Despite the headline, this article was mostly about restaurant ownership and the expectations that go along with it when it comes to ethnicity. Your comment here really doesn't add anything IMO,...
Despite the headline, this article was mostly about restaurant ownership and the expectations that go along with it when it comes to ethnicity. Your comment here really doesn't add anything IMO, hence why I have labeled it noise.
Ya, I read the article before I commented. Felt it was worth saying. 🤷 (in fact, I was gonna come back and make the distinction between chef/owner and line-cook/worker...but I went back to reading)
Ya, I read the article before I commented. Felt it was worth saying. 🤷
(in fact, I was gonna come back and make the distinction between chef/owner and line-cook/worker...but I went back to reading)
Eh. The premise of this article might ring true in the upper-class, expensive restaraunts where there's still a fair bit of racism floating about in the clientelle. But the best cuisine,...
Eh. The premise of this article might ring true in the upper-class, expensive restaraunts where there's still a fair bit of racism floating about in the clientelle.
But the best cuisine, regardless of race, comes from blending different flavor profiles from different cultures to make something new. It develops most frequently in lower and middle class households where neighborhoods are less segregated and more work needs to be done to make cheaper ingredients taste better.
Someday my family is going to vacation in Houston TX, where large immigrant populations from Korea and Vietnam are mixing their cusine with traditional southern cooking to make all new dishes.
My wife's family is Jewish...emphasis on the ish. They eat a lot of traditionally Jewish foods, as that's the foods her parents and grandparents ate when younger, but since they don't keep kosher at all, they often get blended in ways that traditional Jewish dishes wouldn't ...A BLT made with latkas...Matza Fry with Ham and Cheese.
She’d always reckoned that she could do things to a bit of beef that the bullock had never thought of. But now she realized that wasn’t cooking. Not compared to cooking in Genua. It was just staying alive as pleasantly as possible. Cooking anywhere outside Genua was just heating up things like bits of animals and birds and fish and vegetables until they went brown.
[...]
Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No one would even try a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.
I'm not trying to be rude here... I mean, I even agree, personally... but how is this relevant? If you're skeptical (or worse, dismissive) of the article like your first paragraph says, nothing...
But the best cuisine, regardless of race, comes from blending different flavor profiles from different cultures to make something new.
I'm not trying to be rude here... I mean, I even agree, personally... but how is this relevant? If you're skeptical (or worse, dismissive) of the article like your first paragraph says, nothing after it really explains why.
I'm not entirely sure myself, it was just what I was thinking about after I read the article. To attempt to tie it together a bit better: I guess it's that I think that these kinds of problems...
I'm not entirely sure myself, it was just what I was thinking about after I read the article.
To attempt to tie it together a bit better: I guess it's that I think that these kinds of problems stem mostly from the target audience and the reviewers that cater to that audience. Average folks don't eat at high-end restaurants much and most will likely never have a meal crafted by a professional chef. Ending bigotry has always been a bit of a bottom-up affair, and this isn't really any different. So maybe, if you don't want to fight the systemic racism in serving the upper-echelon of society, don't. Strike your own path and cater to the average folks who are far less likely to care about the origin story of the chef behind the meal. Somehow thousands upon thousands of local restaurants thrive in this country without having a celebrity name tied to them.
So I guess that brings me around to my followup paragraphs: Because high-end chefs don't have a monopoly on good food, that often the best foods originate not in a culinary training program and working in a high-end kitchen, that this really doesn't have anything to do with 'not being able to cook white food,' but more about the additional barriers to becoming a famous chef.
... but one of the additional barriers is 'not being able to cook white food.' Customers aren't willing to accept the chefs' food simply because of their preconceived notions of what the chefs...
... but one of the additional barriers is 'not being able to cook white food.' Customers aren't willing to accept the chefs' food simply because of their preconceived notions of what the chefs should be serving them, based only on their ethnicity.
It's ironic that your response to this situation is telling the chefs maybe they shouldn't aspire to do high-end cuisine. Do you not realize that people of color have been hearing "You know what, maybe you shouldn't aim so high" for decades? The only reason they're able today to be part of the thousands of restaurants you cite is from previous generations ignoring that type of advice.
