My fiancee and I were having a debate recently after having been served some truly wretched food of a cuisine with which we were familiar, but the preparer was not (and had obviously stretched to accomodate us).
My view is that while one cannot expect authenticity in such a circumstance, taste is a universal attribute, and thus if the chef who made the food were talented, he would have known that the food was not good, even if he did not know what it was supposed to taste like. In other words - I have some confidence in my palate, if not my cooking skill. If asked to produce, say, Ethiopian food, I suspect I would produce inauthentic but tasty food, and if I erred and produced inauthentic and unappealing food, I would have noticed.
My fiancee is somewhat more inclined to the view that the badness of food made by people unpracticed in a cuisine is excusable. I don't want to put words in her mouth (and I'm sure I will be chastised if I am mischaracterizing her views), but I think her bottom line is - "maybe that chef's normal food is actually good, and his efforts to accomodate us hamstrung the man".
All this, of course, circles delicately around the cultural relativist question of whether food can be poorly done or can only be differently done. Obviously, I cling to the former position. And, of course, I once got myself in hot water with apparently the entire readership of another blog when I declared that I didn't understand people who claimed they didn't like foods.
4/03/2009
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3 comments:
As I recall, that debate got somewhat resolved in favor of: certain food items, especially prepared in particular ways, are gross, but there didn't seem to be anyone defending a categorical dislike of particular cuisines.
I am not sure which side I take in the debate between you and your fiancee, however. I can imagine my mother, who is quite a good cook for many foods, producing what many would consider a bad steak simply because it's out of her realm of experience and she'd be concerned about undercooking it. Animal products in Indian food generally are very well cooked -- I didn't realize how odd my idea of an omelet was until a boyfriend suggested that I take it out of the pan about three minutes earlier.
Also, it can be difficult to get past our idea of what a particular item is supposed to taste like. A cocktail that is expected to be dry but comes in sweet may be thought "bad" tasting even if someone who likes sweet cocktails would find it acceptable.
I agree, basically its all a matter of what your expectations are and how willing you are to deal with not having them met.
I disagree, simply because extremes in any style may not be properly appreciated until one has a grasp of the style. Even now, I imagine most non-Asian Americans would have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between badly- and well-prepared Korean food, as the style is so foreign to them. In fact, I tend to assume that the more I like a Korean dish I am eating, the more inauthentic it is, as I suspect that some of the enjoyment comes from relative familiarity. If it tasted super-harsh to me, I could easily be persuaded that it really appealed to native Korean tastes.
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