A Menu for Interethnic Dynamics
“Seadrift” resolves on an optimistic, yet ambivalent note. The film’s sweet-and-sour assortment of closing scenes features a series of interviews featuring White and Vietnamese townsfolk struggling to comprehend the senseless animosity they harbored towards each other in years past, with clips of the former foes enjoying Vietnamese New Year festivities together sprinkled throughout.
One of the most resonant sequences (pictured above) depicts a resident lamenting over the lack of an intervention or community-building initiatives, which is overlaid by a depiction of a hot pot feast shared by Seadrift townsfolk of all ages and ethnicities. Here, the meal is more than a means for satiation; it evokes the mutual desires of both communities to heal from the wounds of their past and coexist peacefully through a reconciliatory meal.
The scene serves as a point of departure for my exploration into the sociological significance of culinary exchanges between different ethnic groups. With this digital exhibit, my goal is to create a comprehensive “menu” for these interactions, which will contain five media objects in the form of dishes that represent distinct intercultural culinary exchanges.
Discourses on the relationship between food and cultural interactions are rooted in studies on symbolic interaction, which utilizes a dramaturgical framework to reposition and examine culinary exchanges as performances. The preparation, rituals and presentations of food symbolically demonstrate social interactions within cultural politics to an audience such as repaying debts, expressing gratitude and establishing solidarity¹. Specifically, there are three points of intersection between food and performances. The first is that both culinary and performative arts require active preparation and presentation², whether it is through cooking and serving a meal or rehearsing and showcasing an act. The second intersection involves the importance of well-established traditions and norms to be upheld in both cooking and performing³, such as eating certain dishes with particular utensils or bowing after a performance. While the first two parallels are only tangentially related to my inquiries, the third parallel serves as a core theoretical underpinning for my digital exhibit. Like performances, the most theatrically resonant culinary exchanges invite their participants to exercise discernment, evaluation and appreciation⁴. Along these lines, I will explore the ways in which participants of such exchanges imbue meaning in the culinary medium to perform underlying inter-ethnic dynamics.
Food as a Performance
Today’s Specials
2. Char siu pork
This soul food and Cantonese-style barbeque-inspired dish was offered at the Black and Asian Solidarity Supper. Tu David Phu and Nelson German, pair of Top chef alumni, joined forces with the goal of uniting Asian and African American community members using fusion cuisine. The collaboration resulted in a 7-course meal containing dishes that incorporate elements of both cultures. Some other dishes offered at the dinner include pepper pot chicken to garlic truffle noodles. This intercultural feast fostered an environment that enabled the two communities to “break bread together as different cultures” and “show the love.”⁷
1. Beef ho fun
This dish is one of Clarence Kwan’s “Chinese Protest Recipes.” The Chinese-Canadian Chef created a pamphlet containing a series of recipes with with politically charged titles like “A.C.A.B crabs” and “F.T.P fried rice” in the wake of the racial reckonings of the Black Lives Matter Stop Asian Hate movements to ally himself with the African Americans and push back against their white oppressors. Kwan utilizes food as a means of “personal expression” and “reclaiming power” over a medium that has been historically “used as a political weapon against BIPOC folks,”⁵ while offering a savory dissection of “your own biases and how you interact with other communities and how you interact with other people through the food itself and how you vote with your dining dollar.”⁶
3. Rotis
With the opening of a South Asian grocery store in Halfmoon, New York, Rotis are finally one of the many dishes that immigrants can enjoy in the comfort of their own homes. “It’s like our country,”⁸ one patron told the Times Union upon marveling at the store’s diverse stock of goods, which range from “ingredients for meals from Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as India”⁹ to “some items popular throughout the Middle East.”¹⁰ Especially when they are so far from culturally diverse metropolitan areas, an ethnic supermarket is able to create “a community”¹¹ for the town’s South Asian and Middle Eastern population.
4. Chop Suey
This dish is a staple at Chinese restaurants, which are oftentimes frequented by Jewish Americans on Christmas Day. This centuries-old tradition can be traced back to the late 19th century on the Lower East Side of New York City, where both Jewish and Chinese immigrants settled at the time. Chinese restaurants were the establishment of choice for Jewish immigrants not only because the restaurants remained open on Christian holidays, but also because they offered a “safe treyf” environment that served dishes with familiar ingredients to Eastern European palettes such as “onions, garlic and vegetables.” ¹²
5. Halal burger
French fast-food chain Quick’s introduction of a Halal burger on its menu in 2009 sparked one of the largest culinary controversies in recent memory, raising questions about “how much society should accommodate [to] Muslim traditions” and “what it means to be French.”¹³ Quick’s newly introduced menu item garnered fierce backlash from various media sources, with commentators from all sides of the spectrum arguing that the item’s inclusion is racist towards other cultures¹⁴. A study on the media framings of media reactions to a Halal hamburger introduced on the menu of the fast-food chain Quick to accommodate for Muslim diets found that 58 out of the 98 responses examined were in opposition of its inclusion¹⁵.
