The Art of Eating in New York

[Fat Guy]

As John Sconzo ("docsconz") mentioned in the Food Media & News forum, Issue Number 66 of Edward Behr's The Art of Eating contains a gazetteer of New York restaurant picks courtesy of the estimable Mitchell Davis. It is the cover story.

The picks and commentary are solid. Making allowances for personal preference, space limitations, and a few outright blunders (Davis's love of the Second Avenue Deli, and omission of Katz's, would be wrong for any connoisseur but is doubly shocking for the author of The Mensch Chef), armed with this list a visitor to New York could eat very well indeed for many weeks. For its currency and intelligence, I would for for the time being call it an essential guide.

More interesting to me, however, is Davis's overview of the New York dining scene, the core of which is a discussion of the phenomenon of authenticity as viewed through the lens of New York restaurants. Davis, who is the Director or Publications for the James Beard Foundation and who has written at length and with insight about restaurants all over the world, would seem to be uniquely situated to provide us with an interesting critical perspective.

Davis's taxonomy holds that restaurants in New York fall “on a spectrum from totally authentic to wildly creative.” He defines the authentic end of the spectrum in terms of “places that recreate the food and often the eating environments of other parts of the world.” In other words, he views authenticity as reproduction. “An authentic restaurant,” he argues, “feels tied to a particular place or culture.” He is speaking mostly of “ethnic” restaurants – he mentions Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese – but also sees Alain Ducasse New York as authentic because it “so accurately recreates the experience of eating in a Michelin three-star restaurant in France.”

He defines the other end of the spectrum in terms of “restaurants that shun any sort of authenticity or tradition whatsoever.” Here he cites Nuevo Latino, a host of nouvelle Japanese restaurants, and the chef-driven restaurants of the Time Warner Center. He also sees, in the middle of the spectrum, a species of “hybrid restaurants,” in which he includes places such as Babbo and Nobu. “When the mix of authentic and creative is right,” contends Davis, “they offer excellent dining experiences.”

To be sure, Davis also understands that authenticity is a “fraught concept.” He notes that authenticity can be defined in terms of the question “Would I find a restaurant or menu like this in India, in Hong Kong, or on the Lower East Side?” But he also sees a definition framed by “Would people from those places understand and appreciate this food, this style of service, the experience of eating here?” Further, he recognizes the difficulty of determining the “what and when of authenticity.” He does not believe cuisine should be frozen in time or place, and makes limited allowances for the authenticity of Japanese fusion, which after all “is popular these days in Tokyo.”

I too have been thinking about authenticity of late, as well as off and on over the years. And while I appreciate Davis's points I fundamentally have a different take on the meaning of culinary authenticity, and on New York's relationship to it.

Despite allowances made for some evolution, authenticity as commonly understood by culinary authorities like Davis refers to the preservation of "original" recipes, presented with some historical and cultural context. In the language of Merriam-Webster, authentic means “conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.”

But what if evolution itself lies at the core of authenticity? In that regard, paying attention to how cuisine has evolved in modern times, it's hard not to notice that one city has led the pack: New York may be the most inauthentic eating town on the planet, yet it's also the most exciting.

Davis senses that New York is “the best restaurant city in the world.” But his concept of authenticity forces him to argue from a creative deficit: “Sure, there are better French restaurants in France, better Japanese restaurants in Japan, better Italian restaurants in Italy,” he concedes. “But add up the huge number and the diversity of dining options available on any night in New York, factor in price and quality, and what you've got is the best restaurant city in the world.”

Reading the glossy food magazines, the newsletters, and the Internet, and even when talking to educated gourmets who should know better, I get the sense that the authenticity police are everywhere these days. Have you ever dined in an Italian-American restaurant with friends who have just returned from Italy? "Oh, in Italy they never serve pasta as a main course," they'll inevitably say. Or, "Cappuccino after dinner? That would be unthinkable in Italy." (Amanda Hesser built a book on that premise.) Or, "You call this bolognese?" (There is nothing like a week in Europe or Asia to activate the authenticity chromosome.)

This attitude stands in stark contrast to the basic facts with which we're all familiar: Italian cuisine did not spring into existence as a fully formed entity. There was no tomato sauce – and there were certainly no sun-dried tomatoes – until centuries after the tomato first reached Europe from the New World. When that beloved red fruit first appeared in Italy, did the local food cognoscenti protest, "We don't use these things in authentic Italian cuisine"? Such an objection would never be heard in a trattoria in Brooklyn, where the chef preparing the "red sauce" cuisine could easily be a Mexican who started his day with a bagel and a schmear.

We could just as easily imagine knee-jerk authenticity-based complaints about chiles in China's Sichuan province, chocolate in France, and wine in Australia. If you dug really deep, you'd probably find that at some point in prehistory the very notion of cooking beasts over a fire instead of eating their bloody haunches raw was scorned for its inauthenticity, too.

Since everything in the world of food likely had some precursory experience, wouldn't it be smarter for us to make allowances for what "authentic" really means? If you ask me, such tolerance is necessary when you dine out in a place like New York City. In what many rank as the world's hotbed of restaurant life, the top chefs collectively seem to scoff at the maintenance of traditional cuisines. Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Gray Kunz, the leading practitioners of fusion cuisine, run roughshod over culinary borders with the audacity of international arms dealers. Nobu Matsuhisa blends Peruvian, Japanese, and even seemingly extraterrestrial flavors together; take his signature squid "pasta": linguine-like strips of calamari with garlic sauce, asparagus, and shiitake mushrooms. Wylie Dufresne presses oysters into paperlike sheets. Mario Batali cooks pizzas on a griddle.

