How much does awareness of a foreign cuisine affect that cuisine’s transnational character and its inclusion in PFM’s? (Preconception and Industrial Food Networks)

Naturally, as befits its status as a “melting pot,” a crucible for immigrants from around the globe, the United States is a nation stuffed to the brim with various imported foodways. This has been the case for the entirety of the nation’s relatively short life: from the very first European settlers in the colonial era to the bustling food cart pods peppering today’s city streets; not to mention the meals being prepared each and every day at home. We can examine the historical record and track the primary influx of significant ethnic groups to the US, such as waves of Chinese, Italian, Irish, or Filipino immigrants—all typically tied to global political relations at the time. As we have seen, every particular immigrant cuisine is inextricably tied to that group’s particular cultural identity; the day-to-day habits and practices peculiar to their place of origin. Just as awareness of these “new” American minority groups builds among the nation’s populace, so does awareness of their peculiar cuisines. What we think of as “American” cuisine is really a historical record, like a geological cross-section, constructed and fossilized layer by layer as new groups contribute their foodways to the quilt: English, Dutch, West African, Scandinavian, Italian, Chinese, and Mexican, to name but a few of the primary constituents. I use the term “fossilized” quite deliberately here, because as each layer of cuisine gets added to the American identity, its popular conception tends to become pigeonholed; set in stone, as it were. Chinese-American cuisine is a perfect example of this trend.

A powerful modern nation with some of the deepest roots of cultural tradition, China has thousands of years of contiguous history informing its kaleidoscope of proud culinary practice. Its many unique regions, ethnic groups, and religious and philosophic traditions lend to a vast array of approaches to food preparation and consumption. And yet here in the United States, the conception of “Chinese food” has developed into a unique cuisine—endemic to no particular Chinese region or traditional practice—and yet one that also serves to strengthen and support a minority group seeking to carve its own niche in American identity. As Yong Chen states in the introduction to his book Chop Suey, USA:

“[Chinese food’s] rise to popularity embodied the budding mass-consumer empire’s desire for the convenience and service that Chinese laborers provided in restaurants, more than for the long and rich tradition of Chinese cuisine. This explains why the American dining public embraced the Chinese food characterized by simple and inexpensive foods like chop suey but largely rejected China’s haute cuisine represented by exquisite dishes such as shark’s fins.” (Chen, 4)

Chinese-American cuisine thus arose as a result of the combination of immigrant foodways and the preconceptions and expectations of American popular consumption culture. The Chinese, as an immigrant minority, were associated in the American consciousness with service-industry labor, and thus appetites for their food came with notions of convenience and affordability. In efforts to establish their cultural knowledge as a commodity viable in the American economy, Chinese entrepreneurs over the last two centuries worked to adapt their products to the tastes of US consumers. It is also important to note that despite these adaptations, Chinese-American cooking at home remained relatively traditional—the evolution of chop suey and General Tso’s chicken happened in the commercial sector. In this way, Chinese entrepreneurs were performing transnationality threefold: the traditional Chinese identity of the homeland, the Chinese-American identity within the home, and the unique Chinese-American identity presented to American consumers. As such, the acceptance of Chinese-American restaurant cuisine in the US can be seen more as an economic product than a genuine embrace of immigrant identity.

I discuss the example of Chinese-American cuisine to highlight the powerful influence preconceptions have on the development of immigrant foodways and identity. I also seek to point out how the trends outlined above affect the level of entanglement between a transnational cuisine and the industrial food system. The continuing association between Chinese cuisine and convenience shows itself in the current prevalence of Chinese food in the frozen foods aisles of grocery stores across the country, from ubiquitous brands like P.F. Chang’s, Panda Express, Tai Pei, and Ling Ling. As demand for ready-made frozen meals has developed, interest in bags of microwaveable egg rolls and dumplings has grown at a commensurate rate.

Along with Chinese-American food, a modern shopper will find shelves devoted to frozen lasagna, pizza, fettucine alfredo, and Italian meatballs—foods that fall under another hyphenated category: Italian-American. As the introduction to The Silver Spoon, a comprehensive Italian cookbook in print for seventy years, states: “…Italian cooking is traditionally based on excellent, fresh, seasonal ingredients. This is one of the main reasons why Italian food varies so much from region to region and even from village to village.” (Silver Spoon, 8) Indeed, the primary factors in Italian cuisine’s rise to prominence in the United States are attributed to be “its taste, simplicity, and high-quality ingredients.” (Camillo, 550) Thus we see that the presence of an ethnic food in the frozen aisle may not simply be due to a prolonged association with convenience.

Variety and connection to regions and seasons (read: freshness) are acclaimed aspects of many national cuisines, including Chinese. Socio-economic factors and a complex history dictate personal preference for the cuisines of specific regions such as Sichuan, Fujian, or Hong Kong. Each of these unique culinary traditions are also constantly undergoing processes of blending and mixing, as Cheung and Wu observe:

“Chinese gourmets used to argue about whether there should be three, four, six, or eight major high cuisines in China, but the post-modern food scene in China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan today, has obscured all the boundary markers, because of migration, innovation, modern communication, creolization and globalization.” (4)

And yet for all this variety, Chinese food was originally recognized by American citizens as a single “rancid,” “repulsive,” “heavy and offensive” odor which identified one’s location in Chinatown. (Chen, 84) Eventually becoming one of the most popular foreign cuisines in the United States, Chinese-American food has yet to fully escape this homogenization imposed upon it by American preconception.

With such differing paths to the modern level of acceptance in the U.S., how is it that both Chinese-American and Italian-American cuisines have converged to inhabit such a large proportion of industrial convenience foods? Keeping the above discussions in mind, it becomes clear that there is a relationship between awareness of a transnational cuisine and the level with which it is involved in the industrial food system. After all, demand drives production, and a population of consumers can only demand a product after becoming aware of it—and more importantly, accepting it. This latter notion is very important, and more complicated than it first appears. Acceptance is a double-edged sword: the decreases in xenophobic acts of aggression almost always come with some sort of subversion of cultural identity. In other words, an ethnic cuisine has the potential to become “so well known and prevalent that it is no longer considered ethnic.” (Ray, 78)

These cuisines have become identifiable and lodged in American consciousness, and as such have become less and less recognizable by nationals from their countries of origin. In an oft-repeated process, “immigrants who are self-taught cooks improvise both cooking materials and how they present dishes, to satisfy the imagination of a Chinese eating culture comprising both Chinese migrants and host (non-Chinese) populations.” (Wu, 77) As this process (which occurs in any transnational group) progresses, the foreign cuisines became more and more aligned with the industrial appetites of Americans, whose eating habits in the 20th century came to be centered around capitalist ethics of labor and expediency. Here we can see how a host population’s (in this case, American) acceptance of a foreign cuisine can directly result in that cuisine’s inclusion in and absorption into the industrial food system.

In some ways, Filipinx cuisine represents the other end of the spectrum. In 2014, Filipinx restaurants were the only major ethnic culinary category not represented in either the Michelin or Zagat guides to New York City eating, despite having at least twenty-three locations across the city. (Ray, 80) Philippine food exists on the outskirts of American consciousness, known well only to those who identify as Filipinx, Filipinx-American, or their immediate relations. Though this position may make it more difficult to find particular ingredients or to eat “locally,” it does allow identity to be enacted and defined by those within the community, versus industrial interests who develop food products based on economic demand.

If we consider the antithesis of progressive food movements to be the leviathan that is the current industrial-global food system, then it presents a curious facet to the questions of transnational identity inclusion. Posed as a question: can a high level of acceptance of an immigrant cuisine actually decrease its viability in progressive food movements?