Ethnic Food - It’s All About Taste Sep 18 '06 (Updated Sep 22 '06)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Mildred D. Taylor - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Literature Unit From $8 Olivier Dunrea - Ollie From $7 The Bottom Line Ethnic diversity makes this country great and makes the culinary landscape far less boring. Authentic ethnic cuisine shows the true flavors of the world. Often when I review an ethnic restaurant I talk about wanting to find ‘authentic’ ethnic foods. I’ve tried to explain what I mean by ‘authentic’ and why it is so important to me but I still occasionally run into someone who doesn’t get my point. I even had a disgruntled sushi bar owner/worker who became so upset with a 3 out of 5 rating of their restaurant that they started attacking all of my other sushi bar reviews in somewhat psychotic fashion. Rather than continue to try and explain myself in every review from now on I decided to write this article and just reference it in my reviews. If you already know me and know how I feel about ethnic food than you probably don’t need to read this but if not I hope it gives you an idea as to why I say the things I say. What’s to love about ethnic cuisine? I have always been interested in other cultures and countries and if I won the lottery tomorrow I would spend a great deal of the winnings traveling the globe. When I do travel I always seek to experience a small taste of local life. I don’t think much can be learned dining in tourist hotels or traveling around in tour buses. Yeah, sure you can visit a few tourist spots like museums but will you come away from your visit knowing much if anything about the people who live in the country you’re visiting? I remember working with people from the UK in Thailand who were astounded that I ate Thai food almost every day. To them it was inconceivable to forgo potatoes for rice and the thought of eating Thai food more than a few times a week was out of the question. They would invariably seek out tourist restaurants serving Western fare and while I was eating curry for breakfast with the locals they were eating bacon and eggs. I never understood why they even bothered to live in Thailand to begin with. Few learned much if any of the language. Most weren’t really interested in the culture, customs, or history of the Thais. I doubt that any but a small handful left Thailand knowing anything about the country where they had spent six months or a year of their lives. Not to single out just the UK. I did see this with other Westerners as well but it seemed to be most pervasive among the Brits. Using Thailand as an example, I spent my time there trying to immerse myself in Thai culture and in doing so an amazing thing happened. Doors to new experiences opened everywhere and the generosity of the Thais in sharing their traditions and lives with me was heartwarming. It is a humbling experience being the only non-Thai at a large party or a funeral. Yes, that’s right, funeral. Thai funerals are quite amazing affairs that can last for days and involve both a religious aspect as well as a huge party that can run through more than a day. Along with seeing this side of Thai culture that normally was beyond the view of tourists I experienced a huge variety of Thai cuisine that you won’t find in tourist hotels and restaurants. From the ‘khanom jiin’ or Chinese noodles at the local open air market to ‘yum nem’ or pickled pork skin salad from the motorcycle cart vendor I got to see what Thais really eat. I actually grew to enjoy rice soup or curry for breakfast. Although not all dishes were to my liking, ‘pla raa’ or fermented fish is a taste I never acquired, I’m glad at least that I tried them. I also learned two certainties about Thai food. Real Thai food is an amazingly diverse cuisine which, not unlike Italian food, varies greatly from region to region. The second thing I learned is that most Thai food in the US bears only a small resemblance to the original in Thailand. Now I’m not opposed to eating Westernized Thai food if it is done well, but I much prefer the bold tastes of authentic Thai food that can only be found in the few restaurants catering to the Thai community. Is it really Americanized? Whether the ethnic food you're eating is 'Americanized' or not really depends on a number of factors. Some cuisines such as many Asian cuisines tend to be 'Americanized' if the target audience is more American than Asian. A perfect example of this are the thousands of strip-mall Chinese restaurants dotting the American landscape whose customers are mostly non-Chinese. Besides adjusting recipes for American tastes most menus contain a number of items that originated in the US, for American audiences. Egg rolls may be a distant cousin of the Chinese dim sum spring rolls, but the egg roll as we know it wholly American. Crab rangoon is not an invention of some Hong Kong dim sum shop but a 1930's product of Trader Vic's, again American. The list goes on and on, General Tso's chicken (American), Orange Flavor whatever (American), and pretty much any other dish in a sweet syrupy sauce. And it's not just Chinese food. A great many Thai restaurants serve Chinese-American appetizers or even entrees to appeal to new diners familiar with Chinese food. I can't even begin to count how many Thai restaurants feature crab rangoon. Although some dishes just don't exist in the restaurant's home country many dishes are simply adjusted to American palates. The biggest trend seems to be to sweeten things alla the General Tso's chicken. It seems there is the perception among many Asian restaurateurs that Americans love sweet