Watching the British TV series "New Tricks," my wife and I were puzzled at a character's response to a visitor's suggestion that they all go out for some kebabs. The subtitles read, "Nah, we're going for some real English food, jowl frazee." We thought it might be an obscure dish like spotted dick, but a London friend set us right. He meant the Indian dish jahlfrezi, which had apparently become so ubiquitous in London that it was voted the city's favorite. This prompted me to try some the next time we visited our local Indian restaurant. It was delicious.
Having lived in California for 55 years, I've learned to love food from (literally) all over the globe. At home we make green chile chicken, chicken curry or Thai grilled chicken more often than we roast a whole bird French-style (which we also do). Food trucks around here liberally combine cuisines, rolling Korean barbecued pork into burritos, and scattering Filipino sisig over pizzas.
Leftovers from Indian dinners out find their way into what we cook for ourselves. Last night a few spoonfuls of korma dressed our pork chops. No Indian would do that, but we loved it.
It's not cultural appropriation of you don't try to sell it, right?
I don't feel it's cultural appropriation to eat - or even sell - the food of another nation. Food is explored and eaten in the spirit of inquiry, and the discovery of something delicious opens the heart. Unlike artifacts, food is not a solid unique element whose appropriation makes it possible to entirely remove it from its origins. It can be reproduced meal after meal without diminishing the original. Enough of an interest in food and curiosity about its origins to eat it and perhaps attempt to cook it surely results only in an enlarging of experience that doesn't insult the source. Eating - or selling - an Indian dinner, for instance, outside India is never going to reduce the meals that are eaten inside the nation, yet may broaden the interest and curiosity of the person doing the eating in the society and history of the source of the food. Food broadens experience and enlarges our potential for empathy.
Watching the British TV series "New Tricks," my wife and I were puzzled at a character's response to a visitor's suggestion that they all go out for some kebabs. The subtitles read, "Nah, we're going for some real English food, jowl frazee." We thought it might be an obscure dish like spotted dick, but a London friend set us right. He meant the Indian dish jahlfrezi, which had apparently become so ubiquitous in London that it was voted the city's favorite. This prompted me to try some the next time we visited our local Indian restaurant. It was delicious.
Having lived in California for 55 years, I've learned to love food from (literally) all over the globe. At home we make green chile chicken, chicken curry or Thai grilled chicken more often than we roast a whole bird French-style (which we also do). Food trucks around here liberally combine cuisines, rolling Korean barbecued pork into burritos, and scattering Filipino sisig over pizzas.
Leftovers from Indian dinners out find their way into what we cook for ourselves. Last night a few spoonfuls of korma dressed our pork chops. No Indian would do that, but we loved it.
It's not cultural appropriation of you don't try to sell it, right?
I don't feel it's cultural appropriation to eat - or even sell - the food of another nation. Food is explored and eaten in the spirit of inquiry, and the discovery of something delicious opens the heart. Unlike artifacts, food is not a solid unique element whose appropriation makes it possible to entirely remove it from its origins. It can be reproduced meal after meal without diminishing the original. Enough of an interest in food and curiosity about its origins to eat it and perhaps attempt to cook it surely results only in an enlarging of experience that doesn't insult the source. Eating - or selling - an Indian dinner, for instance, outside India is never going to reduce the meals that are eaten inside the nation, yet may broaden the interest and curiosity of the person doing the eating in the society and history of the source of the food. Food broadens experience and enlarges our potential for empathy.
“Food broadens experience and enlarges our potential for empathy.“ Amen.