By Cari Spencer
I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, eating mac ‘n cheese and casserole dishes–but spent summers in Taipei, Taiwan with my grandparents, eating beef noodle soup and pork belly buns. My cultural identity is multicultural to the core, a mix of Midwesterner and Taiwanese-American. It’s a mix of milk, cheese and butter from the recipes my dad’s mother loved, to a mix of garlic, green onions and ginger from the recipes my mom taught herself, after immigrating to the United States, in order to feel more at home.
Because my cultural identity is a blend of two countries on opposite sides of the world, my food identity is inevitably a product of globalization. Even though I grew up in Minnesota, I was able to eat foods that originated from an island 7,000 miles away. Even though I grew up in Minnesota, I was able to eat ingredients non-native to my state because my family was a fifteen minute drive from United Noodle, an Asian food market in the city. At the same time, my food identity is a product of homogenization. My mom had a handful of recipes that she taught herself, but because the first foods my siblings and I ate were more American (mac ‘n cheese, apple sauce, mashed potatoes, etc.), she modified the Taiwanese food that she introduced us to. Instead of mapo tofu with chili oil, she would make the dish with ketchup — inevitably putting an American spin on the traditional Taiwanese dish. Half the time my mom would season vegetable dishes with garlic, and the other half of the time she would melt cheese on the vegetables. The line between flavors associated with Midwestern American cooking and Taiwanese cooking blent together to the point that I never really felt like I was eating anything distinctly American or Taiwanese. Even when I attended pot lucks with the rest of the Taiwanese community in my suburb, the community gatherings where it would seem like I should connect with Taiwanese culture the most, I didn’t feel like I was eating anything strictly heterogeneous. My mom would cook beef stew with potatoes, placing it on a big table next to homemade vanilla cake from one family and rice noodles from another. There was always chips and salsa by the fruit punch.
Today, I “border crossed,” by eating food that does not fit into my culinary identity. Because I am living in an apartment near the USC campus, I was able to try Yucatecan cuisine from Chichen Itza–a place that has appeared in some of the readings for this class. Due to Covid-19 precautions, my roommates and I have only been eating food that is delivered to us, so I was unable to visit Mercado de la Paloma. However, I was still able to enjoy the cochinita pibil and tamal colado that I ordered.
Is Chichen Itza authentic?
As we have discussed in class, authenticity is a social construct–one that is oftentimes wielded most by diners who expect their food to have a certain ethnic appeal. The search for authentic food is trendy, and so many restaurants default to staged authenticity in order to bring in customers. However, this was not the case with Chichen Itza, where nothing is staged. The restaurant does not rely on Mexican stereotypes, but rather pays tribute to the traditional foundation of Yucatán cuisine. The restaurant is named after the famous Maya temple complex–which is featured in the restaurant’s logo as well–and certain Maya words like tikin-xic are featured on the menu. While this is “authentic” imagery, it is more of a reminder that the food is specific to a region and rooted in history, rather than an ethnic heuristic.
As Gustavo Arellano pointed out in an interview for L.A. Taco, so many liberal diners striving for authentic dining experiences fetishize authenticity and cast Mexicans as poor, pathetic victims in need for protection and support (“The Fetish”). This ultimately leads to cheap Mexican food (which is never understood regionally but always under the blanket term “Mexican”) being the only type of “Mexican food” that is legitimized. Essentially, rather than allowing Mexican chefs to be the ones who define what Mexican cuisine is, diners decide what is authentic by relying on stereotypes and taking the actual chefs out of the conversation. This also limits various regional Mexican cuisine from gaining traction because people will not pay as much money for Mexican food as, for example, Italian food. Fortunately, as word spreads on Instagram and diners search for “hip” places to eat, a greater range of Mexican regional cuisine is being enjoyed.
https://www.instagram.com/chichenitzala/
Authenticity or flavor-based authenticity?
Chichen Itza, on the other hand, relies on traditional ingredients and flavors for “authenticity.”