1. Beef Ho Fun-------------------------------------------------------Chinese protest recipes
Asian Americans and African Americans communities have a very complex and historically strained relationship. The Hmong people, in specific, served as “agents of state violence” when they were recruited by the U.S. government to serve as “proxy soldiers” during the Vietnam War¹⁶. But when this role was reprised with Hmong American Tou Thou’s involvement in George Floyd’s murder, the Asian American community refused to rally behind the systems of oppression they once served, expressing support for the African American community instead. This decision is rooted in the principle of accompliceship, which holds that their collaboration is rooted in an “abandonment of self-interest” for a collective interest of “liberation and justice”¹⁷. The performative significance of Kwan’s “Chinese Protest Recipes” does not lie in the physical dishes themselves. Rather, his recipes utilize the culinary medium as a vehicle for accompliceship by explicitly interweaving pro-Black Lives Matter messaging in Chinese recipes to raise awareness for the social injustices facing another allied minority group. His brand of culinary accompliceship is encapsulated by the panel displayed above from the pamphlet, which reads: “WHEN BLACK PEOPLE WIN, WE WIN.”
A panel from the “Chinese Protest Recipes” reads: “WHEN BLACK PEOPLE WIN, WE WIN”
2. Char Siu Pork-------------------------------Black and Asian solidarity supper
Similar to the “Chinese Protest Recipes,” the Black and Asian Solidarity Supper is also geared towards strengthening the relationship between the two communities. However, the primary distinction is that the performative capacities of the Solidarity Supper are centered around the creation of the meals. Fusion cuisine is characterized as “a style of cooking combining techniques and ingredients from different foodspheres” in order to create “innovative and seamless dishes.”¹⁸ Crafting novel and unique dishes with the combined efforts of two cultures perform the constructive potential of complete solidarity and collaboration between the Asian American and African American communities. The dishes served are also crafted to blur racial divisions, with Chef Phu noting that “the beauty”¹⁹ of the collaboration is being able to taste the dishes without being able to distinguish the chef or culture it originated from. The supper uses fusion cuisine to perform solidarity by striking a balance between finding common ground between the two ethnic groups while constructively embracing cultural differences.
A video clip depicting the dishes and festivities of the Black and Asian Solidarity Supper
3. Rotis----------------------------------------Tasting home in ethnic supermarkets
For Arabic and south Asian migrants in Canada, the proliferation of ethnic grocery stores, as well as the preparation and availability of traditional dishes, is linked to establishing a closer proximity to their cultural backgrounds, with food being used as “a means of connecting with home.”²⁰ The ingredients provided by these specialty markets also enable the modification of new foods like pizza and pasta to incorporate ethnic flavors and account for religious restrictions, which is another signifier of “the process of adjusting to life” in a new country²¹. Furthermore, a 2005 study on Chinese immigrant customer behaviors in Chinese supermarkets indicated that their actions transcended those of a rational actor making decisions based on purely economic factors²². In fact, shopping in ethnic supermarkets is even perceived by immigrants as a socially and culturally situated leisure activity because these spaces serve as reflections and facilitators of their own ethnic identities²³. Similar to ethnic restaurants, ethnic grocery stores create welcoming and communal atmospheres which facilitate community amongst the minority groups that they cater to. These stores achieve this by functioning as forums of cultural construction and reconnection for immigrants working to retain their roots while acculturating into Western society.
“That’s been sort of one of the best parts of immigration since the start of this country. Certain populations immigrate here and as soon as they set up and find it safe and welcoming, others follow.”
4. Chop Suey-----------------------------------------------Jews eat Chinese on Christmas
While there is not always a direct correlation between culinary preferences and socio-racial attitudes, restaurants and the culinary medium still function as “sites of cultural exchange” ²⁴because cultural differences are perceived as “less threatening” within “the context of food and dining.” ²⁵ In fact, the connection between Jewish Americans and Chinese American food is rooted in the performative aspects of food, especially its function as a celebration of the “centrality of domestic life”²⁶ as a medium that is served in family-style portions. Furthermore, they identified with Chinese cuisine due to shared experiences of speaking in “tongues mocked for their stereotypical sounds,” existing as non-churchgoing groups in an “overwhelmingly Christian nation” and enduring “sometimes violent racism.” ²⁷ The performative ability of food, in tandem with these layers of mutual experiences, creates communal atmospheres which enabled Jewish immigrants to embrace a “cosmopolitan, secular and sophisticated” cuisine and render a culture otherwise perceived as “strange” and “exotic” palatable.²⁸
A clip that further elaborates on the history between Jewish Americans and Chinese Restaurants
5. Halal Burger------------------------------------ French fast food controversy
This relationship exemplifies the principle of Gastronationalism, which holds that culinary performances on a large scale can facilitate nationalistic sentiments and demarcate aspects of the national zeitgeist. Many believed that the menu change exhibited a disregard for French Universalism, a core cultural principle that holds that cultural equality is maintained by suppressing cultural differences²⁹. Therefore, the French perceived inclusion of a Halal burger as a significant disruption, and even attack, on well-established social norms, as well as their nationalistic identity as a whole. Furthermore, fast-food restaurants as a whole have always been a point of contention for the French, who dismissed them as “mal bouffes,” or junk foods³⁰, which evoke the unwelcome influence of an excess-driven American culture on a more conservative French culture. While the Halal Burger was not actively crafted with the intention of creating controversy, it was able to elicit such a polarizing response because it evoked the subversion of deeply-entrenched cultural norms. The active response to a passive performative culinary stimulus indicates that food can serve as a cultural litmus test that reflects the social values of a society based on the reactions it elicits, regardless of intentionality.
