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I've finally caught up with the @masterchefau episode that everyone's been talking about. While I'm extremely distraught that one of my favs was eliminated, I'm also disappointed at some comments by the judges regarding Asian and Vietnamese fine dining. (a TED Talk)
For context: In this elimination challenge, contestants are given the task to pick a cuisine from 11 nations (including France, Korea, Peru, Vietnam, etc.) to create a fine dining dish.
The number is inspired by the guest chef, whose restaurant Atlas features themed weeks based on one country. The chef, Charlie, travels there, takes inspiration and creates fine dining menus based on what he ate.
Problematic Statement #1: I can think of hundreds of French dishes, but I think it will be harder for some of the Asian cuisines [to create a fine dining dish]. (made by a main judge, a Scot classically trained in French and Italian cuisines)
To that I say: lolz okay Jon Snow. There are examples of haute cuisine across the continent. Japanese kaiseki, Chinese banquets, Joseon Wangjo Gungjung yori from Korea.
I remember watching Dae Jang Geum as a kid and marveling at the cooking sequences. The colors, the precision, the blindingly shiny bronzeware. Korean royal court cuisine is an art.
One of the MasterchefAU contestants, Khanh, chose to cook an elevated version of gà kho gừng, but with quail, persimmon and a ginger sauce. And I roll my eyes every time the judges seem to doubt his choice because it doesn't fit into their idea of fine dining.
We have built a reputation for our cuisine as simple, fresh, rustic, but superbly balanced food, and I stand by that. Though I feel compelled to point out that Vietnamese has our own version of court cuisine too in ẩm thực cung đình Huế.
The Hue royal court was notorious for its laser focus on cooking precision and upscale ingredients, especially surrounding bát trân (the 8 most prized dishes) only reserved for royalties and nobles.
The two remaining, and probably most well-known, representatives of the 8 are nem công chả phượng, made from the rarest of birds.
Hue court cuisine was the most intricate, precisely prepared and sourced form of Vietnamese food that would make French fine dining seems like bánh mì thịt.
Problematic Statement #2: The guest judge comments that picking Vietnamese to make fine dining is valid because there is a lot of French influence that one can use to "elevate" it.
This comes from someone who went to Vietnam, ate food, and came back to Australia to make a Vietnamese-inspired menu.
I don't know if he's aware of the complex dynamics between French and Vietnamese cultures in general. But that off-hand assessment brings to mind the decades of us being "enlightened" and "civilized" by French colonizers.
Apart from the shadow of our colonial history in general, to say that the remnants of French influence in Vietnamese cuisine will help make it more upscale is plain wrong.
The French can take NO CREDIT in current Vietnamese cuisine having French culinary vestiges. Everything is thanks to the resourcefulness of past Vietnamese. From baguette to butter to our ốp-la.
They spent the entire time in Indochina making sure that fancy western produce and food stay in the western circle, looking down on native ingredients, and maintaining the colonial hierarchy.
“Bread and meat make us strong, rice and fish keep them weak.”
Take bánh mì, for example, as this incredible feature chronicles. https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2016/the-sandwich-that-ate-the-world/
Taking a brief moment to chat between orders, with Mrs. Le now resting upstairs, her daughter Hanh tells me how her father made the banh mi affordable to everyone. “He reduced the size of the traditional baguette to around 20 centimeters,” she says, through an interpreter.
“He also reduced the amount of meat, adding vegetables instead.”
The use of canned condensed milk, for example, is the result of racist market manipulation. As @thinguyens writes in her brilliant feature on colonial canned food. https://saigoneer.com/saigon-food-culture/18552-history-in-a-tin-the-colonial-past-of-vietnam-through-popular-canned-food
So, to sum up, whatever French bits and bobs we have left in our cuisine can't be further from the so-called fine dining that was claimed. It's rustic, accessible, cheap, and a beacon of working-class resourcefulness.
This dude is just one example of what I dislike about the white restaurant industry. A culinary equivalence of parachute journalism — parachute gastronomy, if you will.
In which a white chef is free to fly to whatever exotic destination they so desire to "gather inspiration" and come up with a pop-up menu. And is later heralded as an authority in ethnic cuisines. While in fact he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Ethnic chefs, on the other hand, do not have the same luxury of being allowed to cook such range of cuisines. They're pigeonholed and often expected to include their identity on a plate to be taken serious. https://www.gq.com/story/what-happens-when-a-brown-chef-cooks-white-food
"Among American food critics, the most highly regarded, or haute, cuisines are French, Italian, and New American, he added. Other ethnic cuisines, with the exception of Japanese, are seen as cheap eats—inferior, less sophisticated traditions."