One of the dishes I tried, the cochinita pibil, features pork that is marinated for 24-36 hours, put in a cold oven for ten hours with a tray of hot ashes beneath it, then cooked at high heat (Portnoy 39). This type of cooking mimics the traditional Yucatecan way cochinita pibil is cooked: in a smokey pit “cooked underground” (the direct translation of the Mayan word pibil). Although the restaurant is not able to cook the food the way it “traditionally” is cooked, the smokey flavor palette is still honored through innovation. The achiote and sour orange flavor from Yucatán is still recreated, too. Although a slight modification was necessary in order for the food to taste more traditional, that still sounds “authentic” to me! The other dish I tried, the tamal colado, was a moist tamale filled with chicken tomato and epazote with “kol” sauce. Both of the dishes I tried were spicier than what I am used to eating from my Minnesotan-Taiwanese background, as habaneros are a pillar of Mayan cooking but definitely not a pillar of either of my parents’ cooking. The dishes also featured the slight taste of sour orange, which was not something I had ever associated with Mexican food.
Beyond the distinct flavors of achiote, citrus and smoke, the rest of the menu showcased other key flavors and ingredients like pumpkin seeds, turkey, and Dutch Edam cheese. This brings me to another point. Some of the authentic ingredients, tied so closely to Yucatecan identity, actually originated outside of the region. In the Portnoy and Pilcher reading on fusion cuisine in Los Angeles, they write about how encounters between cultures from immigration have historically led to forgiving relationships and the blending of culinary traditions (Portnoy and Pilcher, 3). Although Chichen Itza’s menu does not deviate far from traditional Yucatecan flavors and ingredients, that does not mean that the cuisine has been untouched by the effects of migration, trade, etc. The kibi on the menu is Lebanese, for example.
Again, this pokes holes in the common understanding of authenticity. What is authentic Yucatán cuisine then, if what is now understood as traditional was actually affected by Spanish and Lebanese influences? As Albala puts it in Three World Cuisines: “authenticity points to an imaginary tradition frozen in time and place that exists only as a point of contrast with more familiar and presumably corrupt permutations .. all cuisines are in a constant process of evolution” (Albala 11). Yucatecan food is built on a history of evolution, so although the dishes are “authentic,” we must understand this authenticity as a social construct.
The point, then, should be less about how authentic Chichen Itza is, and more about how the menu utilizes the “symbolic power of flavor to demarcate cultures … linking taste and smell, on the one hand, and memory and nostalgia, on the other” (Heldke 387). The question of authenticity is always a nebulous one, one complicated by past and current evolution, by staged versions and stereotyped ethnicity, so perhaps a better way to understand authenticity and the honesty of Chichen Itza, is to think of the restaurant as honoring a taste that represents Yucatecan identity. Afterall, as Heldke says, “flavors possess surprising power to remind us of our identities” (387). Ketchup and tofu might not be Taiwanese or American, but it’s what I associate with the taste of home, and that’s an honest depiction of my own identity.
References:
- Albala, Ken. “A Theory of Gastronomy.” Three World Cuisines: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, AltaMira Press, 2012, pp. 1–27.
- Heldke, Lisa. “37. But Is It Authentic: Culinary Travel and the Search for the ‘Genuine Article.’” The Taste Culture Reader, edited by C Korsmeyer, Berg, 2005, pp. 385–94.
- Portnoy, Sarah. Food, Health, and Culture in Latino Los Angeles, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/socal/detail.action?docID=4756736.
- Portnoy, Sarah and Jeffrey Pilcher. “Roy Choi, Ricardo Zárate, and Pacific Fusion Cuisine in Los Angeles,” Global Latin America into the Twenty-First Century, p. 1-14, 19-22
- “The Fetish of Authenticity ~ Gustavo Arellano on the Perils of ‘Cultural Appropriation’.” L.A. TACO, 6 Aug. 2018, http://www.lataco.com/the-fetish-of-authenticity-gustavo-arellano-on-the-perils-of-cultural-appropriation/.
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