A breaking news report on the backlash against Halal burgers in France
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Cultural exchange is one of the most important components for a successful adjustment process as immigrants thrust themselves into a strange new land, and what better way to achieve this than through food— one of the most enjoyable and leisurely, yet pervasive and influential touchstones of modern society. Each of the five menu items outlined in this digital exhibit offers unique dimensions to the sociocultural significance of culinary exchanges. The Char Siu Pork and Beef Ho Fun portions highlighted the ways in which food can perform cross-ethnic solidarity through constructive innovation and accompliceship-fueled advocacy. The Roti and Chop Suey portions described forums of cultural exchange, such as restaurants bridging the gap between two seemingly disparate groups with a hearty serving of cultural exposure and ethnic grocery stores which rally together immigrants yearning for a taste of their homelands. The Halal Burger portion broadened the scope of the influence of culinary exchanges to encompass entire countries, showing that foods can perform and reflect national sentiments.
Photo Credits
Screenshot from “Seadrift” (2019)
Left: Wikimedia Commons (2016)
Right: Wikimedia Commons (2015)
Top right: @bett_yu on Instagram
Top middle: @thegodofcookery on Instagram
Top left: Sonia Goyal/Flickr (2018)
Bottom left: Marco Verch (2018)
Bottom right: Screenshot from Eater
References
Harvey, Daina Cheyenne. “‘Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer’: Food as Cultural Performance in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.” Symbolic Interaction 40, no. 4 (2017): 498–522. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.318.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Chen, Joyce. “This Chinese Food Zine Is Serving up Asian-American/Black Solidarity.” Colorlines, October 19, 2020. https://colorlines.com/article/chinese-food-zine-serving-asian-americanblack-solidarity/.
Ibid.
Yu, Betty. “Black and Asian Solidarity Supper in Oakland Celebrates Culture and Community.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, June 12, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/black-and-asian-solidarity-supper-in-oakland-celebrates-culture-and-community/.
Moore, Kathleen. “Grocery Specializing in Indian, Middle Eastern Food Opens in Halfmoon.” Times Union. Times Union, February 22, 2022. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Grocery-specializing-in-Indian-Pakistani-Middle-16932287.php.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Plaut, Joshua Eli, Julia Gergely, Jacob Henry, Lisa Keys, and Andrew Silow-Carroll. “We Eat Chinese on Christmas.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 20, 2012. https://www.jta.org/2012/11/20/ny/we-eat-chinese-on-christmas.
Associated Press. “French Debate: First It Was Burqas, Now Burgers.” Deseret News. Deseret News, September 2, 2010. https://www.deseret.com/2010/9/2/20138424/french-debate-first-it-was-burqas-now-burgers.
Ibid
Wright, Wynne, and Alexis Annes. “Halal on the Menu?: Contested Food Politics and French Identity in Fast-Food.” Journal of Rural Studies 32 (2013): 388–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.08.001.
Vang, Ma, and Kit Myers. “In the Wake of George Floyd: Hmong Americans’ Refusal to Be a U.S. Ally.” Amerasia Journal 47, no. 1 (2021): 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00447471.2021.1974781.
Ibid.
Spence, Charles. “Contemporary Fusion Foods: How Are They to Be Defined, and When Do They Succeed/Fail?” International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 13 (2018): 101–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2018.07.005.
Yu, “Black and Asian.”
Vallianatos, Helen, and Kim Raine. “Consuming Food and Constructing Identities among Arabic and South Asian Immigrant Women.” Sisters or Strangers?, 2016, 455–74. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442625938-026.
Ibid.
Wang, Lu, and Lucia Lo. “Immigrant Grocery-Shopping Behavior: Ethnic Identity versus Accessibility.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 39, no. 3 (2007): 684–99. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3833.
Ibid.
Barbas, Samantha. “‘I'll Take Chop Suey’: Restaurants as Agents of Culinary and Cultural Change.” The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 4 (2003): 669–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5931.00040.
Ibid.
Miller, Hanna. “Identity Takeout: How American Jews Made Chinese Food Their Ethnic Cuisine.” The Journal of Popular Culture 39, no. 3 (2006): 430–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2006.00257.x.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Wright & Annes, “Halal.”
Ibid.
Espiritu, Yên Lê. “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in US Scholarship.” Jstor, 2006, https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/stable/10.1525/vs.2006.1.1-2.410?sid=primo&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents.