Do the dishes taste similar to the food in the home country?
Is the restaurant filled with customers who are ethnically related to the cuisine?
Are the chefs from the home country?
These questions are often posed towards an ethnic restaurant’s legitimacy.
There are a few quotas people ask when they evaluate a restaurant. Then again, maybe only diehard foodies like me look for these requirements. After all, food is food, right? As long as it’s good, does the authenticity matter?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
I crave authentic Cantonese (Southern Chinese) food because I grew up eating it (and my Dad refused to eat anything else). It connects me to my culture and blesses me with fond memories of meals with family and friends. When I think of authentic Cantonese cuisine, I immediately imagine steaming baskets of dim sum, small appetizer-like dishes, and siu mei, delicious roasted meats. Every now and then I crave these foods. Too bad I live an ocean away from Hong Kong.
What do I do then?
I opt to the closest choice I can get. If I get a chance to travel to an Asian populated city, I search high and low for a Chinese restaurant that matches my palate. If I can find the right ingredients, I make the dishes myself. Chinese restaurants that don’t serve Cantonese-styled dishes are not “authentic” in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I like orange chicken, too, but it's not comfort food for me.
I believe that chefs at fusion restaurants try to follow traditional Chinese recipes in some sense, but they also cater towards populations that wouldn’t eat dishes like steamed fish or pork buns. They use ingredients that are the most accessible like broccoli instead of traditional leafy greens like bok choy. Cooks adapt. I get it. Food changes as people move from place to place.
But for first-generation immigrants, they miss the food from a life prior to moving to America. They miss the flavors that cannot be replicated in their new home. While they adjust to the new foods as best as they can, there is always a lingering nostalgia for their childhood cuisine. This longing is a constant pivot between the pull of a familiar past and the adaptation to fit the mold of a changing future. If they are lucky enough, they will find a place that serves food that they have missed. In that special moment—when they have their motherland cuisine in their new homeland—they are given a window of happiness and peace.
