There’s a way to do fish and chips where you bake tilapia or halibut or some other nice white fish in a Japanese citrus juice called sudachi and serve it with thin potato crisps and sautéed bok choy. It’s a traditionally a British dish, but under the avant-garde garb of fusion cuisine, bizarre Asian elements crowd the plate and prove that globalization is not confined to markets and religious conflicts.
It’s probably always been this way in The United States, where immigrants brought with them their cupboards of paprika and curry and sesame oil and saffron, and butchered pigs in strange new ways, and grew potatoes in their windowsills; in the United States, at least, there have probably always been bent grandmothers pickling cabbages the way their grandmothers in Old Europe did, or lingering at the dairy for the milk to make dumplings. Later on in history there was an invasion of woks, soy sauce and chopsticks to the chic and savvy kitchen, and the domain of Chinese cookery heeded to culinary requests by Vietnam, Japan, Thailand and Korea.
But until recently those cuisines have stuck mainly to themselves. Athens’ feta cheese and Kalamata olives never mingled with a tofu p?té, and fish and chips were never served with bok choy. It is only in the last decade that we see our kitchens and restaurants enveloped in the great maw of global culinary fusion, where the East can meet the West, North and South on the same menu item. French techniques like braising are employed to work tofu to perfection, or ginger is minced with cilantro for a chutney or dipping sauce. Even some mediocre pizzerias offer a Thai option, where bean sprouts, strips of teriyaki chicken and peanut sauce are slathered on the typical Italian dough.
But not all expansion of food culture is so innocent, nor so chicly creative. Our spindly grandmothers, who remember what real slow-cooked, farm-raised lamb chops are, must be weeping at a different sort of fusion taking place in their homeland today.
A particular brand of American convenience food has leapt back across the Atlantic and tackled once-culinary mavens like Spain, France, Greece and Italy.
It isn’t just that McDonald’s and Burger King are now as much a part of Europe as the euro, because initially they were seen as a once-in-a-while food, an American theme to sample for a goofy repast in downtown Paris.
But the fast food that is exported now is becoming more and more a part of the daily lives of many Europeans. Our American techniques of reheating bean burritos are fused with Greco lamb and beef so that there are reheatable gyro packets lining store shelves, pushing out the crates of tomatoes and leeks and other, more local fare. Away from the California elite who turn their creativity to new and innovative frontiers of the human palate, industrial America has turned is marketing to the corner stands of rural Greece.
A recent article in The New York Times explored this trend, documenting the growing obesity rate of children on Crete, where the famed Mediterranean diet once flourished. While older generations still spread olive pesto on honey bread and toss large salads of leafy greens and pine nuts, their children fall to the lure of cheap fat and microwaves. Local food cultures that have sustained populations for centuries are losing out to that brazenly inevitable commercial food fusion.
Culture happens between bites of food, and as we march on toward the future, let there be a deference to native elements and to good food.
Let the kind of globalization we choose with our stomachs be one of creativity, where the true fruits of the world are merged kindly, and respected.
Roberta Singer is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
