Cultural Fusion

Alex was in town on his two month tour of (in my words) “cities that don’t suck” – you know – the Philadelphia, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and so on.

Anyhow, we went out to dinner at Mi Linda Peru one night – it’s like four blocks from here, and had some good reviews, and I’m still at the stage where I’m enjoying the process of trying out new places.  (NOTE: Also guesting in the meal: Doug, who just moved out here)

I think that some of the best foods in the world comes from when two cultures intermingle.  This place was a tiny little joint, like a dozen tables, very casual atmostphere with great food, and pretty good service.

I’m totally going back there, even if Alex did fall asleep at the dinner table, and the waiter offered him a free 7-up as we were leaving because of how sickly he looked.

But back to cultural mixing and food.  In my book, the reason this place had such good food (besides the chef) is because the South American flavors (corn-salsa with the bread, fried plantains) and Spanish flavors (a wonderful seafood paella) mix well.

It’s also probably why food is San Francisco world-famous.  The entire concept of “California Cuisine,” (Wikipedia) which is my biased opinion, is about as good as food gets, is this same concept:

California Cuisine is a style of cuisine marked by an interest in “fusion“— integrating disparate cooking styles and ingredients— and in freshly prepared using local ingredients.

This sounds revolutionary!  This new great thing!  I call BS.  It just means there are a lot of immigrants here, and some of them made their restaurants go up-scale, and served whatever was grown around where they are.  I’m pretty sure that’s how all new food/cooking-categories (ain’t that the less high-falutian word for cuisine) gets made – people set up home somewhere new, and serve food to a group that they hadn’t ate with before, using the food of where-ever they are now.

It’s why the Chinese butcher we go to sells Mexican spices; why one of the cheap Chinese joints I walk by going to BART is titled “Chinese food and donuts”……  Why it’s okay to use a non-stick pan and olive oil to do a stir-fry, using french wine instead of rice-vinegar, wild rice instead of short-grain, radishes in addition to ginger, jalapenos in addition to Thai chilis, Italian sausage side-by-side bok choi, and so on and so forth – all things I’ve done recently.

What’s your favorite item from the complete wrong culture you put into a meal you like to make?