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What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

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Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#21

Post by bilalq »

satvikpendem wrote: post #10
j7ake wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. Chinese restaurant cuisine is not defined by home cuisine at all. They are almost orthogonal. You go to a Chinese restaurant to eat something that cannot be made at home, almost by definition. The only exception might be breakfast food.

Indeed, same reason I don't usually go to Indian restaurants, I can just make the same thing at home with much fewer costs. The only ones I'd go to are specialized or well known ones, such as some South Indian places I've been to recently. What's even more interesting is no one actually makes butter or tikka chicken at home, or has a tandoor to do so, but Indians also don't eat it outside generally, instead it's main…

I'm assuming by tikka chicken you mean "chicken tikka masala"? Because chicken tikka is something my family made all the time growing up. I still make it at home often. That's mostly been with a charcoal grill and not a traditional tandoor, but like you said, most people don't have tandoors at home. That's restaurant food.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#22

Post by zem »

satvikpendem wrote: post #10
j7ake wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. Chinese restaurant cuisine is not defined by home cuisine at all. They are almost orthogonal. You go to a Chinese restaurant to eat something that cannot be made at home, almost by definition. The only exception might be breakfast food.

Indeed, same reason I don't usually go to Indian restaurants, I can just make the same thing at home with much fewer costs. The only ones I'd go to are specialized or well known ones, such as some South Indian places I've been to recently. What's even more interesting is no one actually makes butter or tikka chicken at home, or has a tandoor to do so, but Indians also don't eat it outside generally, instead it's main…

I feel like similar to the chinese, indian home cooking and indian restaurant cooking are very different; I can try my hand at a lot of restaurant style recipes at home but it's not what I usually cook or what I grew up eating at home.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#23

Post by bilalq »

I cannot wait for a cultural shift away from respecting "authenticity" and "tradition" in food. It's fine to remember and recognize how things were often done. But the ridiculousness of saying New York style pizza is not pizza or that you have to make things the "right way" needs to go.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#25

Post by zahlman »

bobthepanda wrote: post #6

I think what is so interesting is also, if you peel back the curtain, most recipes have standardized at a fairly recent point in their national mythos, depending on how long that is. Recipes are a snapshot of economic and technological advances of the time, and whole classes of recipe are not available until certain technological watersheds, like * precise temperature controls for ovens and stoves in the early 20th c…

> or example you had early Scottish shortbread primarily using rice flour because it was cheaper at that time.

What era of history are we talking about here? Would it have been transported as flour, or ground locally?

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#26

Post by llsf »

I believe that us, Americans are pretty good at bending international food to our limited ingredients, our own favorite chemicals, sweeteners (corn syrup in everything), our flour and butter (good luck to make pastries like in Europe, with our poor flour and butter).

So I get it when Italians get offended by our poor rendering of carbonara... and feel that what we get here is off.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#27

Post by zahlman »

bilalq wrote: post #23

I cannot wait for a cultural shift away from respecting "authenticity" and "tradition" in food. It's fine to remember and recognize how things were often done. But the ridiculousness of saying New York style pizza is not pizza or that you have to make things the "right way" needs to go.

> But the ridiculousness of saying New York style pizza is not pizza or that you have to make things the "right way" needs to go.

Suppose people say it; why shouldn't they be entitled to their opinion? How does it harm anyone? People who like New York style pizza are equally free to just disagree, and keep making it.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#29

Post by fortran77 »

"If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike" is a bowdlerization of a much older phrase. As my Great-Grandfather, born in 1890 in Widz, Belaruz would say it "ווען די באָבע וואָלט געהאַט בײצִים, װאָלט זי געװען מײַן זײדע" (If my grandmother had balls, she would have been my grandfather.)

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#30

Post by SugarReflex »

j7ake wrote: post #4

Italian restaurant cuisine today is judged by whether it tastes like the way their particular Italian grandma made it. Asian restaurant cuisine is judged by partly by how different (technique, taste, looks) the dish is from what they can make from home.

I don't know how relevant it is, but my wife and I like to eat out at places where the dish/cuisine is something that we simply cannot make at home. If it is too similar, my wife will sigh "we could have just made this at home".
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