food. It is rare that I eat at a Thai restaurant where the pad thai, curries, or other dishes aren't far sweeter than the originals in Thailand. Unless the restaurant has a large Thai clientele don't expect to really be tasting true Thai flavors. Even sushi has been Americanized with the introduction of avocado in California rolls, cream cheese in far too many rolls, and Thai Sri Racha chili sauce added to mayo for spicy rolls. The funny thing about this particular trend is that many of these American ingredients are finding there way back to Japan. Oh no, it's spreading. So how do you find a restaurant that offers dishes flavored to native tastes? When in Rome – Look For Romans One of the truisms of ethnic dining that I’ve been aware of for most of my life is that it is always a good sign when dining in an ethnic restaurant to see people of that ethnicity dining there as well. I want to dine in a Chinese restaurant full of Chinese families or a Mexican restaurant full of Mexican patrons. Why does this matter? The answer to that question should be obvious. People of any ethnic group should by definition be experts at how that food should taste. I’ve rarely been disappointed when dining in a restaurant with a large following within its ethnic community. Conversely a restaurant that never has patrons from their own ethnic group is usually not a good sign. In the Tampa Bay area we have hundreds of Chinese restaurants and very few have a following among the local Chinese community. The ones that do, several of which I have reviewed, are head and shoulders above the local strip mall places that dot the highways. Anyone Can Learn to Make Any Cuisine – Right? Certainly anyone with enough skill in cooking can learn to prepare food from another ethnicity. Bobby Flay is a New Yorker of Irish decent but I don’t think too many people would doubt his skill at Southwest cuisine. The same with Emeril Legasse who grew up in a Portuguese community in Massachusetts yet learned to excel at New Orleans Creole cooking. Here in Tampa we have Chris Ponte, who shares Emeril’s Massachusetts Portuguese background yet graduated number one in his class at Paris’ Cordon Bleu cooking school outdoing the French at French cuisine. So what do these three chefs have in common? They are all outstanding chefs first and foremost, and took the time to properly learn their cuisine of choice. But how many chefs among the thousands in the US are at this level of expertise with the cuisine of an ethnicity not their own? In my experience very few. It makes sense that someone who grew up eating a specific cuisine would be better able to prepare that cuisine authentically than someone who learns to prepare it second hand. Over the course a their lifetime a chef will have developed a palate for the cuisine of their country even before they learn to cook. On the other hand someone who learns to cook the food of another ethnicity has to try and remember how it is supposed to taste. Even after having lived in Thailand for a couple of years I still forget how some things are supposed to taste. One of my favorite dishes is ‘Tom Kar Gai’ or chicken coconut soup flavored with lime and galangal. Often shortcuts are taken in US Thai restaurants such as using ‘Tom Yum’ paste instead of the correct ingredients. Yes, it saves time and avoids having to source hard to find and costly ingredients. But it doesn’t taste the same or even nearly as good as the real thing. It isn’t until I stumble on to a restaurant that prepares it the right way that I remember just how wonderful this soup is when done right. Another example is sushi. In the Tampa Bay area the vast majority of sushi bars are owned and operated by non-Japanese. Mostly the chefs are of Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese, or Korean backgrounds. Unfortunately many of my fellow countrymen have trouble telling one Asian group from another. And don’t even ask them to find an Asian country on a world map aside from maybe China. And for many of these diners they have never experienced authentic sushi so they don’t know any better. I too started to forget how truly wonderful authentic sushi was after six years of eating Bay area sushi until one day when I discovered one of the few Japanese owned places, Kaisen. Suddenly I remembered why I fell in love with sushi some thirty years ago and once again it shot back to number one position on my list of favorite foods. Since that time three years ago I have eaten sushi at one or another of my favorite sushi bars at least once a week. Is Sushi Really That Hard to Make? Sushi is a pretty unique food in that it appears very easy to make but is, in reality, very hard to master. I’ve said before that sushi has become the get rich quick scheme for many non-Japanese, Asian restaurant owners in the Tampa Bay area. This statement was met with anger by at least one non-Japanese sushi bar owner. The reason I said what I said is personal experience. I have a large number of friends among the local Thai and Lao communities, many of whom are either chefs or restaurant owners. I’ve had more people than I would care to count tell me they wanted to either open up a sushi bar or add one to their existing Thai restaurant because they perceived the work as easier and more profitable. Working in either a Thai, Chinese, or Vietnamese restaurant is extremely hard work. Often these restaurants are open 7 days a week and many don’t close between lunch and dinner. From a chef’s perspective they also don’t pay very well for the number of hours they are required to work. Certainly the prospect of working in a sushi bar that is only open 5 or 6 