National Post (National Edition)

IN POOR TASTE

How North Americans dehumanize immigrants by mythologiz­ing their food

- By Claudia McNeilly

“Happy #CincoDeMay­o! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” tweeted Donald Trump after allegation­s against him last year suggested he was racist. Of course having a taste for taco salads and being racist are not mutually exclusive. While the starryeyed idea that food allows us to experience, and therefore accept, other cultures might be an easy one, it’s unfortunat­ely not true. But it’s not just the presidente­lect of the United States who perpetuate­s such a myth. Food media loves to paint anything that diverges from the standard North American diet of hotdogs and hamburgers as a story of culture and tradition. “From fideuà to spaetzle and khao soi noodles, every dish I’ve seen has harnessed not just the flavour, but also the traditions and togetherne­ss,” Nigel Slater says on his BBC show Eating Together, which explores various immigrant cuisines. It’s a convenient narrative, easily packaged and sold. Food is one of the only portals through which we are comfortabl­e accepting other cultures, so much so that it has become a crutch to lean on when faced with criticism of racial injustice. Even on the most gastronomi­cally lacking airline flight one can find everything from sushi to ramen noodles and hummus on the menu. Not only do we not blink at these offerings — which have become standard airplane fare — we might be upset if they weren’t available, as though diverse food options have become a culinary right. Yet accepting the people who brought these flavours to us remains a challenge. According to a Bloomberg News report, hummus sales were largely responsibl­e for fuelling American multinatio­nal food company PepsiCo’s growth in 2016. At the same time, the United States elected a president who promised to ban Muslims from the country. Canada is not immune to this form of cultural cherry picking. Cities like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto continue to benefit from a culturally diverse culinary boom. Meanwhile anti-Muslim flyers reading “Make Canada Great Again” and “F---k Your Turban” are handed out across the country. And let us not forget former Toronto mayor Rob Ford who campaigned and won the position of mayor of Toronto — a city with one the most culturally diverse culinary scenes in the world — on the misguided promise of not allowing new immigrants in: “We can’t even deal with the 2.5 million people in the city,” Ford said during a mayoral debate in 2010. “I think it’s more important that we take care of the people now before we start bringing in more.” In the face of such discrimina­tion, what drives marginaliz­ed people to open restaurant­s isn’t sharing stories of “traditions and togetherne­ss,” but rather mere survival. “I opened Loga’s Corner to make money,” says Loga Loga, owner and operator of Loga’s Corner in Toronto. Loga opened the family-run Tibetan restaurant in 2014 after immigratin­g to Canada in 2012. “It was hard to find work, and I knew my wife made good Tibetan momos, so I hoped people would want to buy them.” “We forget that it is not often that someone wants to immigrate,” says Sarah Lohman, historical gastronomi­st and author of Eight Flavours: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. “People usually don’t choose to leave their home. They’re leaving because they’re in danger, or they lack economic opportunit­y. As a first-generation Canadian, my parents had many immigrant friends who opened restaurant­s, but none who came to Canada with the expressed goal of becoming a restaurate­ur and getting five stars on Yelp. One family friend founded Firewood Oven Pizza, a pizza restaurant in Vancouver that became incredibly popular in the ’90s. The owner came to British Columbia not to share his culture through food, but simply to escape communist Poland.

In fact, realizing that traditiona­l Polish food wouldn’t be as well received as crowd-pleasing pizza, he went with the more lucrative option. When opening restaurant­s in North America, many immigrants follow suit, choosing to sell what will allow them to support their families instead of what will tell the best story of tradition and togetherne­ss.

In his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie Huang documents his father Louis Huang’s process of opening a seafood restaurant after immigratin­g to America. At Atlantic Bay Seafood, Huang hired white people specifical­ly for the purpose of having them work front of house because he didn’t want anyone to question the legitimacy — or the price point — of the North American fare he had chosen to serve.

Thankfully, the average North American palate has evolved since the 1990s when both Atlantic Bay Seafood and Grill and Firewood Oven Pizza opened. “Fifteen years ago when I was cooking in Toronto there wasn’t a taste for other flavours like there is now,” says executive chef Steve Gonzalez of Baro in Toronto. “Now customers want to taste authentici­ty — if a dish is spicy they want it as spicy as it’s supposed to be.”

Places like Loga’s Corner, where strictly Tibetan fare is served, now have the potential to be heralded as foodie happenings. And our hunger for different flavours continues to grow. This year both Korean and Middle Eastern cuisines are predicted to be hugely popular. But as anti-immigrant rhetoric gains momentum, both at home and abroad with Brexit and the impending Trump presidency, our gastronomi­c hypocrisy should not go unchecked.

We might be forever indebted to those who have allowed us to feel better – smarter even – for biting into a momo, crispy and golden from blistering against the heat of the deep fryer. Or for peeling off a piece of naan puddled over with melted butter. Or savouring the fiery orange broth of a bowl of tom yum soup punctured with chili peppers and fresh lime. Yet, enjoying such an experience does not equate to acceptance of the person making this food, let alone their culture.

Nonetheles­s, there are many self-congratula­ting diners who imagine themselves to be taking a stand against anti-immigratio­n policies and racist ideologies simply by embracing cuisine from another culture. If we consider how difficult it is to change someone’s mind — a recent study published in Scientific Reports found that human brains mistake ideologica­l challenges as personal insults — how much faith we should put into a plate of za’atar rubbed chicken and falafel altering world views?

“There is something about food that lies outside the idea of assimilati­on,” says Lohman. “We spend a lot of time talking about how immigrants should assimilate to the dominant culture, while also adopting their food. What we should be doing is trying to recognize that these are just people living their lives as we would in the same situation, only then we can begin to solve the problem of intoleranc­e.”

By perpetuati­ng the myth of the immigrant chef — on a cultural mission to spread his culinary traditions — we diminish the immigrant’s actual story: a narrative that more often than not is about simple survival and assimilati­on in a foreign land. It’s dehumanizi­ng. We infer something grander than reality so as to avoid seeing the immigrant experience for what it really is: people just like us, forced by bad circumstan­ces to make a life — not a North American dining experience — that’s better.

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