods, recipes, and even identities to sell food or content. In Part I of this newsletter series, I’m going to dive into the most common form of cultural appropriation.
CULINARY APPROPRIATION: CULTURAL FOODS + RECIPES
Now, this goes without saying, but it is completely okay to cook and try recipes from another culture. Actually, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so! It’s fun, delicious, and can even be a great challenge to replicate recipes from other cultures that are not your own. It expands your palate, helps you see beyond your own front door, and can make you a better cook with practice. Heck, I do it ALL the time myself.
So if it’s okay to do this what are you getting at Natalie?
I want to help folks discern between appreciation and appropriation with some examples. Nothing that I’m going to say is spankin’ brand new information. There are dozens of great articles about it. My goal is always to educate others so they too can spot wrongdoings and make better choices.
Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric Controversy
This topic has been discussed at length and is quite exhausting so I won’t go in too deep, but there was a recipe by a famous New York Times food writer that went viral. She called her dish a “stew” and featured a recipe that heavily features South East Asian ingredients. The recipe took the internet by storm with her immense following recreating the dish and shouting from the proverbial Twitter rooftops that it was the best thing since sliced bread.
After the recipe raged hard in popularity for months many folks came forward claiming she had made a curry and was appropriating another culture’s food. The author came to her own defense of the recipe saying she did not make a curry and had never made a curry before. Here is why this is culinary appropriation:
Erasure of the origins of a dish by renaming it something altogether.
Denial of said erasure and doubling down on what you have appropriated.
Absorption of another culture’s food by Columbusing it as your own invention.
Disregarding people of said culture when they are trying to educate you.
Instead of being defensive about what her recipe really is, she could have taken it as a teachable moment. Sit back, listen and learn. She could have invited a person of that cultural heritage on to her platform to have a conversation. There are many BIPOC food writers who do not have the same amount of clout or access to writing outlets as she does. Sometimes allyship means saying you’re wrong and doing right by standing back and letting others take the reins.
Lucky Lee’s + Lucky Cricket Restaurants
Let’s start with Lucky Lee’s. Lucky Lee’s was a fast-casual sit-down restaurant in New York City that served Chinese American take out favorites like General Tso’s and lo mein. The twist was that the restaurant was started by a White nutritionist who touted the restaurant as clean Chinese food that is good for you. It incorporated all the buzzy wellness trends/words like gluten-free, unrefined ingredients, and clean eating. Many protested the restaurant’s tone-deaf marketing and overall concept. Here is why this is culinary appropriation:
Creating a business that exploits and vilifies another culture’s food. By stating that her version of the food was “clean” she was perpetuating the myth that Chinese American cuisine is unhealthy and dirty.
Using stereotypical tropes of an auspicious culture. Case in point the name of her restaurant. Her husband’s name is Lee, but wanting to drive the point that it’s a Chinese restaurant using the word Lucky which is a direct rip off of Asian culture in general. It’s exactly the reason why we don’t call the Lunar New Year the Chinese New Year. Many Asian countries participate and believe in certain cultural traditions that bring forth luck and good fortune.
What could she have done better? Perhaps before opening the restaurant sit down with an actual Chinese American chef to curate the menu and for overall advisement on the marketing. Make sure that she is not offending folks or appropriating, but appreciating.
Lucky Cricket was a similar situation in the Twin Cities. Renowned chef Andrew Zimmern started a 200-seat restaurant that was supposed to be “authentic” Chinese food. Zimmern had earlier shat on establishments like P.F. Changs in an interview for not supposedly serving higher-quality Chinese food so he said that was his reasoning for starting his own restaurant. Besides shit talking other restaurants for authenticity he also hired zero Chinese chefs to take the helm of the kitchen or to create so-called authentic dishes. Here is why this is culinary appropriation:
Claiming that you can create something better than the people who come from that culture and benefiting from it financially is a bold statement that continues a colonized narrative.
Disregarding people from that culture when they object to the culinary appropriation (the restaurant closed shortly after heavy criticism from local Asian chefs).
Haldi Ka Doodh
If you’ve never heard of haldi ka doodh it’s because you’ve probably heard of it touted as Golden Milk or a Turmeric Latte. The drink features turmeric, coconut milk, and sometimes additional spices. In recent years the wellness industry has zoned in on turmeric as a superfood that basically can be put into everything for its anti-inflammatory effects. Hipster coffeehouses and wellness playgrounds have banked on haldi ka doodh by changing its name and stripping any cultural associations to the drink. Here is why this is culinary appropriation:
Changing the name of a cultural dish or food to make White audiences comfortable is a form of colonialism.
Disregarding or erasing the historical and cultural origins of food is appropriation and a constant plight that BIPOC continually face when preserving their heritage.
These are all just a few instances where culinary appropriation has happened recently. Some questions I have for myself and others are:
As consumers how can we be allies to BIPOC communities?
How do we hold folks accountable for culinary appropriation when it happens?
What does culinary appropriation education look like in the long term?
In the next part of this series, I’ll be delving into how some have appropriated another culture’s identity to sell its food.