days a week, many only for dinner is far more preferable to spending 70 or more hours a week in a very hot kitchen. As result the vast majority of sushi bars are not Japanese owned or operated. So how does this affect quality? Lets start by looking at what it traditionally takes to become a sushi chef in Japan. Traditionally most sushi chefs start out while still in their teens and begin work by doing the grunt work like cleaning the floors until they are deemed worthy of teaching. At this point they are first taught how to make proper sushi rice and might spend a year or more doing nothing but make rice. When they are experts at making proper rice they are taught how to select the best seafood and how to properly clean it and prepare it for the chef. Again they will likely spend several years doing nothing but select and prepare fish before ever being allowed to make sushi for a customer. By the time they do serve their first customer they are truly experts at what they do and the food they produce reflects this dedication. In contrast most of the non-Japanese sushi chefs I know in the Tampa Bay area learned to make sushi on the job, for customers, from someone who was never traditionally trained and likely learned in the same manor. Although these chefs may know a good fish from bad one in terms of grilling or frying they in no way have the level of skill in selecting sushi grade fish or how to properly prepare it that a traditionally trained Japanese chef has. Often what I see at these places are large chunks of improperly cut, probably not sushi grade fish. The logic is that quantity is more important than quality. Another trick seems to be to use cream cheese or spicy mayo in just about every ‘specialty’ roll. I like spicy mayo, but not in everything. To me the epitome of sushi skill is displayed in the simple act of presenting perfectly cut, superior grade nigiri sushi. Both Kaisen and Shiki are great examples of places where the chefs let the fish do the talking. I won't even bother with American buffets that feel the need to add sushi to the offerings as this is almost always of inferior quality. And supermarket sushi is just a bad idea no matter how you look at it. Trust me, the fish in your supermarket sushi won't exactly resemble sushi grade fish. Summary One of things that is so great about living in the US is the diversity of ethnic cuisines available in most metropolitan areas. Without a plane ticket or long flight you can sample the flavor and culture of some far off place. What a boring world this would be if we only ate pot roast or meatloaf. I always feel sorry for people who refuse to try other foods or are afraid to try something new. What a world of possibilities they are missing. Personally I tend to like Asian cuisines the most and eat Japanese, Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese food almost every week. Throw in the odd trip to my favorite Korean or Indian restaurant and I’m pretty happy. Add to that mix some great Mexican restaurants and occasionally Greek, Italian, German, or French restaurants and I’ve got enough to be my palate busy. Of course we also have several South American restaurants cropping up to add spice to the mix. And for the most part if I follow my two basic rules, look for a chef from that country and try to find restaurants with customers of that ethnic group, I can’t go wrong in my search for truly authentic, tasty ethnic cuisine. A side benefit of seeking out the truly authentic is that many restaurants serving local immigrant communities are some of the most affordable besides being delicious. I know not everyone agrees with me or puts as much emphasis on authenticity as I do but hey, that's just me. In short my P.O.V. (point of view) is like this: Taco Bell bad - Real Mexican Taqueria good Asian Buffet bad - Authentic Asian food made in a one cuisine kitchen good Papa Johns, Dominos, etc bad - Mom & Pop pizzeria making it the old fashioned way using homemade ingredients good Strip mall Chinese places with pictures for menus and no Chinese customers very bad - Place that serves dim sum or Hong Kong style seafood from live tanks and is filled with Chinese families very, very good. Sushi bar with some guy who was trained by another guy who never had real Japanese training and thinks all sushi is better with cream cheese just plain awful - traditionally trained sushi chef who can pick out the perfect fish among several dozen and understands that it is the rice and the fish that make outstanding sushi, simply outstanding. Does this make sense to anyone besides me? Anyway, now you know how I feel about ethnic cuisine and why I say what I say. By the way if you haven't tried these dishes put them on your culinary to do list: Greek Lamb Shank with orzo, can you say Oopa? Traditionally made nigiri sushi with real honwasabi - my current favorites are otoro (super premium fatty tuna), salmon toro, and hotategai. Hong Kong style dim sum, this is what steamers were really made for. Made from scratch Mexican mole, and no it doesn't have to be the chocolate variety there are hundreds of different kinds. Traditionally made Thai tom kar gai soup with pieces of lemongrass, galangal, kafir lime leaves, and prik kee noo chilies floating around. Vietnamese pho noodle soup, never has noodle soup reached such a level of richness and flavor than in the hands of a well trained Vietnamese chef. When made authentically these dishes are some of most wonderful tastes of the world one can experience. Of course there are hundreds of other examples and when I find them I'll let you know.

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