So, here’s the thing. I find the intersection of food and politics compelling. Often very compelling. Know what I don’t find compelling? The writing people do at the intersection of food and politics. But then I found out about this book: The Ethnic Restaurateur.
And it sounded promising! Krishnendu Ray comfortably crosses the worlds of food and theory, and I think he gives us plenty worthwhile in The Ethnic Restaurateur.
Food and Practice
Ray works somewhere in the realm of the ‘practice turn‘ in humanities and social science theory. It’d be silly for me to try to summarize this in a short blog post, but this work often takes its points of departure from Heidegger‘s attention to everyday practice in Being and Time. If you’re interested in this stuff from some of the angles I’m interested in it, I’d recommend the Hubert Dreyfus reading of Heidegger, through his commentaries and related essays.
Again, Ray doesn’t ignore high theory. Nor does he include it awkwardly or superficially. When he discusses Heidegger, he does so clearly and pertinently. He also integrates feminist theory and various lines of work originating in Pierre Bourdieu on taste and cultural capital.
The Ethnic Restaurateur
But, really, he calls the book The Ethnic Restaurateur. What he really wants to do here is present certain issues in food politics from the perspective of…well…the ethnic restaurateur. Or, as Ray understands the term, the immigrant who opens a restaurant.
Why?
One, he thinks food writers overlook the perspective of immigrant restaurant owners when they’re thinking through key issues. Two, immigrants are at the forefront of some of the biggest challenges with owning a restaurant: capital requirements, specialized knowledge of law and custom, the importance of kin and support networks, the necessity of self-exploitation among the petty bourgeois (i.e., working hard in your own shop), and finding specialized financing. Three, immigrants often make explicit those things that native restaurant owners might take for granted. Thus, studying immigrants helps us build a better anthropology of dominant groups as well.
A Note on ‘Ethnic’
And then there’s the ‘ethnic’ of The Ethnic Restaurateur. Ray gives a pretty standard overview of ‘ethnic’ as an alternative way of thinking about non-dominant and/or non-normative differences without the historical baggage associated with ‘race’ language. And in some sense, that’s the whole story. But I think much of the subtext here is that he’s thinking mostly about members of non-black (and, at least in the 21st century, non-white) ethnic groups.
That comes out in the history. While, e.g., soul food is certainly a part of the US ethnic restaurant scene, Ray tells a broader story about changes in the US ethnic restaurant scene in which the dominant ethnic foods move from French and German in the early 20th century to Chinese and Mexican in the early 21st. Among other things, this represents a change in representations of whiteness and foreignness. French and German food, and more recently Italian food, receive cultural value as a ‘fancy’ kind of foreign, whereas American culture represents Chinese and Mexican food as dirty. Economic exploitation, particularly a low wage, accompanies this.
It also represents, and Ray explicitly cites Du Bois on the point, a transformation of the French and German and Italian chef. They transitioned from ‘white ethnics’ to a professionalized white class receiving, among other things, the wages of whiteness.
Cultural Values and Attitudes
Ray works through several case studies, conversations with ethnic restaurant owners. He finds, unsurprisingly, that the ethnic restaurateur comes from many different places and backgrounds. He also finds widespread mixing of cultural food offerings, particularly at less expensive restaurants. This sometimes produces a kind of cultural angst within the ethnic restaurateur.
For example, one owner repeatedly defends his restaurant as ‘just a business’. It’s not a part of him or, perhaps, his culture. It’s a place he goes to and works on to support his family. Others do something similar by renaming or rebranding the dishes. It’s not Chinese food, for instance. Rather, it’s ‘Chinese born in America’ food.
By contrast, Ray doesn’t see this as much in more expensive ethnic restaurants, whether, for that matter, French or German or Chinese or Korean. To the customer, particularly the white American customer, all ethnic restaurants serve culture as much as they serve food. But in the expensive ethnic restaurant, there’s more harmony between owner and customer. In the fancy joint, it’s not ‘just a business’. Often the owner happily serves culture as much as the customer buys it.
Expertise and Authenticity
Until, of course, they’re not so happy! While the owner of the expensive Chinese or Korean restaurant may happily serve culture, they face pressure to do so from customers. And in ways the customer finds palatable. Pun, perhaps, intended.
Among other things, customer expectations limit what the owners of fancy ethnic joints can do. And he cites pushback from Korean chefs, in particular, directed both at customers and at other Korean chefs who succumb to those expectations.
Part of the source, and why these things gain traction, is that ethnicity is a cultural marker of a lack of expertise in the kitchen. The ethnic restaurateur must set themself apart and jump through far more hoops than the white chef.
And it’s here where, I think, some of the US ‘left’ perhaps runs afoul. Many members of the US ‘left’ think it’s their duty to police boundaries of cultural authenticity in food among ethnic restaurateurs who, in many cases, are either doing what they need to do to make their business run or doing novel things in the kitchen that, while creative and interesting to them, fail to meet whatever bar of ‘cultural authenticity’ the well-meaning customer has chosen.
Ethnic Food and the Politics of the So-Called ‘Middle Class’
Here’s a final thought. Interestingly enough, Ray doesn’t think wealthy Americans are the real drivers of the conversation around ethnic food. Now, look. He doesn’t deny the role of capital here at all. That’s not the point.
The point is middle class Americans, beginning around the early 20th century, become a large part of the customer base for ethnic restaurants of all kinds. And they’ve exercised outsized influence on what the restaurant looks like, what the food tastes like, and how much it all costs.
Middle class Americans, according to Ray, used ethnic food to achieve a higher status without actually changing anything about their underlying politics. Particularly their politics regarding immigration, ethnicity, and race.
Are things any different now?