Beyond that, I challenge your assertion that the 'upper-class clientele' at haute cuisine are more racist than somehow more-enlightened lower and middle-class folks. I don't know what you're basing that on, aside from possibly your integrated neighborhoods comment. That doesn't even hold much water, because it's usually the immigrant population that starts experimenting and modifying their food, either to cater to American tastes or because they have to substitute for available ingredients. They eventually get accepted by wider society by trying to fit the American template; it's not that Americans start discovering these new ingredients in immigrant markets and integrate them into American cuisine, or that Americans see this incoming foreign culture and by and large make efforts to accept and understand it. Besides, the foodies who are the ones who really follow the food scene in any given town aren't all the aristocracy. Middle-class people go to nice restaurants too. If anything, the difference between the clientele in high-end restaurants and the ones catering to the 'average customer' is more that they are seeking two different experiences. To identify customers' biases as systemic racism and yet assume that it's effects are going to be limited to a privileged elite is contradictory.
Now, to be fair, I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the background of the chef/cooks when you go to a restaurant, especially one that specializes in regional cuisine. I'm someone that HATES paying for bad food. Of course I'm gonna be skeptical if I go to the Ethiopian spot and I see the chef is Korean, because that's telling me they likely didn't grow up with those flavors, those ingredients. They probably didn't have 20 years' worth of experience of that cuisine before they even started culinary school. Still, ethnic background is only one aspect of a person's background, so we can't judge the book simply from its cover. @krg already alluded to it, but if you go into hundreds of restaurants across the country, the kitchen might be making sushi during service, but it's playing some classic Norteñas during prep.
Non-white immigrants and first-gen Americans are the backbone of the restaurant industry in the US. Regardless of your or my personal opinion as to the best type of cuisine, if we believe what we often preach about American ideals, there's no justification for consumer bias to enforce this type of ignorance:
Unfortunately, the media and customers expect a certain amount of “ethnic-ness” from chefs of color—no matter what kind of food they are cooking. But it’s very much a Goldilocks problem. If the food is too white or too brown, it will not sell. It has to be just the right level of “ethnic.”
Sounds like you might like this cookbook: Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. It was mentioned in the author's notes of a book I read recently where the protagonist was a Jewish...
Sounds like you might like this cookbook: Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. It was mentioned in the author's notes of a book I read recently where the protagonist was a Jewish woman who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina.
Not to invalidate what this article is saying, but I'm curious how people would determine a chef's race? I don't think I've ever even seen/met the chef of a restaurant, even in ones I've gone to...
Not to invalidate what this article is saying, but I'm curious how people would determine a chef's race? I don't think I've ever even seen/met the chef of a restaurant, even in ones I've gone to frequently.
It's more of an expectation at higher-end restaurants. I pretty much exclusively eat at <=$$ places, so not an idea I'm super-familiar with (though I've watched my fair share of Top Chef). Kinda...
It's more of an expectation at higher-end restaurants. I pretty much exclusively eat at <=$$ places, so not an idea I'm super-familiar with (though I've watched my fair share of Top Chef).
Kinda like...knowing the director of a movie vs. knowing the director of a television episode.
What is problematic here? Are they saying that they portrayed the restaurant as an Asian or Asian-fusion restaurant when the owner was clearly going for a mostly Italian concept, or rather that...
"But he [Dale Talde, a Filipino chef] still faced a frustrating slant in coverage when he opened Massoni [his new Italian concept]. All the stories about the restaurant didn’t focus on the fact that he was making Italian staples like spaghetti and meatballs, but instead focused on dishes that featured the use of Asian ingredients, like the arancini made with biryani (a baked-rice dish popular in South Asia) and gnocchi made with gochujang, a fermented Korean hot sauce."
What is problematic here? Are they saying that they portrayed the restaurant as an Asian or Asian-fusion restaurant when the owner was clearly going for a mostly Italian concept, or rather that they called it an Italian restaurant and focused their reviews on the unexpected additions to the menu? Because, I feel like those additions to the menu of an Italian restaurant are note-worthy regardless of the race of the owner. I have not read the articles in question, so I do not know if they linked the race of the chef with the influences on the food, but just the description given in this article doesn't immediately sound racist to me.
