All Episodes

April 8, 2020 47 mins

Diasporic foodways looks at the ways identity and food evolve in new home countries. Join Whetstone Magazine’s Point of Origin podcast as we speak with Asleigh Shanti, Aarohi Narai, and the team from Third Culture Bakery on the power of diasporic foodways. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M M. What does the diaspora mean to you? The
diaspora to disperse a scattered population whose origins lie in
a separate geographic locale. The diaspora is not a singular

(00:20):
experience originating from one place. It is a multitude, a
complex experience with many origins. Diasporic Food Waves examines how
food has traveled from origin to adopt at home and
in doing so, taken on new meaning while steadfastly keeping

(00:41):
communities connected to their heritage in many instances, and the
grappling is the creation of a third culture. In today's episode,
we hear from several voices connecting us to Diasporic Food Waves.
At Third Culture Bait gree in Berkeley, California. The team

(01:01):
shares with us how they're Mochi muffins connect their Indonesian
in Taiwanese heritage. Katherine Bowen tells us the story of
honoring her roots through Paboosa's the iconic Salvadorian flatbread. The
chef Ashley Shanti, who lives in the Appalachian South, tells
her story and amplifies those of African Americans and her

(01:21):
hybrid West African and Appalachian cuisine. We learned how to
make another kind of flatbread, the Jamaican miannike case, a
dish with Afro Caribbean origins popular on the Atlantic Coast,
and finally a rohein the Rain. Unpacks the colonial history
of Japanese curry as a cultural and culinary artifact from

(01:43):
the perspective of an Indian woman in Tokyo. On today's
episode of Plant of Origin, we're exploring what the diaspora
means and how it informs and enriches our food. I

(02:12):
grew up in the Indonesia and also in New York City.
That's Sam boots Are Boots Are. He's the co owner
in chef at Third Culture Bakery in Oakland, California. So
we kind of identified as Third Culture kids, and it
was kind of like more of a sociology term, and
it was trying to describe kids who originally they grew

(02:32):
up in a an immigrant family and they didn't particularly
attach themselves to the culture where they grew up nor
to the culture where they were born. My partner, I
felt that we were too white to be Asian and
too Asian to be white, ended up forming our own culture,
our third interpretation of it. We wanted to create a

(02:55):
bakery basically that tells that story and all the flavors
and all the pastries and drinks a third culture. They're
epanomizing third culture by creating mochi muffins and mochi donuts,
an Asian dessert molded into an American pastry. And I
I also really missed all these flavors that I grew

(03:16):
up eating, all these tropical fruits like passion food and
glove and mango. Selfishly, I want to eat all these things.
I really wanted to create a bakery, and I actually
partnered my partner Winter, he was born in Taiwan but
also grew up in l A came and it was like,
you know, I kind of want to create a bakery
where it reflects our upbringing. When Sam and his co

(03:39):
founder Winter launched their bakery, they lead with the intention
of creating the pastries of their childhood. Yeah. The first
adapt adaptation was actually just taking taking my mom's recipe
and kind of putting it in a muffin tin um.
That's how it started. I still remember the first night
I made it and is just shocked at how this

(04:03):
contrast of texture that you get out of baking emoji,
and you know, the outside gets kind of crispy and
crunchy and the insights stay soft and gooey. Let's talk
about one of the ingredients that makes these cultural ties,
and that is the mochi itself. So could you explain
to us what is mochi Mochi is. It's a type

(04:27):
of rice. It's basically glutinous rice. It's a variety of
rice that is cultivated to have more a specific starch,
kurd amulose. So when it's cooked, it kind of connects together.
It forms this kind of sticky network, sticky chewy network.
The word mochi itself is actually Japanese, but the crop

(04:48):
itself um is from China. You know, the species of
rice comes from and it ever since it's spread to Japan,
it's spread to the Southeast Asian, and it's spread to Thailand.
So it's very interesting in that Japanese UM, Japanese, Southeast
Asian and Chinese they all now have their own varieties

(05:11):
of mochi rice. They have different qualities. The Japanese is
more supple, more soft um. The Southeast Asian is more firm.
In China and Japan, the mochi tends to be pounded
into this kind of soft, sticky thing and Um, usually
it's stuffed um, I believe in China. UM. In Indonesia, though,

