This post is about my current thoughts on Chinese food. I have been absent from this blog lately because I have other food blogs that I manage. In particular, my flagship blog is a pizza blog (please visit some time).
My thoughts on Chinese food were derived from an experience that I had yesterday. I had breakfast at a small diner owned and operated by Chinese people. The meal that I had was an American egg and cheese omelet with hash browns… oh…and a side order of 3 pancakes (I like my meals large). The food was average but this post isn’t a review of what I ate.
This post is actually about my thoughts while eating American food in a Chinese diner. The question that came to mind was about Chinese food. This question is an age old question that can be applied to countless other ethnic foods. Is a food considered Chinese food just because the chef who cooked the meal is Chinese? Of course, Chinese food is the food that originated from the ethnic culture of the Chinese. But really what I am questioning is other foods in addition to what we already know to be popularly considered Chinese food. Can a non traditional Chinese food be considered Chinese food if prepared by a Chinese chef?
This question may sound stupid (and it did to me at first) but the more that I thought about it the more that I could not find an answer. Let me elaborate.
A Chinese chef may have been trained to use the ingredients and styles of the ways of the Chinese. Thus, any food that he or she creates will have at minimum some connection to the tastes of Chinese food as we know it. So in my case yesterday I ate a breakfast platter that is traditionally known to be an American meal. How can you make an omelet taste like Chinese food? The chef who prepared this omelet did though. There were subtle hints of a Chinese chef through the works of the meal. For example, I am sure that MSG was used as I could taste it throughout. Or how about the cheese being put on top of the omelet instead of inside neatly tucked away like the traditionally American style?
The point that I am making is how far do we draw the line when we define an ethnic food. Better yet, what is American food? Most American dishes are in fact derivatives of other cultures. The hamburger, for example, actually was derived from Hamburg, Germany. But the Americans have become known for the meal because of their style of the way it is cooked and the marketing behind it. If you apply this same analogy to my omelet, why wouldn’t you be able to consider that a Chinese omelet. Yes it is normally considered an American platter but another ethic group has now influenced the norm by cooking this platter with their own culture’s style. Who knows – in 50 years the American pancake may be considered a Chinese dish.