Though, I'd be happy to hear other opinions and interpretations!
In England we have a programme called "Masterchef the professionals". You'll see some of those chefs being pushed into pigeon holes when they're clearly trying to break out of them. Chefs with...
In England we have a programme called "Masterchef the professionals".
The original article was excellent, and eye opening, but I found this one a bit sensationalised - not least because it seems more like Twitter being offended on his behalf than something he's said...
The original article was excellent, and eye opening, but I found this one a bit sensationalised - not least because it seems more like Twitter being offended on his behalf than something he's said himself.
In the context of the show, Arbinder had already chosen to do quite a few Indian influenced dishes. He even described this one as "spiced". That seems like reasonable territory to judge him against expectations set by his own food. It would have been a whole different situation if he'd come in presenting himself as a French classical chef and still had the same comments; perhaps he would have done, and that's a serious problem, but it doesn't seem like what happened here.
That said, there's definitely space to ask the question raised by the first article: did he have the opportunity to develop his career in other cooking styles? Did he want to? I'd be genuinely interested to know his own take on this.
Brown people are cooking "white" food* in kitchens all across America.
* and pretty much every other cuisine.
Despite the headline, this article was mostly about restaurant ownership and the expectations that go along with it when it comes to ethnicity. Your comment here really doesn't add anything IMO, hence why I have labeled it noise.
Ya, I read the article before I commented. Felt it was worth saying. 🤷
(in fact, I was gonna come back and make the distinction between chef/owner and line-cook/worker...but I went back to reading)
Eh. The premise of this article might ring true in the upper-class, expensive restaraunts where there's still a fair bit of racism floating about in the clientelle.
But the best cuisine, regardless of race, comes from blending different flavor profiles from different cultures to make something new. It develops most frequently in lower and middle class households where neighborhoods are less segregated and more work needs to be done to make cheaper ingredients taste better.
Someday my family is going to vacation in Houston TX, where large immigrant populations from Korea and Vietnam are mixing their cusine with traditional southern cooking to make all new dishes.
My wife's family is Jewish...emphasis on the ish. They eat a lot of traditionally Jewish foods, as that's the foods her parents and grandparents ate when younger, but since they don't keep kosher at all, they often get blended in ways that traditional Jewish dishes wouldn't ...A BLT made with latkas...Matza Fry with Ham and Cheese.
I'm not trying to be rude here... I mean, I even agree, personally... but how is this relevant? If you're skeptical (or worse, dismissive) of the article like your first paragraph says, nothing after it really explains why.
I'm not entirely sure myself, it was just what I was thinking about after I read the article.
To attempt to tie it together a bit better: I guess it's that I think that these kinds of problems stem mostly from the target audience and the reviewers that cater to that audience. Average folks don't eat at high-end restaurants much and most will likely never have a meal crafted by a professional chef. Ending bigotry has always been a bit of a bottom-up affair, and this isn't really any different. So maybe, if you don't want to fight the systemic racism in serving the upper-echelon of society, don't. Strike your own path and cater to the average folks who are far less likely to care about the origin story of the chef behind the meal. Somehow thousands upon thousands of local restaurants thrive in this country without having a celebrity name tied to them.
So I guess that brings me around to my followup paragraphs: Because high-end chefs don't have a monopoly on good food, that often the best foods originate not in a culinary training program and working in a high-end kitchen, that this really doesn't have anything to do with 'not being able to cook white food,' but more about the additional barriers to becoming a famous chef.
... but one of the additional barriers is 'not being able to cook white food.' Customers aren't willing to accept the chefs' food simply because of their preconceived notions of what the chefs should be serving them, based only on their ethnicity.
It's ironic that your response to this situation is telling the chefs maybe they shouldn't aspire to do high-end cuisine. Do you not realize that people of color have been hearing "You know what, maybe you shouldn't aim so high" for decades? The only reason they're able today to be part of the thousands of restaurants you cite is from previous generations ignoring that type of advice.
