During Friday’s class, we discussed what made certain meals authentic to us. In addition, we discussed how Gladys, the Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, may challenge or promote the authenticity of food. Gladys is owned by two white males who travelled Jamaica and learned how to cook Caribbean food, specifically jerk chicken. The fact that two white men are trying to replicate a Jamaican recipe could make the food debatably not authentic; however, these two men are trying to promote the Jamaican culture in their neighborhood, and are even importing wood from the country to make the food as authentic as possible.

 

Gladys is an example of a restaurant that demonstrates food traveling, and how it’s identity changes as it moves from one country to another. Mintz expresses that “when food objects, processes – even ideas – spread from one society to another, the receiving society is likely to modify, often to misunderstand, and usually to redefine what it has received” (Mintz, 517). Although the owners of Gladys tried to bring Brooklyn the most authentic version of jerk chicken they could, the jerk chicken they make will never be exactly like the jerk chicken made in the local places of Jamaica. Even if the same wood is used for the smoke, the jerk chicken will not be the same because different cultured people are handling the food. Mintz stresses the importance of the “locality and its distinctive natural characteristics” of the place a food is from, and states that the place shapes cultural specific foods (Mintz, 520). The two white men who own Gladys have done extensive cultural research on the Caribbean food they prepare for the people, and are a perfect example of how a place shapes a food that is culturally from somewhere else.

 

In terms of cultural appropriation, it is very important that the owners of Gladys know the culture about what they are cooking. Mintz gives the example of what happened when maize spread throughout Europe. The Europeans did not have “the knowledge that it had to be cooked with lime to make its limited niacin digestible by humans” (Mintz, 517). As a result, “there were terrible outbreaks of pellagra” (Mintz, 517). The fact that the owners of Gladys went to Jamaica, saw people prepare traditional dishes, and explored the culture of the people makes them more reliable as chefs, because it lets the customers know that the chefs really know how to prepare what they are cooking. Understanding the afro/indo history of West Indian identity through its food production is critical to making a food authentic. With no background on a food, one doesn’t know what precautions to take while cooking it, or what it is supposed to taste like. Different cultures have the same foods, but they taste different due to the way the food is produced and prepared.

 

“Authentic” food, to me, is food that is cooked traditionally with ingredients that have been prepared the same way that they are prepared in the native country of the dish, or where the foods originated from. It is very hard to grow foods in the exact same matter in two different countries because the climate and other factors are not exactly the same. Using foreign ingredients to make a dish from another country will not result in an authentic food. The travel of food that Mintz talks about makes it more difficult for authentic food to be made because cultural identities have changed all over the world. I would say the most “authentic” food is made in the villages of countries where the people grow their own foods and use them to make traditional dishes. “Authentic” food can be identified what is used to prepare the food (has to do with food traveling), and how the food is prepared (has to do with cultural appropriation).