Questioning America’s culinary intelligence almost always risks a food fight.
Detractors line up with anthropologist Sidney Mintz, who claims the United States has no national cuisine to boast. While this statement stirs only mild controversy, it points to the difficulty of historically tracing an American culinary tradition to any root other than immigrant cultures. Even our simplest “American” comfort foods first appeared on plates in mother countries. Macaroni and cheese? Look to Italy and France for savory origins. Hot dogs? Link these to the sausages of Europe.
The land of the free, however, has quite a few delicacies born and bred on our shores. They seem better close to home. Speaking from firsthand experience, collard greens simply do not taste the same in Colorado. Eating pierogies outside Chicagoland usually means a bland experience.
Fusion? To some food purists, it’s as dirty a word as they come. I tend to ally myself with that camp, though I recognize that blending foods and culinary practices sometimes lets a new taste or a new idea shine through.
Take the Kogi truck in Los Angeles, for example. The very popular food truck whips out Korean BBQ in the form of tacos, burritos and featured quesadillas. Kogi combines two foodways exemplified by current Angeleno culture … a delicious and logical fusion.
Then we find instances of more subtle fusion.
Eddie Huang’s Baohaus in New York City represents the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with food cultures, Western and Eastern. Anthony Bourdain, the super chef, says of Huang, “He’s bigger than food.” Thanks to his popular VICE show “Fresh Off The Boat” and now a new memoir with the same name, I wholeheartedly agree.
Huang’s influences and interests range widely: Wu-Tang Clan, Audre Lord and eye-catching streetwear, among many. A son of Taiwanese immigrants, Huang identifies deliberately with the tastes and sensibilities that simmer in the stockpot of hip-hop culture.
Born and for a while raised in the Washington, D.C. area (or the DMV—for D.C./Maryland/Virginia, as he puts it), Huang spent most of his adolescent years in the Disneyfied Southern suburbia otherwise known as Orlando. While always drawn to food, law school led Huang toward, he felt, a career devoid of passion. He quickly found his calling in the kitchen.
Baohaus claimed New York magazine’s “Best Bun” laurel in 2010 and Huang’s standing-room-only space also earned a New York Times notable $25-and-under designation. Huang’s baos—steamed buns filled with traditional or unexpected fare—don’t intrinsically represent fusion … but by naming one of these pockets of joy the “Jeremy Lin Bao,” cultural collisions seem hard to ignore. What’s more, Huang carves out a new culinary spot for himself while simultaneously being aggressively true to his Taiwanese culture.
Fresh Off The Boat explains to readers how some foods … and some people … need to be lost in translation for a while to find what they really have to say to us.
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