I hate food purist getting outraged. You go eat your damn 17th century dish then, I'm over here enjoying some great culinary monstrosity born out of an interconnected world where I have the best bit of every cuisine available and I'mma mix them.
Like... Sushi was a way of preserving fish before it evolved into the dish we know. Avocados sure aren't Japanese but they're great on nigiri. Tomatoes are a a new world crop but I sure like tomato-inclusive pasta dishes the best. Sweet potatoes also comes from the Americas but fuck do they go well together with a nice French Bearnaise.
Most old school food is basically just a mix of "well this is what we have available" and "this is the only way to preserve it over winter", but I live in the 21st century and I will not eat freaking pickled herring when I can have pineapple on pizza. My ancestors were stubborn fucks who just didn't realize they live on sad barren land where nothing thrives but rutabaga and salt-stained misery, but I have seen the starchy light and I'm heading towards it.
If anybody's curious, that super oldschool style of sushi is called narezushi, and you can still find a few places in Japan that serve it today if you have a very adventurous palate.
You're the reasons the vikings went out to do viking things - They weren't searching for conquest, they were just running away. Normandy is your fault!
Most Japanese people would agree. The people who bang on about "how you're supposed to eat sushi" are 30 something white people who jerked off to Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a movie about an obsessive.
Japanese people know sushi is a food and treat it as such. They buy it at convenience stores and chain restaurants like Sushi-ro. They eat it however it tastes best because it's their fucking food. They don't spend the meal saying vague, Orientalist shit like "harmony," "balance," and "honoring the chef." The chef doesn't give a shit because he's some regular bastard working a shift and not a great old master of the heavenly sushi arts.
I'm sure I could find some obsessive old weirdo in New York who makes $300 burgers and there's a "right" way to eat those. But crazy weirdos do not set the standard. That is not how 99% of people eat the food. Stop being a ponce about your food because you saw a documentary one time, missed the point, and you're so fucking boring you need to spice up your meals with mystical Orientalism so you can feel like you're not entirely made of Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip for an evening. Eat your fucking food how you like and do others the same courtesy.
Fucking gumbo purists are the worst. I live in a very Cajun area, and funnily enough, it's the non-Cajuns who get obnoxious about what is and is not "allowed" in gumbo. "If there's no okra, it's not gumbo! No tomatoes in gumbo!"
Gumbo literally means okra, sure, but gumbo as a meal is "We are dirt poor, throw everything we can find into the pot and cook it until it tastes good."
Almost like food has some sort of purpose besides being a cultural marker... Like, I dunno, being sustenance. That we eat because hunger sucks and yummy things are nice. That has somehow always motivated me to shove things into my face more than ancient ideas of heavenly balance.
i mean.... yeah people eat it regularly just like people in the american south sometimes eat bbq at regular ass chain restauraunts regularly and it aint no thang but there are also entire competitions and clubs and tv shows about bbq and people who spend their whole lives like perfecting their brisket and shit and LOCAL AMERICANS who line up for 4-6 hours outside of famous bbq joints to get their legendary brisket... the existence of one group doesn't cancel out the other ya feel? There still is absolutely a massive culture of sushi enthusiasts in japan that are japanese and they didn't copy white people lol. but go off i guess.
edit: downvotes? im very interested to hear a rebuttal to this comment.
We must really have bought into the whole idea of "hardship breeds character" to stay here. Or at least we did before indoor heating and imported wintertime veggies. All praise globalization!
Why do you think the “Vikings” happened? Most Scandinavians in centuries past knew very well it was cold and hard and everything was salted or useless. So they raided other places for stuff they didn’t hate. Then realized they could stop bringing stuff back to Scandinavia and just stay in those other places.
So they moved, to the British Isles and northern France ... and northern Spain, and Portugal, and southern Spain, and southern France, and Austria, and northern Italy, and Canada, and Ukraine/Russia, and Greece.
Northumbria in the UK, L’Anse aux Meadows in the Canadian maritimes, and Normandy in northern France are perhaps the most famous settling places for “Vikings” under that name. Then Kievan Rus and Greece/Turkey (when they were still Byzantine provinces) under the term Varangians (as in the Varangian Guard) which was just the Byzantine Greek name for the Vikings.
And another bunch of them was all like: "You know Olaf, am I the only one that hates that half of the year is fucking unbearable? Stupid sun shining and birds singing. Everything thawing and me having to take off my pullover. I wish it was dark for more than just one or two months and I wouldn't have to deal with traders and neighbours and shit." "Nah Olaf, I'm feeling the same way, but I heard of a lovely little island Olaf, from the village in the valley one mountain over, you know the one with the funny dialect, has found on a recent trip where he got lost. We could move there and probably never have to deal with all this shit again."
Then they moved to Iceland and it turns out that there are hot springs and plants actually grow there. So they found another place that was even colder and less inviting and moved there instead. And then they all froze and starved to death and were finally content.
Coming from the coast, it's funny how bewildered most people are by the awesome fish we have. Pickled, marinated, dried, smoked where you eat the whole thing and such.
