It has been almost a year since I made the switch to vegetarianism (do not worry I am not talking about converting others) and in that time I have come to try and to love all sorts of new foods because the bland American cuisine does not comprehend vegetables as a meal unless it is deep fried or slathered with dressing. Not knowing how to cook at all let alone a foreign dish made this experiment interesting to say the least. I switched out some ingredients for more familiar things (partly because I had no idea where to get the stuff), thus resulting in strange food fusions that my eyes and taste buds had never conceived of being possible. This taught me to not judge a dish by the expectations of food in my culture. I want to experience food simply for what it is once it touches my tongue. And suddenly my world explodes with new flavors and ideas.
The funny thing about food is that it is never just about eating. Breaking bread with someone else is one of the most fundamental ceremonies of every culture because of the primal function it serves: protection and nourishment. When we eat, we can let our guard down because we have the safety of a group (only recently has eating become an individual activity), so we develop an attachment to that group and the food. After years of stability, this food becomes the ethnic cuisine because the ingredients are a reminder of home, a shared history, and taste good, thus, when something foreign is introduced to our food, we have a negative reaction to it. Another basic human ceremony is the catalyst for spreading our ethnic cuisines: war.
As Napoleon Boneparte said, “An army marches on its stomach,” while he meant soldiers can only operate if feed, but that food is also marching into another culture. The conquerors and conquered begin to intermix and share meals, which ultimately heals the community because they have adopted an new group identity and no longer see two factions. Immigrants also serve to spread their ethnic cuisine in their new environments at a much slower or faster rate depending on the circumstances for leaving their native land such as the Great Potato Famine of the 1850s and the resulting flood of Irish into America (by the way happy belated St. Patrick’s Day). After five thousand years of civilization, we are all products of a globally mixed family. There is no escaping food fusion because most dishes were foreign to our culture at some point and we just adopted it beyond living memory to see it as alien. So let us celebrate our weird and wonderful world by trying a little bit of everything.
The people who seem to be fully embracing this culinary collaborative curiosity is the YouTube group Epic Meal Time, a cooking show like no other. Every Tuesday they throw caution and tradition to the wind and create monstrosities of food like sushi made from bacon and fast food. Sure, there are more formal restaurants that focus of blending cuisines, but that doesn’t really demonstrate how we can incorporate food fusion into our daily lives or how much fun it can be. Trying something different does not require a complete reinvention of food, just switch out one or two ingredients. Instead of beef hamburgers, try a shitake mushrooms (they taste like meat if cooked right), put BBQ sauce instead of red sauce on pizza, wasabi on hotdogs, and experiment with spices. Knowing something beyond the everyday allows you to enjoy food again instead of seeing it as a mundain daily task.
The world of food fusion offers an infinite combination of flavors, textures and smells. We have access to a global market of products and ideas; why not take advantage of it? Venture forth and discover new territory, then share your discoveries with others because that is the foundation for human civilization. Food can turn enemies to friends and strangers to family, so embrace it all.
Grant Vargas
Senior Viewpoints Editor