(05:31):
UM it tends to be more like the steam cake
that I told you, where it's layered and it's cut UM.
I think because of the fact that Indonesian they just
love to eat snats on the go. You mentioned that
when you were a child, you grew up eating these

(05:53):
pastries called kol at bees. They're a Southeast Asian steamed cake.
Can you tell us more about the pastry and your
childhood memories of having this dish? Yeah, super special dish.
My my mom usually she makes it during the big
holiday Christmas and New Year's UM. And it's a super

(06:16):
traditional cake that you make kind of a batter, kind
of a thin batter with rice flour, coconut milk. And
traditionally in Southeast Asian pastries they use this herb called
pandan and if you ever if you ever google it,
it looks like this long kind of grassy leaf and um,
so at these Asian people, they Indonesian and Malaysian and

(06:39):
type UM cooking uses this leaf as a flavoring and
it smells a lot like vanilla, like a very grassy sweet,
and so she would kind of blend out all together
and um, have a giant steamer going on, and would
pour this batter close the lid and and and then

(07:00):
the batter would kind of like thicken into this kind
of um trewy layer, and then she would keep adding layer,
and she would pour another second layer, close the lid,
and so um it would have this like, you know,
ten or fifteen layers. And usually she makes it kind
of little fun and it's different colors. There's like green
and red, um, depending on what kind of flavorings or

(07:21):
what kind of color she uses. And then when it's
all done, she would let it cool, take it out
of the steamer, let it cool, and then unmolded and
when you cut it, you see these beautiful lines. And
as a kid, I just remember loving and I don't
know if this is like a childhood thing, but I
think kids love chewy things, you know, So it has chewy,

(07:42):
sticky kind of sticks in your teeth kind of consistency.
Um kind of this netty coconutty flavor, but very subtle um.
And yeah, that was my memory of it. And my
mom would always because It's such a long process to make,
and she would make the batter from from whole rice,
like whole grain rice, so she would have to soak
it overnight and then blended in the morning. So it

(08:04):
was it was a very special dessert, time consuming, and
you would only do it for your family or a
loved one. So Um, I think a lot of Indonesian
kids have a very special memory of that, you know,
um telling the story of why the pastry meant so
much for me and what I wanted to do. But Um,

(08:24):
I think I think that the pastry itself and the
storytelling together kind of just made a life of its own.
And I'm just still amazed to this day that so
many people eat our pastries because of that. Sam and
I start to talk about fusion cuisine. Is there a

(08:45):
conflict between preserving and honoring tradition. How do foods and
recipes modernize and how do they modernized based on location
and adaptation. I fee like Asian cuisine as like more
of a trophy, and I feel a lot of places
do that. They just they disfuse cuisine for the sake

(09:07):
of using cuisine, and I feel a lot of time
they don't understand the heart of like, you know, the
heart of Japanese cooking, like what is it, or the
heart of Vietnamese cooking. And I feel that a lot
of times it's it goes a right just because they
don't really understand the history and the flavor, and and
for me, at the end of the day, it's just
it has to taste good. You know. There is a

(09:30):
lot of resistance from people who are kind of purist
and being like, oh, that's not you know, that's not
Indonesian food, or that's not Vietnamese food. And I think
for us, we are not trying to make Indonesian pastry.
And I think if you acknowledge the fact that you're
not trying to make Vietnamese cuisine modern quote unpute modern
or Vietnamese cuisine better um, and you're trying to like

(09:50):
lift it up from the you know, the Dark Ages
or whatever and the savior kind of mentality, I think
that that's when it gets troubling. And for us, it's like,
you know, weird, Well, I'm just trying to make stuff
that that I grew up with and I'm trying to
make it to my interpretation in and I'm not calling
it necessarily American food. I'm not necessarily Asian Indonesian. It's

(10:11):
kind of like a thing of its own, and it's
it's a very thin line. I think any exposure of
um other culture that I'm there underrepresentative, I think is
a good thing. But I think that the intention has
to be there, a good intention, and not just for
the sake of doing it. Yeah, so you bring up

(10:41):
many good points here. I agree with you fundamentally that
Asian cuisine as a moniker is absurdly broad, and it's
also usually the first cuisine that comes to mind when
we think of fusion and we think of all the
parts of fusion that have gone awry. Uh. It's like
if you just slap Asian or Pan Asian alongside any

