Mailing Wu
Cross-Culinary Exchange
eric ripert and columbians agree: fusion food is hot
PrintWe’ve heard the story since elementary school: pilgrims meet Native Americans, they share corn and turkey, and no one goes hungry. But colliding traditions aren’t just for Thanksgiving anymore—with the skyrocketing popularity of David Chang’s Momofuku restaurants, fusion has become more common than ever in New York City. And recently, campus cultural groups have joined forces to hop on the fusion bandwagon as well.
Over the past decade, fusion-inspired restaurants have proliferated across New York City. Fusion food may wear two guises. A cook may incorporate unexpected ingredients from one ethnic cuisine into another, like the use of Thai fish sauce to flavor a French stock. An executive chef might also decide to include a variety of disparate dishes on one menu.
Fusion restaurant Le Bernardin, the recipient of three Michelin stars and four New York Times stars, adheres to one of the city’s most intellectually digestible philosophies. In an interview, Head Chef Eric Ripert describes Le Bernardin as “a seafood restaurant with a French flair, however at the same time, a very American restaurant inspired by our surrounding[s].”
Though Ripert says that most of his restaurant’s cooking techniques are influenced by his early training in classical French cuisine, Le Bernardin also moves beyond those techniques. “A city like New York is very diverse with Asian, European, [and] South American influence,” explains Ripert. Le Bernardin’s goal, he says, is to embrace diverse traditions without forgetting its French roots. With dishes like marinated hamachi Vietnamese style sharing menu space with a classically prepared whole red snapper baked in rosemary and salt crust, Le Bernadin exemplifies the merging culinary trends of New York.
The reasons behind fusion’s rise are debatable. Increased globalization obviously plays an important role, as Ripert points out: “Centuries ago ingredients wouldn’t travel well—except maybe spices—and the cuisine was very regional. Today the exchange is monumental in between different cultures.”
Fusion cuisine is becoming more popular on campus even as it becomes more common at high-end restaurants. Numerous cultural clubs have recently co-hosted cultural exchange events centered on food. On November 13, La Societa Italiana and the Chinese Students Club (CSC) held an event called Oodles of Noodles in Lerner Hall to celebrate their overlapping but disparate culinary roots.
“New York is very diverse, and because of that, we have all these different cultural groups on campus-everywhere from Armenian to Caribbean. It really helps to foster this kind of event,” says SEAS sophomore Jim Huang, one of Oodles of Noodles’ co-coordinators.
In another moment of culinary collision, Bhakti Club and the Native American Council (NAC) held an Indian and Indian Dinner on November 10, serving vegan versions of the two ethnic cuisines. The event gave students unfamiliar with Native American culture a taste of it. “Food is a great way for people to connect, to come together and eat,” says Columbia College senior Halley Hair, treasurer of the NAC and the event’s coordinator. She believes most Columbians don’t know a lot about Native American cuisine: “I’ve had people ask me, ‘So what do Native Americans eat?’ And I say, ‘Um, food.’”
President of La Societa Italiana and Barnard senior Elise Caldarola understands the University’s ethnic food exchange, saying, “There are so many cultures in one place and there’s so much cultural diffusion when everyone is in such close quarters.” Maybe Columbia’s tiny campus isn’t so bad after all, since it brings diverse students together out of necessity.
A deeper psychological need may be responsible for the spread of fusion cuisine. As the five boroughs and our own six-block campus grow increasingly diverse, people are seeking a way to marry different culinary traditions. The simplest solution is to combine these geographically and culturally clashing cuisines on one menu, providing a comforting experience of diversity and compromise.
But at what point does fusion distract from or even pervert original culinary traditions? When cuisines are combined for fusion’s sake alone, the food can taste shallow and almost sacreligious. Fusion truly succeeds only when the incorporation of alien ingredients or techniques heightens the base cuisine.
Food gives students and chefs the opportunity to transform diversity into unity, on both an intellectual and physical level. It represents a new form of globalization in which dissonant cultures form novel conglomerates, simultaneously preserving their individual characteristics and creating new identities.
Thanksgiving demonstrates the potential of the fusion trend. Native American and European traditions met harmoniously in classic dishes like turkey and stuffing, giving modern Americans much to be thankful for. It’s telling that we don’t think of America’s first experiment in fusion—Thanksgiving—that way at all, but instead as a united, traditional, and entirely American feast.
19 November 2009
vol. 7, issue 10
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