In the 1970s there was a Chinese restaurant near where I lived that served a dish they called sweet and sour pork. It was the colour of David Dickinson, and tasted of a cross between Tizer and orange-flavoured Nurofen. Naturally, being a kid, I thought it was brilliant. Doubtless anybody with a detailed knowledge of Cantonese food would have raised an eyebrow. What I suspect they wouldn’t have done is flown into a spittle-flecked rage at the way a culinary tradition was being traduced, and bellowed “cultural appropriation” at the chef. Not least because back then we didn’t know what cultural appropriation was.
Oh, for those lost days of innocence. Last year, students at the impeccably liberal Oberlin College in Ohio protested about the dismal food in the student canteen. They claimed poor versions of dishes from Vietnam and Japan were “culturally insensitive”. Apparently they were making banh mi with ciabatta rather than baguette. The sushi rice was undercooked. “If people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic’, it is appropriative,” one furious Japanese student told the New York Daily Post. Last month, a similar row flared when the website Food Republic credited a young white chef with launching a craze for Nashville “hot chicken”, fried chicken with a cayenne-boosted sauce. Furious critics pointed out that he hadn’t launched anything; that it was a venerable African-American dish which he had “appropriated”.
Oh dear. The whole argument is based on the notion that there’s such a thing as a correct way to make a dish and that a group owns the “authentic” version. In truth, there is never just one way to cook something. There is only good food and bad food. A country or ethnic group can take pride in their culinary traditions but the fact there are different versions cooked by others doesn’t diminish those original dishes.
Nobody ever accused the Japanese of cultural appropriation for nicking tempura from the Portuguese in the 16th century. The Vietnamese banh mi sandwich is only made with a baguette because the French were the colonial power. If it had been the Italians it could have been ciabatta. Except, of course, it couldn’t, because that authentically Italian loaf was only invented in 1982.
Of course, all of these geographical interplays lead to new dishes. We all know that chicken tikka masala was invented in the UK – maybe Glasgow, possibly Bradford; let’s not get involved – but is now available in restaurants in India. So is it British or Indian? And does it matter?
Call me an idiot, but I suspect the dishes of India, Japan, Vietnam and the rest are robust enough to survive the efforts of less than expert cooks from somewhere else. Indeed, I’d go further. There’s a lot to be said for experiencing crappy versions of food before you get to the good stuff. It makes the moment of realisation so very much better. And, sometimes when it’s late, and I’m deep down the bottom of the second bottle, there really is no substitute for sweet and sour pork the colour of a television auctioneer. Judge me at your peril.