(11:05):
other global cuisine, we just call it fusion. Um. So
that is understandably maddening. Um. I'm really interested in what
you said around the fear of bringing this savior complex
into into your cooking. Um. I haven't exactly thought of
it in those terms. I mean, of course we we

(11:26):
know about the savior complex outside of food as a concept,
but as a third culture, kid, it seems that you're
saving the cuisine by not being a purist or I
think that's really too much to ask if anyone cooking
the food of their childhood or the food of their memory.
I think a lot of those in the naming because

(11:48):
the naming kind of um presents the viewpoint, you know, um.
And I think I think for me, the most compelling,
the most compelling cuisine, I think I always say it
has a sense of time and space. Um. And I
always tell my my partner Winter, you know, I was like,
you know, when we go to a restaurant, I just
love places that just feels that it belongs to a

(12:10):
time and space. And not necessarily that has to be
authentic or it has to be like true to whatever
tastes it comes from that country. But I think it's
just like it speaks very um honestly about like where
they interpret the cuisine. So why is it perceived as

(12:30):
acceptable to take French or Italian dishes and adapt them.
Sam has a perfect explanation and it's not one lacking nuance.
You know, we we find it acceptable, and myself included
if if someone makes an Italian or French and you know,
even if they're not French or they're taking into another direction.

(12:53):
Society accepts it and cognizant of what I find to
be true is that I think a lot of Asian
cuisine have had so much history of just colonization and
history of change. And that's part of the reason why
Asian chefs and you know, third culture kids who who

(13:13):
want to make these food are more aware of it.
And I think the same can't be necessarily said about
French or Italian just because it's so ingrained and so
part of the American culture already, and so there's you know,
there's there's a lot of history there, and and I
feel that a lot of food that we make are

(13:34):
also reflective of these occupation times. I wish I could
tell you I came from a family that cooked together
from an early age. I helped my mother recreated a
beloved dishes from her birthplace, outs off the door. I

(13:57):
wish I could say I looked like her, because she
has always been consummate beauty. I wish I could claim
that I spoke fast, seamless Spanish with her. That's Katherine Bowen.
Katherine is an Oakland based writer with a background in
law and food policy, and is a first generation Salvadorian.

(14:17):
The truth is that I'm often ashamed of my Spanish,
which is choppy and littered with English words, in part
because my father insisted that growing up we speak a
language he understood. The reality is that I received his
skin and European last name, and though there is undoubtedly
privilege that attends to those attributes, they made me feel
less able to claim my Salvadoran ancestry. My cultural, linguistic,

(14:41):
and physical and securities were in some ways exacerbated in
my birthplace, Miami, Florida, where the population is predominantly Hispanic,
but I never felt Latina enough. Looking back now, I
partly attribute my early cultural dissonance to narrative. As a child,
I heard only conflict written story of Salvador, a place

(15:02):
that my mother says she escaped, where I learned she
ran from police after peaceful protests, had friends shot at,
acquaintances kidnapped, among so many other casualties of the country's
twenty years civil war. We didn't discuss home cooked salvador
And specialties or treasured family recipes. Are dishes, tomatas and
papusas and yuca were store bought near holidays like Thanksgiving

(15:24):
our Christmas. Still, it was a one time, I felt
that as a family, we were Salvadoran together. I saw
my mother, her brothers, and my grandmother celebrating this food,
and with this food, I recalled Papusa's hermetically expertly fashioned
sheathed in a light caramel masada, their cores molten, brimming

(15:45):
with rich, smoky cheese. The papusas with loco, a zippy
green vegetable, where my grandmother's favorites, so they were mine too.
I recall fat logs of fried yucca, their interiors tender
beneath Cragley Crispin ears. As a writer, I knew that
I wanted to explore my relationship to Salvador and that
part of my identity. So towards that end I sought

(16:07):
out two chefs in particular, Anthony Sataghetto and Rosa Gonzalez. First,
I meant Anthony Sagaeto. He is the chef and owner
of Popoca, a salvador and inspired pop up in downtown Oakland.
I think it was pride, or perhaps admiration that I
felt swelling in my chest when I first heard what
Anthony was doing, in short, applying his experience in fine