Beyond that, I challenge your assertion that the 'upper-class clientele' at haute cuisine are more racist than somehow more-enlightened lower and middle-class folks. I don't know what you're basing that on, aside from possibly your integrated neighborhoods comment. That doesn't even hold much water, because it's usually the immigrant population that starts experimenting and modifying their food, either to cater to American tastes or because they have to substitute for available ingredients. They eventually get accepted by wider society by trying to fit the American template; it's not that Americans start discovering these new ingredients in immigrant markets and integrate them into American cuisine, or that Americans see this incoming foreign culture and by and large make efforts to accept and understand it. Besides, the foodies who are the ones who really follow the food scene in any given town aren't all the aristocracy. Middle-class people go to nice restaurants too. If anything, the difference between the clientele in high-end restaurants and the ones catering to the 'average customer' is more that they are seeking two different experiences. To identify customers' biases as systemic racism and yet assume that it's effects are going to be limited to a privileged elite is contradictory.
Now, to be fair, I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the background of the chef/cooks when you go to a restaurant, especially one that specializes in regional cuisine. I'm someone that HATES paying for bad food. Of course I'm gonna be skeptical if I go to the Ethiopian spot and I see the chef is Korean, because that's telling me they likely didn't grow up with those flavors, those ingredients. They probably didn't have 20 years' worth of experience of that cuisine before they even started culinary school. Still, ethnic background is only one aspect of a person's background, so we can't judge the book simply from its cover. @krg already alluded to it, but if you go into hundreds of restaurants across the country, the kitchen might be making sushi during service, but it's playing some classic Norteñas during prep.
Non-white immigrants and first-gen Americans are the backbone of the restaurant industry in the US. Regardless of your or my personal opinion as to the best type of cuisine, if we believe what we often preach about American ideals, there's no justification for consumer bias to enforce this type of ignorance:
Sounds like you might like this cookbook: Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. It was mentioned in the author's notes of a book I read recently where the protagonist was a Jewish woman who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina.
Not to invalidate what this article is saying, but I'm curious how people would determine a chef's race? I don't think I've ever even seen/met the chef of a restaurant, even in ones I've gone to frequently.
It's more of an expectation at higher-end restaurants. I pretty much exclusively eat at <=$$ places, so not an idea I'm super-familiar with (though I've watched my fair share of Top Chef).
Kinda like...knowing the director of a movie vs. knowing the director of a television episode.
What is problematic here? Are they saying that they portrayed the restaurant as an Asian or Asian-fusion restaurant when the owner was clearly going for a mostly Italian concept, or rather that they called it an Italian restaurant and focused their reviews on the unexpected additions to the menu? Because, I feel like those additions to the menu of an Italian restaurant are note-worthy regardless of the race of the owner. I have not read the articles in question, so I do not know if they linked the race of the chef with the influences on the food, but just the description given in this article doesn't immediately sound racist to me.
Though, I'd be happy to hear other opinions and interpretations!
In England we have a programme called "Masterchef the professionals".
You'll see some of those chefs being pushed into pigeon holes when they're clearly trying to break out of them. Chefs with Indian heritage are often told to "use more spice!" even in dishes that are not spicy-hot dishes. https://intercontinentalnews.com/masterchef-the-professionals-judge-gregg-wallace-slammed-for-stereotyping-asian-chef/
If he likes spiced food he should be making those comments to everybody, not just a racially profiled subset.
The original article was excellent, and eye opening, but I found this one a bit sensationalised - not least because it seems more like Twitter being offended on his behalf than something he's said himself.
In the context of the show, Arbinder had already chosen to do quite a few Indian influenced dishes. He even described this one as "spiced". That seems like reasonable territory to judge him against expectations set by his own food. It would have been a whole different situation if he'd come in presenting himself as a French classical chef and still had the same comments; perhaps he would have done, and that's a serious problem, but it doesn't seem like what happened here.
That said, there's definitely space to ask the question raised by the first article: did he have the opportunity to develop his career in other cooking styles? Did he want to? I'd be genuinely interested to know his own take on this.