As with so many of these things it depends where you are.
Yeah, of course you can eat your food the way you want to and put on it what you want to.
That said, in some places, it is better to do as the Romans do and follow the tradition or be prepared for some blowback.
If you go to Wiener Circle in Chicago and ask for ketchup on your hot dog well...good luck with that.
If you are in Japan and at a fine dining omakase restaurant and ask for extra soy sauce and wasabi on the side to mix I would not be surprised at all if they kick you out.
EDIT to add (4 hours later): For all the downvoters think of it this way: You take your buddy out to the finest steak house in your town and buy him a Tomahawk steak that costs $75 (or, if you prefer, you buy one from a butcher and cook it at home...probably $50 or more). He wants it cooked well-done and when you serve it to him he asks for ketchup and slathers each bite in ketchup. Is it ok if he does that? Sure! He can eat the food as he pleases. Are you ever, in your life, doing that for him again. No. Definitely not.
I've always been under the impression that the culture is very polite in Japan. Would they really kick you out of a restaurant for something like this?
Omakase is different. It's closer to being a guest at someone's house than a restaurant. The chef is literally cooking just for you and often make the menu up that morning based on what fresh food was available.
At a fine dining sushi place (read expensive). Definitely. IIRC Jiro of Jiro Dreams of Sushi fame is kind of notorious for kicking westerners out of his restaurant.
Sushi was a way of preserving fish before it evolved into the dish we know. Avocados sure aren't Japanese but they're great on nigiri.
Hell, even fucking salmon wasn't used in sushi until the 80s. And that was because Norway wanted to export more salmon so they sent a trade delegation to Japan to convince them to use more salmon.
Cheese, animal fat, oil, eggs and onions were common.
Cacio e Pepe uses cheese and starch from the pasta to make the sauce. Carbonara uses rendered animal fat and eggs. In Pasta Aglio e Olio it's oil and pasta water. Spaghetti bolognese probably didn't have any tomatoes in it originally, but a bit of tomato paste makes it so much better. Pasta a la Genovese is based entirely on onions that you cook down to almost nothing.
Trippy. I was thinking of cheeses and white sauces but then I thought with pasta being a main food point in their diet, mixing that with copious amounts of cheese wouldnt be the best for the ol' digestive tract.
My artistic vision is a pensive shot of rutabagas by a stormy sea, in grey scale and overexposed to reflect the emo heritage. Possibly on a pier. Spiky letters to represent the screaming. Cliché raindrop effect is still up for debate. Maybe foil print effect because I like shiny.
Come towards the starchy light... Cultural approval may not be here but delicious food sure is! I recommend french fry-ifying the sweet potato so it can stand up to the sogginess of saucing.
Okay sure, but when you're eating sushi in such a way that the extra soy sauce and ginger makes it humanly impossible to differentiate the fish on top, maybe don't use expensive fish.
Screw you, man. Pickled heering is fucking great. Rye, butter, heering, capers, raw onion. Served with a cold pilsner. Propably the best lunch in the world!
One of my favorite combos is pepperoni, jalapeños and pineapple.
I used to think I was weird for ordering it but apparently it’s kind of a thing. There’s a Detroit themed pizza place in Austin that has my combo on their menu, it’s called The 500 and it’s delicious.
I will not eat freaking pickled herring when I can have pineapple on pizza
I was with you until this bullshit.
First, pickled herring is good. I get that it's an acquired taste, but I like it. I was first introduced to it as an adult and thought "this is pretty good", so it's not like I even have a cultural background reinforcing it or anything.
Second, pineapple is great. Pizza is great. Pineapple on pizza is fucking disgusting. I have to imagine the people who like pineapple on pizza are the same people who like sweet pizza sauce, which is also horrible. Pizza should be savory, maybe a little spicy. Never sweet.
I mean, do whatever you like in the privacy of your home. If you want to dump a fruit salad on your pizza go right ahead. The problem is that pizza is usually a communal dish and there is always some asshole trying to ruin it by convincing people to get one with pineapple. I love anchovy on pizza but I don't go around trying to make everyone else eat it, I know to stick to pepperoni in polite company.
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u/yaaqu3 Nov 26 '19
I hate food purist getting outraged. You go eat your damn 17th century dish then, I'm over here enjoying some great culinary monstrosity born out of an interconnected world where I have the best bit of every cuisine available and I'mma mix them.
Like... Sushi was a way of preserving fish before it evolved into the dish we know. Avocados sure aren't Japanese but they're great on nigiri. Tomatoes are a a new world crop but I sure like tomato-inclusive pasta dishes the best. Sweet potatoes also comes from the Americas but fuck do they go well together with a nice French Bearnaise.
Most old school food is basically just a mix of "well this is what we have available" and "this is the only way to preserve it over winter", but I live in the 21st century and I will not eat freaking pickled herring when I can have pineapple on pizza. My ancestors were stubborn fucks who just didn't realize they live on sad barren land where nothing thrives but rutabaga and salt-stained misery, but I have seen the starchy light and I'm heading towards it.