The Twitter debate was a bit of a tweetstorm in a teacup, with each side consisting of smart people who care deeply about how their culture’s cuisines are interpreted by a white supremacist society. Yes, the phrase “curry” can be used derogatorily, but as My Annoying Opinions wrote, “curry in the Indian context means something very different than what it has come to mean in the American (and European) context.” While it might seem obvious that a spice mix sold by McCormick wouldn’t be considered authentic, things got complicated as more Indians and South Asians - the pseudonymous food writer My Annoying Opinions prominent among them - argued that plenty of Indians use curry powders and list curries on their menus, and that just because British colonizers are responsible for the widespread and limited understanding of curry doesn’t mean Indians and South Asians haven’t made it their own. For these two, it was just another example of how their cuisine has been butchered for a white palate. Both Mistry and Shah argued that no self-respecting South Asian chef would be caught dead with “curry powder” - the yellow miasma of spices often used to “jazz up” a mayonannaise-y chicken salad - in their kitchens. The semantics behind the word “curry” are long and complicated, but the argument arose because, among some white people, “curry” has become a catch-all phrase for all Indian cuisine, a flattening of the varied and multicultural cooking of more than 1 billion people. This year, writer Khushbu Shah echoed the sentiment, tweeting that only “colonizers” eat curry. “ #currypowder is to India what #italianseasoning is to Italy… a fucking joke, amirite?” they wrote. In May of 2018, chef Preeti Mistry tweeted that “Curry is a social construct” and continued with a thread about the word’s confusing relationship with Indian cuisine. In 2011, Todd Kliman wrote in Lucky Peach that authenticity was “a purely arbitrary, purely subjective surmise of a purely impure thing.” In 2012, Eddie Huang lamented the prototype of someone who “wants to tell ME what Chinese food is because Bear Stearns sent him to Shanghai for six months.” The public discussion of authenticity in food began to feel cliche, the language of insufferable foodies more concerned with appearing to have the correct tastes than doing any tasting. Could you even be someone who liked food if the food you ate wasn’t authentic?īut just as it rose, so did it fall. Places like Eataly popped up with the promise of “real” Italian ingredients over the impostors you’d find at your ShopRite. “Authenticity” was the buzzword that propelled people to seek out so-called hole-in-the-wall taco joints over Qdoba and blast their exploits all over Yelp. About a decade ago, the most important thing food could be was authentic.
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