Illustrations by Délice Williams
Honesty Over Authenticity: Food Culture in America
Everyone loves a home-cooked meal. Whether it be a new family creation or a recipe passed down for the last few hundred years, we all crave that authentic taste we know and love. However, society today is craving not only the authentic meals of our own families but also of other cultures. One of today’s biggest trending food obsessions is getting back to the cultural roots of food: take-out Chinese or Thai food off an American continental menu no longer cuts it. The core concepts of the so-called ethnic cuisines”, such as recipes, ingredients, and methods, have been diluted over time to the current version we eat. This desire to find restaurants that have rebirthed authentic, pure” food has led to an obsession with the expected appearance of authenticity rather than the true taste. Authenticity, therefore, has become a cliche, or perhaps even a marketing term in our multicultural society, a blanket term we apply when we wanna boil things down to their essence,” as John Thomas Edge Jr puts it in the podcast episode of Still Processing, Who Has the Right to Make BBQ?” (14:24-14:35). How real” is authenticity in our diverse food culture? Food has a history; every meal has a story, method, and past where it originated before it was adapted to the accepted, Americanized version we eat today. Society’s trending desire and demand to eat our individually developed ideas of authentic food,” based on predetermined concepts of different cultures, consequently is limiting what and where people eat and ultimately what ethnic chefs can cook in their kitchens. This obsession with authentic food truly calls into question who can cook what kind of food, who can eat said foods, and where to get authentic food if authenticity truly exists.
The concept of authenticity is a double-edged sword: it is both beautiful and burdensome. On the one hand, authenticity can be a lens through which we can appreciate the cultural origin and the journey of food. On the other hand, authenticity can reduce our appreciation of food to ethnic identities. The more celebratory aspect of authenticity is explored in Cristina Martinez,” an episode of the Netflix food documentary series, Chef’s Table, which features the life story of the award-winning Chef Cristina Martinez, the owner of South Philly Barbacoa, and her journey from Mexico to America. As an undocumented immigrant, Martinez escaped from Mexico across the border into the United States to try and give her daughter a better life. Once in America, after many hardships, she opened her own restaurant and became a public figure, cooking barbacoa, a slow-cooked pulled lamb dish, using her family’s generations-old recipe. Martinez embraces her heritage through her food, proudly claiming and sharing her culture with the meals she grew up on in the same type of environment. Authenticity, to Martinez, is the application of traditional cooking; using a wood fire pit to cook meat and corn flour indigenous to Mexico for her tortilla recipe. The authenticity in her food brought out her heritage, and empowered her; she created a community for immigrants like herself simply through food. At its core, authenticity refers to the idea of tradition, looking at heritage, a respect for the culture where a dish originated from, and how it came to be. Martinez’s version of authenticity is certainly worthy of our appreciation and respect.
However, it is also easy to romanticize this version of authenticity and reduce her food to simply a reflection of her cultural background. As the chef and critic Tunde Wey states, there is a “magic and mysticism of food, but there’s a lot of hard work, and a lot of time has to be invested?” (7:33-7:56). That work, time, and effort are being overlooked, the concept behind the food is being diluted as the dangerously ignorant society of today adopts other cultures’ cuisine into everyday life. If an “ethnic” chef’s creation is reduced to its ‘authenticity,’ we lose sight of the labor and the work that is required to perfect the technique. We endow one’s identity with this magical power to create authentic food by one’s DNA. However, is DNA, including the history and culture of one’s past, the thing that provides the right type of knowledge, appreciation, and understanding necessarily required to create truly authentic” food served in a pure environment or style? Martinez’s story, therefore, calls into question the ideological implications that society’s expectations of ethnic chefs, and their ability to recreate authentic” meals and atmospheres, are having on the food industry and its restauranteurs.