(16:28):
dining to create what he calls progressive salvador and cuisine,
while still using traditional techniques, including cooking with a comal
over an open plain. At Popoca, I tasted for the
first time traditional dishes like guyo and chica, which Anthony
prepares with chicken stewed in a fermented pineapple juice with
turnips and prunes. For me, it was a revelation. I

(16:51):
had never tasted dishes that were classic and foundation but
prepared in a seasonal, ingredient driven style that I'd seen
a myriad times. The chickin was so tender it practically
cascaded from the bone. It's sonic broth was thick and
pleasantly sweet. The prunes bobbed in the liquid like small
candied islands. There were, of course papoosa's too, made with

(17:13):
a rich, self known massa. Some were stuffed with silks
and garlic confused geso. Others delighted in Japanese brace pork
shoulder like glimmering orbs, they reflected light from the fire,
and when cracked, they emitted steam like an exhortation to consume.
After talking with Anthony, I learned that his father, like

(17:33):
my mother, left El Salvador thirty plus years ago because
of the country civil war. But by contrast, Anthony's dad
was extremely passionate about Salvador and food, and he passed
that admiration onto Anthony. Anthony realized something he needed to
prepare and share the food he felt connected to, the
food that he says was in his blood, his roots.

(17:56):
After talking with Anthony, I spoke with Rossa Gonzalez, who
was the co owner and chef at Los Cocos, a
restaurant in Oakland's Fruit Bale neighborhood. Los Cocos opened its
doors thirty seven years ago, before I was born. Its
walls are the shade of marmalade, and a bluebird awning
overlooks the restaurant's facade. I spoke with Rosa to the

(18:17):
repeated the wap of a tortilla the sound of a
meal's coronation at Los Corcos. Rosa told me that she
grew up in Al Salvador, where she began cooking at
age nine. She lived there until the late nineteen seventies,
when she was forced to leave. She told me after
being labeled subversive for speaking at work about a mass
killing in a nearby park. After moving to the United States,

(18:41):
Rosa settled in Oakland and helped her brother to open
Los Cocos because she loved to cook. To this day,
her longstanding recipes are a source of pride, and despite
feeling compelled to leave, Rosa still has so much affection
for Salvador she goes back at least once each year
to purchase spices and see which she uses to make

(19:01):
a chatta. The week after I meet Rossa, my mother
visits me from Miami. I bring her to Rosa's restaurant,
where we order prolifically. I asked for the God, and
what I received is a brothy missive to home. The
soup is warm and honest and invigorating. The chata is
a tap dance of spice and cream. I watched my

(19:23):
mother clutch a papoosa and folded in half to create
a crescent moon. She stuffs her creation with ptito, a
spicy cabbage slaw. I laugh and ask if I can
have a bite. As always, she gives me what she has.
I copy her technique, exulting in memory for Catherine, connecting
to the Salvadorian diaspora and dishes like her grandmother's papoosa

(19:45):
coincided with her own pursuits to seek and find Salvadorian
chefs and cooks within her own community. It's within those
kitchens and on those plates that Catherine tasted and found
the identity of her Hispanic heritage. M Hm, Chef Ashley Shanty,

(20:21):
you're the chef de cuisine at Benny on Eagle, which
is a historically African American neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina.
Can you tell us about the restaurant at the Foundry
Hotel and the neighborhood and the nature of your work there.
Our restaurant is nestled in a neighborhood that was historically

(20:43):
referred to as the Blocks, and some older folks in
the community still referred to it as that. So this neighborhood,
past um crow Era was just a thriving African American
business district and it was full of black owned barbershops
and hair salons, bakeries, restaurants, all of those things. And

(21:05):
I mean, I even can remember myself just kind of
coming through the Green Book and landing on North Carolina
and wondering what Asheville, North Carolina would have looked like
at that time, and seeing all of these businesses in
the green books that were on Eagle Street right where
we are right now, which is really amazing. And you know,

(21:26):
we pay homage to a lot of what the block
used to be. Because of urban renewal, things look a
lot different. There are still some of those historic businesses
still standing. Actually one of barbershops which is still owned
by the same family. We pay homage to a lot
of the women that owned businesses. And we're chefs in

