For better or worse, food has become a central part of how we talk about multiculturalism in the GTA. “Oh, we have such a diversity of cuisines here!” people say. And it’s true; we really do.
But to those of us for whom ‘ethnic’ food is just food, sometimes the talk of ‘exotic’, ‘spicy’ and ‘ooh, isn’t that different?’ doesn’t always capture the simple relationship between culture and what we eat.
So this week on The Ethnic Aisle, we’ll be talking about the gustatory, the gastronomic and the downright delicious.
Photograph by Harvey Enrile
There is a blog post by Lea Zeltserman I keep returning to when I think about this. She was reacting to a New York Times review of a hip, nostalgic and probably quite nice Brooklyn deli called Mile End. The kind of place that makes noodles for its kasha varnishkes by hand, because that’s the way the owner’s great-grandmother made it, and was therefore the right way. Neither would ever buy their bow tie-shaped pasta at a store.
I’ve seen my mother on the brink of death. It was my first and only visit to El Salvador. I was nine years old.
We’d gone out to dinner at a restaurant that specialized in fruits from the sea. My mother ate a stew of mariscos. Seafood medley in a bowl, essentially. She’d been told she was allergic to shellfish in the past, but one little rash and slightly laboured breathing wasn’t enough to stop her. Shrimp is just that good.
Khao swe. It’s one of those lyrical food words I enjoy most. Like rooh afza, which is a rose syrup mixed with milk or water. Or sashimi and Darjeeling. Khao swe is a Burmese dish made with noodles and chicken in a spicy coconut milk broth. In my family, my mother and her sister make khao swe on special occasions. My mom’s is slightly spicier and her sister’s somewhat tempered, kind of like their respective temperaments. My mom’s is also always more pungent, which is the way I’ve grown to like it. They both garnish it with spring onions, cilantro and green chilies and drizzle lime for some added zest.
I was into avocados before they were cool.
Food is a nostalgic thing. That’s part of the reason what we eat is usually such an important piece of our cultural identities; your senses can evoke memories which in turn keep traditions alive. The experience of eating is intertwined with where you came from and who you are.
Fusion cooking! Is there anything more symbolic of the melty melding of cultures than, er, melty melded food?
Wait, that didn't sound appetizing at all. Nonetheless! The mix of cuisines is both tasty and metaphorical. Oh hey, speaking of which...
Gold Stone Noodle Restaurant on Spadina has been the source of my weekly Chinese food fix since before I can remember. When I started going there, it was a homely Chinatown hub that served up a cheap abundance of Southern Chinese delights. These days, it’s the same homely hub with the same delights, for only slightly more money. Over the years, I’ve developed that sought-after server-customer relationship: I say “the usual,” she brings me a steaming bowl of noodle soup with succulent Sui Kau dumplings stuffed with shrimp, pork and black fungus, alongside a light green bulb of bok choy and thick slices of barbecued pork and duck.
Visiting India as a 13-year-old was a nightmare realized. Bad things happened: being groped by skeezed-out men in crowded places, disembarking a congested train by jumping as it pulled away from the platform, traveler’s diarrhea, seeing a giant cockroach in a hotel bathroom (my first roach!), getting a bag of chips snatched from my hand by a hissing monkey, screaming at an overly persistent street vendor from a hot, cramped car, blowing smog-blackened snot from my nose in New Delhi. I can go on (but I won’t). My reaction to all of these things was very visceral: Ugh.