If you have fellow foodies in your Facebook feed, you’ve likely seen this Washington Post piece by Lavanya Ramanathan, “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic.'” It’s not an unreasonable issue to raise: Why are some foods are “ethnic” and others aren’t even though, obviously, everything American from pizza to wieners was specific to an immigrant ethnicity at some point (which was almost certainly well after the first bad English cook arrived at Jamestown)? By my calling your food ethnic, on some level I’m othering you, assuming a Norman Rockwell 1950s in which I am normal and you’re weird (never mind that there’s nothing weirder than the noodles and prunes that people of my Nordic white ethnicity cook up as a meatless dish on Good Friday). So yes, I agree that labeling some of us immigrants as the ones who make “ethnic food” and others as people who just make “food” relies on some false assumptions about the underlying food culture and who’s in it and who’s out of it. Absolutely true. It’s good to be aware of that tendency in oneself. Hear hear.
Michael Gebert
Breakfast foull at the Eritrean restaurant Keren Kitchen
OK, that’s pretty naive, as nonprofessional Yelpers can tend to be. But is it really any more provincial than the hipster start-up validation she offers for the right kind of people doing immigrant cuisines the right way?
What that does isn’t so much change minds as lay down a fresh layer of eggshells for everyone to tiptoe over. Make “ethnic food” a hanging offense of racial insensitivity and you won’t make people think more about food and culture, you’ll tell them it’s a whole area to be avoided. You went to a Mexican restaurant, the neighborhood was a little rough but it seemed really authentic, the whole family worked there, the Mama was sweet to your kids, the handmade tortillas tasted like you had in Mexico, the TV played Mexican soap operas, the spicy salsa had real heat, you could taste the lard in the beans, and you sure knew you weren’t eating Lincoln Park late-night frat-boy Mex? You racist monster with your bag of stereotypes that show how you were treating it as other! The only acceptable way to experience a restaurant of a specific nationality is by being completely oblivious to how it was different in any way from the sashimi-grade fish tacos on quinoa tortillas at Sackbutt & Boatswain in Wicker Park. In the end, it’s safer to just stick to Chipotle and not tell anyone you even went there.