(21:50):
Baker's that ran kind of the block in the community
and said all of the children people in need in
the block. And we have actually four portraits of these
amazing women that we're part of the community, kind of
beacons of light, and still are. Two of the four
women in the portraits are still living, and that is
Miss Mary Joe Johnson and Miss hann Shabaz, who actually

(22:13):
is very much so a part of um this project
and involved in what we do. We kind of call
her our culinary advisor. She makes our corn bread and
fish cakes and those are some of the things that
people have known her for for still long in the community.
And I mean they come into our restaurant knowing that
they're going to get the same fish cake today that

(22:34):
Hannan made, you know, the same way thirty years ago,
so it was really cool. And we try to do
our best serve the some of the marginal lives of
the community, underserved and underemployed, and yeah, we we just
try and make good food and not take ourselves too seriously,
but also make sure that we're doing our parts by

(22:55):
by uplifting the community that we're in. The food has
been described as Appalachian cuisine, which presumably blends all kinds
of influences Black folks, colonial influences, Native people. I want
to make sure that I'm not putting you in a
box by calling your food that. But within that historical

(23:16):
and regional context, can you explain to us what Appalachian
cuisine is Appalachia where we are specifically in western North Carolina,
there's what people call mountains and culture. Um, you know,
there's just a different way of preserving a lot of
legos being what people would consider peasant food. There's a

(23:39):
lot of game meats, so I mean regionally, food is
very familiar to me. My maternal great grandmother, she was
from Dan River, Virginia, so that is the western part
of Virginia. I mean she was Appalachian through and through
just you know who she was as a woman. But
I don't think that as a black woman, she considered

(24:01):
herself to be an Appalachian person, but she did consider
herself to be Southern, and so I think the food
that my mother cooked is reminiscent of that. And I
don't know that I consider what it was untill this
project and I started to explore my own identity through
what I'm doing. It is difficult for me to describe

(24:23):
my food outside of just calling it what it is
regionally and just saying that it does just kind of
describe who I am. I mean, it has nuances of
Um and Guici cuisine that that is part of the
paternal side of my family. My paternal great great grand
parents are from Ghana, so I mean there's some West

(24:44):
African influences there as well. I love Um Japanese culture,
so I mean, I'm really inspired by that cuisine. So
they're kind of nuances of a lot of different places regionally,
and I think that that might be unexpected for some people,
which I don't know that. I think that's kind of cool. Definitely,
I love that too, and especially as an African American

(25:06):
woman who was in the kitchen. I'm seeing you get
to experience the full breadth of the things that inspire
you without limitation. And I'm sure that it's something that
you're pushing against every day, but the fact that you're
in a position to push at all brings me great joy.
Can you tell me about the point in which you

(25:28):
started to more clearly see and define yourself in your
own food? What is it that you begin to see?
For so long, I've worked in establishments that have been
amazing and I've learned so much from but that I've
cooked food that never felt like my own. That is
why I feel like what I'm doing right now is

(25:50):
so meaningful and it's so important to me. It's because
I do finally feel like I'm finding that identity through
what I'm cooking, and it's something that I'm constantly acting myself.
How does this relate to who I am? So that's
that is a daily journey. And of course now we're
talking about identity and the civic initiatives that you've always

(26:14):
been really focused on in your work. Do you have
a vision for how this all comes together? Or is
it that your personality just demands that you sample a
bit from all parts of life. Uh well, I think
a very large part of that sampling was that quest
for my identity in the culinary world, especially as a

(26:40):
black queer woman. Um in the kitchen, it is not
uncommon to feel like you don't have a place and
to feel like that's the world that you don't belong in. However,
feeling like there's there's not much else you want to do,
or not not many other fields that you belong in.
So it was a very large part of that was

(27:02):
wanting to find some sense of belonging at times where
I just didn't feel like I belong at all. Yeah,
I have dabbled quite a bit in order to get
to where I am now. And do you feel like
you belong now? I do, Yes, I do finally feel
like I have found that place. And I mean there

(27:24):
are instances that happen on a daily basis that remind
me that there is still a lot of work to
be done. You know, there are still people that walked
right past me and asked one of my cooks to
sign the invoice because they can't imagine that I'm the chef,
or you know, guests watching me direct the kitchen all

(27:46):
night and still asking me if they can talk to
the chef, and you know, there there are a lot
of there's are so many instances that occur like that,
I still feel very empowered to be in the position
that I'm in there. Mm hmm. Yanni cake is is

