Cultural stew

Students from Cambridge University have lodged complaints about their ‘culturally insensitive’ menu. John Lethlean weighs in.

Ever since Hernán Cortés took chorizo to the Aztecs for a bit of pre-slaughter nutrition (citation needed), food has been travelling and dishes have been getting lost in translation. That “spaghetti bolognese” my mum learnt from her Italian neighbour in 1962? I grew up on it. But we all know it was as far from Bologna as… Melbourne. Cultural crimes in the name of food are nothing new.

At Cambridge University in England, students are up in arms about how the catering department of Pembroke College takes liberties. They’ve lodged complaints about dishes including Jamaican stew, oriental beef stew, Indian fish pie and African stew with sweet potato, claiming these dishes don’t exist in their native countries. One student reportedly posted on social media: “Dear Pembroke catering staff, stop mixing mango and beef and calling it ‘Jamaican stew’, it’s rude… as a minority student, I’m used to being constantly invalidated when flagging up specific issues but if people feel their cultures are misrepresented they have the right to address this.”

Another student took issue with “cauliflower, date and tofu tagine with Tunisian rice and coriander yoghurt”. “Sorry but what is this? We don’t eat these things in Tunisia.”

A similar thing happened at Oberlin College in the US. The student newspaper reported that international students felt the food contractor had “[blurred] the line between culinary diversity and cultural appropriation by modifying the recipes without respect for certain Asian countries’ cuisines”. A case in point being the banh mi Vietnamese sandwich, traditionally made with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs on a crispy baguette – but which Oberlin served as pulled pork and coleslaw on ciabatta. “It was ridiculous,” Vietnamese student Diep Nguyen said. “How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

As someone who rather enjoys foods from other cultures, I’m with you, Diep. A good banh mi is a wonderful thing. But commerce and cultural sensitivity are rarely happy bedfellows. Ask the Hawaiians how they feel every time pineapple gets thrown into the mix: hey presto, you’ve got Red Rooster’s Hawaiian Pack of chicken, chips, Coke, pineapple and banana fritters. Ask the Cantonese about that great American dish, chop suey.

And what about the Mexicans? Talk about a society whose name has been taken in vain in the pursuit of food expediency. Look no further than McDonald’s Mexican Fiesta, a burger with nachos and guacamole in the bun. Yes, you read correctly.

Chuck some sweet chilli sauce into anything, really, and it’s Thai. Dijon mustard and it’s French. And how do the Californians feel about their roll? Invented by a Japanese-Canadian chef, Hidekazu Tojo, in Vancouver. Well, that’s one version of history, anyway. The other is that it was conceived in LA in the 1960s by a chef substituting avocado for tuna belly. If correct, this story speaks volumes about how things morph with distance, yet somehow drift into the lexicon of authenticity.

Is it cultural appropriation, or simply human creativity and making do with whatever’s at hand? Whichever, thank goodness the only place you can get an Aussie pizza is… Australia. Some foods just don’t travel – for good reason.