Food quality and demand, or popularity, is, therefore, based on society’s current revolving idea of authenticity. However, where did the term authentic” even come from? Throughout Jaya Saxena’s article, What Did Authenticity” in Food Mean in 2019?” in the magazine the EATER, the idea of authenticity, where it came from, and whether or not it truly exists is deeply discussed, debated, and ultimately ruled to be a cliche that has lost true meaning. Saxena described it as the buzzword of the decade,” where the concept of authenticity is a created, purely impure thing” used by Americans to describe what they believe cultural dishes originally tasted like. A limited understanding of ethnic foods brought back by the colonizers led to the butchering of cuisines for a white palate.” That same white, unknowing palate is the very one that created the idea of authenticity to describe how accurate their version of dishes was to the quote-on-quote original. The problem goes deeper, however, as there is really no one original” dish. Instead, white colonizers generalized other cultures’ unique flavors and palates into one overall concept and taste. One example Saxena explores is the idea of curry and curry powder. Curry in the Indian context means something very different than in the American context.” In India, there are hundreds of different versions and types of curry”; there is no overarching flavor or seasoning used, and no curry powder added to make it a curry dish. Curry powder, marketed as the authentic taste of Indian curry/cuisine, does not exist in India, it is American-made the same way Italian seasoning is; a generalization of another culture’s flavor in a jar. Authenticity, therefore, is the idea of what our Americanized version of other food should taste and look like; it is the language of insufferable foodies more concerned with appearing to have the correct tastes than doing any tasting” (Saxena). This implies the argument that authenticity is more of an aesthetic, the desired idea, or a theoretical, individually developed concept society tries to achieve rather than truly taste. Authenticity, therefore, is a reflection of certain superficialities, or societal trends, of today’s food culture.
Furthermore, Saxena describes authenticity as a weaponized” term; a demand for authenticity has ultimately restricted cultural identities such as race and ethnicity in the food industry. In the episode of the popular podcast Still Processing, Who Has the Right to Make Barbeque?”, hosts Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham try to understand the stereotypes and limitations around who can cook authentic food, specifically BBQ, who can eat said food, and where one can get authentic” BBQ. Good, authentic BBQ, as both John Thomas Edge Jr and Nicole Taylor state, is about this marriage of smoke, meat, and knowledge” (04:06-04:12), knowledge being the emphasized variable. A pitmaster’s understanding of the culture he is cooking from, and the process in which the food is prepared, smoked, made, and served, without adding frill” (35:03-35:06) is what makes BBQ authentic; not necessarily the race of the pitmaster himself. This stereotype around the idea that only southern African Americans are able to cook BBQ insinuates the concept of imposters” in the culinary arts; a restriction of only ethnic people being allowed to cook their specific ethnicities’ food, while everyone else is doing it wrong. ?It’s not just about getting the technique right or the cut of meat right or the sauce right. It’s about understanding that the food itself comes imbued with this whole other legacy that’s still a part of how the food is even made today” (14:56-15:15). This other legacy refers to the cultural history of how the food originated and was made. That legacy, filled with tradition and respect, is believed to only be appreciated appropriately by those who share the same skin color; identity is assigned by society’s understanding of culinary history. There is a strong political blur because of these standards, referring to who can even eat BBQ or more broadly, any ethnic dish. BBQ eaten by white Americans during the Jim Crow era at black-owned restaurants was considered the booty call” (10:30-10:40) of the food industry, as John Thomas Edge Jr puts it. Booty call, referring to a situation in which one could easily enter into and swiftly exit from” (12:10-12:14), gives the impression that this integration of class and race is unethical, again creating the impression that there is a strict, restrictive division between culture and food.
Food, specifically Southern food such as BBQ, is a topic [that] crosses lines of race, class, gender, region?” (Stokes and Atkins-Sayre 3). This division between culture and food stems from a division in personal and cultural identity. Southern BBQ is a part of one’s regional identity for South African Americans; the racial history behind the meal provides a narrative that describes and identifies with their own. Concepts such as the booty call[s]” (10:30-10:40) of the BBQ industry are due to politically created restrictions in Southern hospitality that are limited to those who shared characteristics with the host” (Stokes and Atkins-Sayre 15). Segregation of the region, between blacks and whites, or class and region, determined one’s identity. Whites eating at a black-owned Southern restaurant, and the parallel they present, demonstrated the political segregation and restriction of the food industry. Authenticity as a concept fails to account for the full complexity of food’s journey.