(28:16):
a local adaptation of Jamaican Johnny cakes, also known as
journey cakes for the bread's ability to travel over long distances.
So we now take you to Jamaica where wet Stone
magazine contributor in A. Haynes is interviewing chef Maurice Henry,
who is making Yanni kick is. Yeah, um, alright, So,

(28:39):
like I said, they are various. They're like different species
of the flower. Different types of the flower though that
we consume here in Jamaica. One most popular one is dumpling,
which is basically just flower, bacon, powder water, all right,
So people make that and just fry and have it
just laid up. Then then then we move over to
another one that we call festival. It's the same flower

(29:02):
door again, and they add a corn meal to the
flower dough. So corn corn meal is added to that
same flower dough and a little bit of sugar, and
that one is it's called festival typically round, but people
make them elongated or just flat, so you'll find it
like that. And then there's one. The Johnny cake is
basically the same floor though we just sugar in it

(29:23):
and a little bit of butter and um. And that's
what we call Johnny cake. So it's flower water, butter, sugar,
and they fried. They're all fried. And these are used
mainly for as a starch, and it goes particularly typically
all day. People will have them for breakfast, they'll have
it for lunch, I'll have it for dinner, even late night.
Snap because you stop at most of these little cook shops,

(29:45):
they'll have fried chicken, your chicken with festival or with
the with the Johnny cakes or with with with fried
dumplanes and um. It's part of what we do. It's
part of our culture as part of part of us
so we grew up on it. Coming from the club
two o'clock in the morning, you'll find a Snap shop
that's open them that's what they would have. They'll have
fried Dumblin's festival. You can find iterations of Johnny cakes

(30:08):
all along the Eastern coast from Newfoundland to Jamaica, sometimes
called Johnny cakes, Shawny cakes, home cakes, journey cakes, or
Johnny bread. The origins are a bit of a mystery,
but as Chef explains, johnny cakes are an essential part
of the Jamaican culinary identity and the epitome of Caribbean

(30:30):
street and beech food. Quoting from Anna, her investigation into
the bread's modeled history would find that the first record
of Johnny cakes dates back to the sixteen hundreds, when
European settlers to Rhode Island supposedly learned how to make

(30:50):
the bread from the native Algonquian tribes, for whom maze
was a staple ingredient in their diet. The humble bread
made its way south along the Atlantic coast, and today
various preparations can be found as far as Newfoundland and
as far south as Colombia. But still there remains no
consensus on when johnny cakes were first created and by whom,

(31:15):
nor is there any clear evidence on how they made
their way to the La Popa. But why do we
need to know where our food traditions come from and
why do they need to be owned by one culture?

(31:36):
I think the question of what is curry is one
that you know Indians in the so called Motherlands right
like in the Indian subcontinent and then also in the
dast But I have been wrestling with for centuries. Now

(31:57):
that's a rowhean arranged a row. He tells us about
her experience eating Indian curry in Japanese curry as an
Indian woman in Tokyo Arohe unpacks the colonial history of
Japanese curry as a cultural and culinary artifact brought to
Japan by the British imperial officers from India. She links

(32:18):
the historical trajectory of curry to the experience of being
around and consuming curry as an Indian woman from New
Delhi who's in Japan, and doing so, she examines many
of its cultural implications and her own experience as an
Indian woman feeling both alienated and produced to a singular dish,

(32:40):
in this case, curry, while at the same time finding
that curry houses were the places that provided her the
most to comfort and acceptance and what she describes as
an otherwise very lonely city. It's so vague as to
be meaningless. Um it doesn't for a particular style or

(33:01):
or technique, but really it's often used to flatten the
diversity of you know, foods in an entire subcontinent. Um. Yeah,
so that's my kind of roundabout way to answer what
is curry? It doesn't really exist. And for something that
doesn't really exist, there are you know, infinite variations and

(33:23):
interpretations of what it could be. Perfect answer. During a
semester abroad in two thousand seventeen at the Lasa University
in Tokyo, she explains her specific experience eating Japanese curry
versus Indian curry in terms of some specificity, what is

(33:43):
what is Japanese curry? Japanese guy? You know, it's really
its own thing, um, And what interests me about Japanese guy?
Of course it's a part of like the edible history
of Japan. It's been called but has roots in the
Indian subcontinent. And then secondly, it's sort of the anti

(34:07):
thesis of what I think in the West are even
globally is most revered about Japanese cuisine. You know, when
you think of Japanese food, it's all about like the
professionals or the minimalism in terms of both like farm
and content. To still see a Japanese guy right, like
the thickened ru um gloopy you don't need it with chopsticks. Right.

