Humour falls flat
Debate has been raging since a story highlighted controversial descriptions given to menu items at Christchurch’s ‘‘Asian-fusion’’ restaurant Bamboozle.
There are those who view it as distasteful, racist even, and on the other side, those calling for the fun police to lay off and let everyone have a laugh. The thoughts I’d really like to hear are those of Asian staff members who make and serve the food.
The publicity isn’t doing Bamboozle any harm, it’s fully booked as people flock to guffaw over the thrill of ordering Ho Lee Kok, Chirri Garrik An Prawn Dumpring and Vaag Yoo Owl Brown (it’s either a thank you or a f... you to Al Brown, I can’t quite tell).
Bamboozle isn’t the only Asian fusion eatery to call on desperate, puerile attempts at humour to sell food and drink. Other businesses also make play on the fact that pronouncing words from a second (or third, fourth or fifth) language can be hard, when really, the laugh and the pity should be on us white New Zealanders who speak but one language.
Dredging up themes from the wartime Southeast Asia is another approach, Bamboozle’s ‘‘Luff U’Long Time Phat Thai’’ is a case in point and Auckland’s Monsoon Poon incorporates this cliche in its branding. Because wartime prostitution and food go hand in hand, apparently.
Tellingly, I’ve never seen a menu at a French-style bistro joke around with accents from that part of the world. It just doesn’t happen.
I could argue on about why publicly picking (the term ‘‘poking fun’’ doesn’t apply here) on ethnic minorities isn’t cool but I’d also like to point out that there are way better ways to sell a menu.
After all, we’re talking food here, so why not actually sell the fact that what you’re ordering will taste delicious, and that every dish has a story (we fight tooth and nail to claim pavlova, don’t we?) It’s pretty easy to be interesting, enticing and even funny all at the same time without being derogatory.
Check out the menu in Chinese restaurants around town and you’ll often find direct translations into English of descriptive dish names, as well as names that you can tell must have an interesting back story.
There’s Drunken Chicken, cooked in litres of rice wine, Squirrel Fish – fried till it curls like a squirrel’s tail – and saliva (sometimes Slobbery) chicken: the Sichuan peppers hit makes your mouth water. (Saliva Chicken is also on Bamboozle’s menu – there’s a start guys, it doesn’t have to hurt someone to sound cool!)
The name Eja Ku Rait (for a chicken satay dish – hello, shouldn’t they have reserved this one for something with eggplant in it?) doesn’t exactly get my mouth watering, but maybe that’s just me.
The other thing that bugs me about this type of lame humour is that it pretty much means I can’t eat that food. And it might be really good food! I can’t eat it because I’d feel like I was complicit in the unfunny joke, and the awkwardness of it all would make it unenjoyable.
It’s embarrassing, too. I imagine visitors not just from Asian countries but from anywhere cosmopolitan around the world scratching their heads and wondering if they’ve not only travelled thousands of kilometres to reach New Zealand, but also back in time a few decades or more.
Bamboozle’s website declares ‘‘the entree, main and dessert thing is just so last century for us’’, but it still thinks there’s a future in mocking people’s accents.
We’re so lucky to have expert cooks bringing us Asian cuisines. In only a short time we’ve seen exponential growth in places offering not just food from different Asian countries, but food specific to particular regions within those countries.
This delicious diversity is something to enjoyed, encouraged and honoured.
It’s time we put racist restaurant menus to bed.