Following the same concept, stereotypes of restaurants have become based on the aesthetic appearance of societal trends for authentic” restaurants. These biased, uneducated trends follow the logic that hole-in-the-wall restaurants such as those off the beaten path, on the side of a mountain in Mexico, are the only places that can serve authentic food, prepared the correct” way. The episode of Documentary Now!, Juan likes Rice and Chicken”, is a fake documentary that mockingly discusses a traditional Columbian-owned family restaurant in Mexico that obsesses about authenticity. Juan, the craze-dedicated restaurant owner, caters to a very select clientele interested in the authentic quality and process of food above all else. Juan serves only four things on his menu, three depending on the day; rice, chicken, and a banana with a single cup of coffee. A religious, meticulous process is used to select the ingredients and prepare them into simple, perfected dishes. The episode brings to light the true exaggeration American culture has for their expectations of what process makes cultural foods authentic. The location of the restaurant, being on the side of a mountain where tourists had to go on a day-long hike to find it, calls into question the idea that in order for something to be authentic it has to be an uncomfortable dining experience” (Saxena). While restaurants that are more mom-and-pop style are fun, the aesthetic does not have to be cheap, casual, and dingy to make it authentic; the stereotype of only European dining being upscale and innovative is fake and restrictive.
Ultimately, these restrictions and stereotypes imply authenticity is a burden to the food industry. Authenticity acts as a limitation; a list of rules around how to correctly” make any form of ethnic food and by whom it can be made. Those who award themselves the privilege to define authenticity in any ethnic food? can inflict wounds that either appropriate cultural and personal knowledge or essentialize it causing a stifling of creative growth” (Abarca 2). The idea of authenticity has become boring; it creates limitations to what ethnic chefs can cook as the food industry revolves around the consumer’s standard of what ethnic food should look like to be authentic. This imposes limitations on what the creative culinary license ethnic chefs have on their own cuisine; they can only cook what will sell. The current societal idea of ethnic chefs is that they can only cook their own culture’s food the way in which it originated. The expansion of recipes and the development of new foods are highly frowned upon which ultimately burdens the chefs of today. Juan likes Rice and Chicken” emphasizes this point with the idea of Arturo, the son of Juan, feeling like a failure in the food industry simply because he is unable to cook the same four items the way his father does as a true” chef. Honest food, therefore, is more important than authentic food, and ultimately less limiting to chefs and consumers alike. Honest food, as John Thomas Edge Jr describes it in the podcast episode, Who Has the Right to Make Barbeque?”, leaves room for negotiation; it is an acknowledgment of the history of the food and culture, but also an open conversation allowing for expansion. Honest food, rather than authentic food, ultimately has broader parameters to work within that lead to something more true.
Honesty in food, in other words, is introducing new principles while theoretically remaining faithful to old principles” (Stokes and Atkins-Sayre 15). As discussed previously, Southern BBQ is an extremely ritual-based culinary practice, being a highly historic and traditional meal that varying, regional styles provided incite into identification within said regions. Southern BBQ, therefore, conveys identificatory messages of authenticity, masculinity, and rurality?” (15). These characteristics of BBQ and people alike are molded and change over time; the concept of authenticity, therefore, must reflect that fluidity. This concept argued by Stokes presents the idea that for authenticity to be valid, it must be fluid. The concept of honesty, encouraging an open narrative with respect to adaptation, is more relevant than authenticity with its rigid, historically diluted rules.
As Saxena states, It’s clear that something about the conversation on authenticity has changed, broadening into a debate about innovation, interpretation, and change and recognizing that no cuisine, or culture, is static.” Thus, societies trending desire and demand to eat our individually developed ideas of authentic food,” based on predetermined and uneducated concepts of different cultures, is limiting what and where people eat and ultimately what ethnic chefs are able to cook in their own kitchens. Authenticity is simply an American buzzword”; a hype word used by consumers to inaccurately compare and describe cultural dishes. These European concepts, therefore, have ultimately created limiting, burdening criteria for the ethnic food industry while having no direct relation to the traditional meals of said ethnic countries.