(34:34):
It's quite the opposite of um, guy is a very
maximalist kind of exercise. It it's almost vulgar. I want
to say, what was your experience like as an Indian woman,
because we're talking about the details of the dish, but
for you dining out was your was how you experience

(34:58):
the culture mediated by curry in particular? Right, culturally or
on an individual level, there will be times when you know,
instead of being greeted by my peers like hello or
good morning, they would sort of see my face and say, oh,
I ate curry for lunch today, right, So sort of

(35:20):
on an individual level, that became this distilled entity that
represented you know, their experiences with curry generally. Um. Often
people would ask me, you know, like which cry do
you prefer? Like if there's a Japanese one, you know,
which is sweet and mild or is it the Indian

(35:42):
kind which is spicy and and unpalatable for a lot
of people? Um? You know, I was even asked like
I've heard that cats in India eat guy. Can you
can you conform or deny this? Um? Yeah? So on
a on a culture an individual level, you know, I

(36:02):
often felt like these questions that I was asked, I
did not leave a lot of room for nuance, um,
either in terms of kind of talking about the cuisine
um of my country origin, or or even about my identity.

(36:23):
A Roe's experienced eating curry in Japan became a broader
questioning of her identity abroad for me. I mean, I
didn't go to Japan to look for you know, authentic
Indian food, right, That's not what I was there. But
in these attempts that sort of spears people around me

(36:43):
were making to engage with me or or make me
feel at home or welcome, I was really kind of
coming away from the interaction feeling doubly alienated, right. Um Like,
on a personal level, I was sort of curious and
eager to learn more. Um. I think on on my

(37:08):
part trying to do my best to start to do
the work and not come to the table with my
own misconceptions of stereotypes. Um. But often I felt like
maybe I would not be met halfway. And of course,
I mean, I'm always learning, and I wasn't. No, I'm
not an expert, But I felt like oftentimes there was

(37:32):
not kind of the curiosity along with empathy that I
was hoping for. What about when you were actually dining
out in restaurants? What were your feelings as a solo
diner in Tokyo. Yeah, I mean there's a kind of

(37:54):
well documented culture of solo dining right in in Tokyo. Um,
But a lot of that is kind of reserved for,
you know, the kind of white collar workers. So the
salary man, right, that's usually the archetypal solo diana at
like a round and shop, you know, at an unearthly hour. Um,

(38:16):
So flopping on his on his noddles by himself, right,
That's an image that we've i think seen many times over.
But on the other hand, you know, now you kind
of swapped this salary man for an Indian woman youngish um,
and it becomes quite a different equation, right. Um. There

(38:39):
were many times when people next to me would try
to engage me in in conversation or clearly wanted to,
but maybe we're afraid that I wouldn't you know, be
able to speak Japanese. Um. And I had a lot
of great conversations with people who you know, owned and
and and these restaurants or were cooking um, which is

(39:04):
kind of kind of this conflict that I have right
where on the one hand, I felt like I was
being pushed towards curry, particularly in the South Asian kind
of restaurant context, Right, I was pushed towards that. Um.
And for these people who are pushing me, it was
their way of being hospitable or um, trying to make

(39:29):
me feel like I was being taken care of, right,
which it was a strange and isolating experience. But then
at the same time, when I didn't counter South Asians
who were running these kind of noun and curry restaurants, Um,
those were moments of unprecedented tenderness for me, right and
what is otherwise I think a very lonely free you know,

(39:53):
so these small kind of family run restaurants that Hollywood
playing on the TV screens, um, you usually there the
restaurantally named something like Billy or Ausality or Mango or
something like that. Those moments, as much as I wanted
to kind of resist this totalizing sweet puff um, even

(40:15):
like Arry, I would say that those are still the
times that I've felt most welcome and taken care of
in Tokyo, right, usually at the doorway of a curry
house mediated by some kind of imagined our actual shed
history and food culture and identity. That is so true

