Food for Thought
October 21st, 2020
This week we talked about the importance of food in Asian culture. We explored the idea of impact vs intent by looking at cases where white chefs running Asian style restaurants received a lot of controversy. In the case of Arielle Haspel and Lucky Lee's, there was a clear disrespect and appropriation of Asian culture; however, in the case of Andrew Zimmern, who had years of experience training under and working alongside Asian chefs before opening his fusion restaurant, the issue wasn't as black and white.
Many ideas were thrown around: we discussed our enjoyment of trying new recipes and cooking for fun, we explored various ways we incorporate fusion food in our own lives, and we agreed that food is pretty integral to Asian culture. We talked about what it means for food to be authentic, and when making food different to your culture is ok, in which we talked a lot about the line being when you start profiting off of it.
Stay tuned for news regarding the situation!
Resource |
Description |
|---|---|
| Lucky Lee's | Information about Arielle Haspel's restaurant, and the social backlash she faced from such information. |
| Lucky Cricket | Information and opinion piece regarding Andrew Zimmern's Lucky Cricket, and discussion about cultural relevance relating to the restaurant. |
| Lucky Cricket Reviews | A review of the food and the cultural relevance of Lucky Crickt, written from a customer's point of view. |
| Zimmern's Remarks | Andrew Zimmern's remarks about Asian culture and food—clarifications and apologies over things he has said. |