I been reading this book Red Sauce, which is a history of Italian-American cooking. It reminds me very much of Taco USA, a wonderful book about Tex-Mex and Americanized Mexican food. It made me realize two things: one is that I really have no idea wtf “authentic” food actually is or why I should care about it at alll. The other is that it’s been far too long since I made a batch of tomato sauce, here is my take on very simple Sicilian-style red sauce from canned Cento San Marzanos. The trick is not to sautee the garlic and onions. Do not sautee them no matter what your cookbook says, just slow cook them with the tomatoes.
Authentic food is a silly idea. There is no pure culture. Everything is a blend of global influences. It it just a continuum and there is no way to draw a line on it and declare everything from this point is “authentic”.
Authenticism may be dumb, but I do think there is merit to having a rough consensus of certain foods’ most ideal form. It can be codified into law like a French baguette dough or Prosciutto di Parma. Or it can be more argumentative like pizza and BBQ where some people stubbornly hold minority views, but most people with good knowledge fall into a pretty narrow range of opinions.
That’s not to say that deviations of an ideal form should be avoided or criticized. One example for me is potato chips, where I am fairly promiscuous. Flat, ridged, kettle cooked, artificially flavored, they’re all good. But the perfect chip is the plain old Lays in the yellow bag. It is the quintessential potato chip. You can’t make anything that is more potato chippy than it is.
Another would be wings. Deep fried, sauced with Frank’s Red Hot & butter, side of celery & bleu cheese dressing. That’s it. That’s how wings are done, even if that’s not how they are done at the original restaurant. Other wings are very good too, and should be enjoyed frequently. There are tons of great ways to riff on the concept. But the basic wing is the one true wing.
Sure we can talk about authenticity in food. We just need to understand authenticity as not meaning being able to completely replicate a food experience. There can be good copies and bad copies, but all copies are inauthentic. Some copies are knowingly inauthentic. Some copies are respectfully inauthentic.
Authentic food is that which springs naturally from a cultural context, with the understanding that people who draw from multiple cultures are still being authentic. People who draw from a culture for food while remaining an outsider to that culture are inauthentic, with the worst forms of inauthenticity being describable as cultural appropriation.
There’s good food and bad food but I find myself not even understanding what authenticity means anymore. People look down on spaghetti with meatballs because it’s mostly an “inauthentic” American thing you don’t often find in Italy, but it’s kind of dumb and problematic to say that Italian-Americas in 1920’s New York aren’t authentic people with their own authentic food. Spaghetti with meatballs is actually very good when it’s done properly.
i did have trouble at first eating in ‘italian’ restaurants in the US and getting food that isn’t even close to what I know from home or from Italy.
So it’s not really abut authentic, more about definition and expectations. I don’t like american-italian food personally and whenever i ate outside of major cities, that’s the italian food i received.
If you want a word for “prepared as commonly prepared in X region”, then use “traditional”, but I think the concept of authenticity has value in being used to explain why cultural appropriation is bad.
Most casual to semi-upscale Italian-American restaurants range from mediocre to kinda bad. The customers tend to be people who want a “nice” dinner without really knowing or caring about food very much. The exceptions seem to be so rare that it’s a category of food I just avoid because I can easily make much better versions of the food at home.
There’s a huge difference between immigrants adapting old techniques to changes in available ingredients and catering to new customers, and ignorant people making up imitations based mainly on stereotypes.
A classic example of this is Chicken Tikka Masala which was first made by people from India but in England. I only learned very recently on some cooking show that it did not originate in India, but apparently that is fairly well known.
Chicken tikka masala is kind of a weird one because there are certainly traditional dishes that are similar. Also it’s pretty much only a thing that is served in restaurants. I have met zero Indian people that make it at home. Most of them have a go to chicken curry that they will make, but it’s never chicken tikka masala. Maybe my sample is skewed.
Yeah, I think a reasonable minimum standard for authenticity is if people from around where the dish was invented or popularized would agree that it is what you say it is. Like, Tilted’s Italian Beef example, sure, it’s not from Italy, it’s from Chicago, but that’s what it got known as from its creators and their customers, and it definitely is not sliced roast beef with marinara sauce on a roll. Anyone who tried to serve that as “Italian beef” isn’t being authentic. Maybe Orange Beef isn’t found in China and is Chinese American, but that doesn’t mean its inauthentic, just that it’s its own thing made by different people.