(40:36):
and so powerful as well. Um So when you say
that you were pushed towards Curry, yeah, absolutely. Um. And
you know there's not a lot of there's not a
lot of stut Asians living in Japan, um, something like
pty thousand Indians and then um, you know another other

(41:02):
numbers for like Pakistani's and and Pasadas and Nippali and
documentation is not very um pristine. Um So the site
of you know, another brown face. As much as I
didn't want to be stereotyped or I didn't want people

(41:22):
to think that two round people were probably related or
you know something like that, as much as that was
the case on an intellectual level, it couldn't deny that
on a kind of emotional personal level, I stills did
feel like, you know, we were connected in somewhere. And
it also sort of these experiences made me realized that

(41:45):
you know, we're still really immersed in a in a
landscape of like white food stories or white stories. Um.
You know, when you look at sort of travelers for Japan,
you will still come up with hundreds of results of
you know, white men usually who went to Japan and

(42:05):
discover Japanese, who would discover Japanese culture. Um. But I
when I was preparing to go to Japan, I almost
when there without any points of reference right to understand,
so the possible parameters of the experience that I was

(42:30):
embarking upon. Um. So everything was coming to me as
something of the surprise, and I was sort of figuring
things out by myself. You know. Often if I like
I was the first ever Indian person to go to Japan,
which obviously is not the truth, but just that some

(42:50):
of those stories are not getting out or we haven't
always done the work that we needed to be able
to listen for those kinds of stories. Yes, definitely, And
this is something that I think about, not just in

(43:11):
the context of food either, but even the fact that
I'm having this conversation with you right now in English,
which is not for you know, the colonial history. I
don't know that I'll be able to do that. Um. Yeah.
And then I think with something like food where perhaps

(43:36):
it's harder to trace the origin or um sort of
claim like a perfect unmediated history, where that becomes even
more complicated. Um. It's definitely a source of kind of
emotional conflict for me, UM, And it's really something that

(44:00):
I wouldn't say I have answers to her that I
feel completely at ease about. It's something that I'm constantly
learning about UM. And I would also say that besides
kind of colonialism, there's also other factors mediating the kind
of food that I have had access to both India

(44:20):
and elsewhere. Right there's um cost for instance, which I
think even now is um someone neglected in a lot
of contemporary analyzes of food. You know, more recently there's
been more writing about it UM. But that's something that

(44:40):
I haven't completely interrogated for myself. A rohe story points
to an important lesson about the diaspora that as much
as food is a marker of identity and expression of
our culture, it is not the sole defining factor. That
at our base, we are all humans experiencing and learning

(45:02):
about each other through a variety of cultural exchanges. A
row He at times felt reduced to curry. It became
a stereotype that isolated her and one that she could
not escape. So what is the diaspora. The diaspora is
many things, cultural and ideological strains from the homeland sensory vocations,

(45:29):
a conversation with sentence after sentence that begins with I
remember it is an aftertaste, a source of pride, nostalgia,
and reimagination. To be part of the diaspora is to
have endured, and though the creation of a new home

(45:50):
becomes a worthy possibility, belonging is not promised. M Thank
you to our guest today, Sam Boots Are Boots are
in co owner Winter Shy, you of Third Culture Bakery
in Berkeley, California, Chef Ashley Shanty from Benny on Eagle

(46:12):
in Asheville, North Carolina, wet Stone contributor Anna Haynes and
chef Maurice Henry. And to journalist Katherine Bowen in a
Roheana Rain, whose full pieces you can read in forthcoming
volume six of wet Stone Magazine. Special Thanks to my

(46:33):
business partner who makes all things possible at Whetstone are
co founder Melissa she Thanks mel. Thank you to Selene Glazier,
who is our lead producer. To Cat Hong, our editor,
to Havin Obasa Lassa and Quentin lebou, our production interns.
To our friends at iHeart Radio for helping us bring

(46:54):
you this podcast. To Gabrielle Collins, are supervising producer, engineer J. J.
Paul his Way and executive producer Christopher Hasiotis. I'm your host,
the Origin Forager Steven Saderfield, and we will be back
here next week with more from Whetstone Magazine's Point of
Origin podcast h
Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Host

Stephen Satterfield

Stephen Satterfield

Show Links

About

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.