Author: Teagan Rudderow, Class of 2026
As a final paper for my ENGL110 class during the Fall semester of 2023, my professor, Professor David Kim, challenged me to transform a critical analysis paper I composed on the word authenticity” specifically within the food industry, into a research paper expounding the political, cultural, and personal-identity standards inflicted by the American concept of food authenticity. The original paper was based on analyzing varying source media, examining the idea behind authenticity in different cultures and its effect on society’s food choices. The argument surrounding the topic, however, piqued my interest, as there was much more to the classifying adjective, authentic” than I realized. The idea that a simple, three-syllable word coined by the colonies in America carried such weight, such power, that it influenced the standards surrounding the food industry, was something I personally felt needed to be further expanded upon. Through my research, I discovered the layers behind the concept of authenticity; the limitations and restrictions it created, along with the political, racial, and social standards it further encouraged and fed into.
Authenticity has become a weaponized term, holding far too much weight within the culinary industry. The American term was created to describe foods we ourselves did not make, and therefore, is a personalized, inaccurate way of classifying cultural food in a way that the uneducated palate feels makes sense. This verbal classification creates unjust standards, limitations, and concepts about and on food. As a person of Italian descent, I appreciate this injustice when looking at the concept of Italian seasoning”; a rather insulting idea of inaccurately boiling an entire country down and putting it into a shakable jar on the kitchen table. The term falsely labels, identifies, and controls cultural identities, and is a restriction most anyone can feel when they decide what to eat or cook for dinner each night. This paper was designed to challenge this concept, questioning society’s idea and use of the word authenticity itself.
Instructor: David Kim
The theme of our section of ENGL110 was Food Cultures. Through our engagement with various kinds of food writing–food criticism, memoirs, history, interviews, and documentaries–we learned about food’s relationship to our understanding of tradition, creativity, ethnicity, gender, class, and media. We began the semester with a cognitive mapping of our individual food experiences, an exercise in the mode of cultural/social analysis of connecting the most mundane (salad bar at UD dining hall) to the political (How did the food here? Who is this for?) which set the tone for the rest of the semester. Teagan’s research project grew out of one of our short writing assignments on the concept of in/authenticity, a term often used to assign certain value to ethnic” foods but rarely negotiated. I was impressed by Teagan’s ability to navigate the pitfalls of authenticity in relation to cultural identities. Many science-oriented students, like Teagan, often pursue topics on nutrition, health and agriculture for their final research projects, but she took on the challenge of exploring the cultural politics of representation behind the discourse of authenticity. This essay is a testament to Teagan’s ability to dwell in complexity.
Works Cited
Abarca, Meredith E. Authentic or Not, It’s Original.” Food & Foodways, vol. 12, no. 1, 16 Aug 2010, pp. 1-25. Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710490467589
Cristina Martinez.” Chef’s Table, directed by Abigail Fuller, performed by Cristina Martinez, season 5, episode 1, TV-MA, 2018. Netflix, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8773076/. Accessed 31 Oct 2022
?Juan likes Rice and Chicken.” Documentary Now! created by Alexander Buono and Rhys Thomas, performed by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Helen Mirren, season 2, episode 2, TV-G, 2016. AMC+, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5543348/ Accessed 31 Oct. 2022.
Morris, Wesley, and Jenna Wortham, hosts. Who Has the Right To Make Barbeque?” Still Processing, New York Times, 6 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/podcasts/who-has-the-right-to-make-barbecue.html. Accessed 31 Oct. 2022.
Saxena, Jaya. What Did Authenticity” in Food Mean in 2019?” EATER, 3 Dec. 2019, https://www.eater.com/2019/12/3/20974732/authentic-food-definition-yelp. Accessed 31 Oct. 2022.
Stokes, Ashli Quesinberry, and Wendy Atkins-Sayre. Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South. University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Print.