I believe these cooks demonstrate that authenticity isn't a repetition of history. Real authenticity, to me, is grounded in being faithful to oneself. This is the last definition given by Merriam-Webster, but to me it is the most appropriate for cuisine: “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.” That's why, despite their breaks with tradition, there's nothing inauthentic about the cuisines of Nobu, Jean-Georges, Wylie, and Mario. Change for its own sake is phony, but true originality is authentic. And what New York eschews in terms of historical fealty, it makes up many times over in originality: the big-name cuisiniers we hear so much about are just the most prominent soloists among a chorus of thousands of unsung chefs at every kind of restaurant from the traditional Little India curry shop to the post-modern dessert bar.

To me, what makes New York City a supremely dynamic eating destination is exactly its unabashed dedication to what the old school writers would call inauthenticity: New York doesn't attempt to hide the actuality that human history is built on immigration, assimilation, and invention. I believe that New York chefs have assumed a lot more latitude when it comes to creativity than, say, the chefs working in Michelin-starred restaurants in France. When many of those try to incorporate such ingredients as curry and shiso in their food, the result often comes across as a strained attempt to be modern. Some New York chefs can't pull it off either, but their efforts to reinvent cuisine feel far more natural – maybe because there is no native culinary culture in Manhattan; the Zagat survey lists not a single Iroquois restaurant. Instead, New York has always served up an imported, repackaged version of everything.

Rather than obsessing about historical notions of authenticity, I propose finding culinary validation within ourselves and accepting that tomorrow's authenticity is always the child of today's inauthenticity. Those who forget this lesson will, I think, be relegated to quibbling about trivialities, like faux quartermasters debating the historical accuracy of their Civil War reenactment uniforms.

[bilrus]

I gather that you think this type of authenticity is unique to New York, rather than something that can be found (albeit to a lesser extent) throughout the US?

[Fat Guy]

Bill, I think you can find pockets of it all over the New World, and to some extent in the Old World as well. Jose Andres in Washington, DC; Grant Achatz in Chicago; Susur Lee in Toronto; Ferran Adria in Spain; Pierre Gagnaire in France; and Tetsuya Wakuda in Australia are just a few of the most obvious examples of chefs whose primary notions of culinary fealty are derived from a strong sense of self. I think, however, that New York is unique in that it is defined by this impulse. Dining in DC, I can't escape the feeling that Jose Andres is a fluke, an outsider, someone who taps into a limited audience within a supervening meat-and-potatoes culinary culture. In New York, the counterculure is the culture.

[Jinmyo]

Nice piece, Steve.

[Pan]

Steven, you always write really well and I generally agree with your remarks, but there are times when one person's "personal authenticity" is another person's gimmickry or watering-down. I doubt you'd find anyone posting to eGullet who would argue that fusion cannot be a success; it's just that the "East-West" fusion I've had in more or less upscale places in the U.S. has so seldom worked for me that I tend to avoid it whenever possible.

Side point on tomatoes: Is it an urban legend that Europeans originally thought they were poisonous?

[Fat Guy]

Pan, I've got news for you: a lot of people, especially those on macrobiotic diets, still think tomatoes are poisonous!

I'll be the first person to agree that most chefs fundamentally lack creative talent. And I'll also be the first to say that, if you lack that kind of talent, you should stick to the dishes that people with it already invented for you. But beyond that, once you get into the world of chefs with creative talent, I see no necessary correlation between historical fidelity and excellence. Certainly, when cooking off the grid, there's an element of risk that's not present when cooking from Le Guide Culinaire. Then again, Escoffier wrote in a different time and place -- he didn't work with American ingredients, he didn't work with a Spanish-speaking brigade from Latin America, he probably as has always been the case with most French gastronomes couldn't stand the slightest hint of capsicum. What, then, is so authentic about a chef in New York, who was perhaps born in Toledo, cooking from Escoffier's playbook?

Where I think things really break down is when we get into reproductions of "authentic regional cuisine" thousands of miles from a given cuisine's place of origin. To me, that is not only inauthentic but perverse. The best Italian restaurants in New York -- and I think there is very strong unanimity among gourmets on this point -- are those of Mario Batali. And they happen to be the least authentic by the stodgy definitions that constipate the pages of Gourmet, Saveur, Food & Wine, and The Art of Eating. I see no need to tiptoe around Batali's rejection of tradition; I'm proud to support it. To me, Batali's use of New York and America's bounty in a New World style informed by an Italian aesthetic that is at the core of Mario's persona is far more authentic and respectable than the square-peg-in-round-hole attempts at regional cuisine by so many authentically bad Italian restaurants around town.

[Pan]

We are essentially in agreement, certainly in theory. I have yet to visit any of Batali's restaurants, so I can't comment on them.

[Bux]

I'm not so sure I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you, but authenticity may be in the mind of the beholder. ADNY may be an authentic recreation of the experience of eating in a Michelin three-star restaurant in Paris, but the majority of three star restaurants in Paris are not cooking authentic French food which I would have to define as French food cooked in the first half of the twentieth century or as codified by Escoffier. Fusion food is really a dated term. Few talented chefs are trying to fuse anything. They've all been working with soy sauce, lemon grass, balsamic vinegar, etc.--ingredients as locally available as tomatoes were to Italians at the turn of the century--long enough to have absorbed them into a personal cooking style. An authentic NY restaurant may well be one where the chef has his own style. Basically, I've seen this same trend trickling well down to the bistro level in Paris and even the provinces of France, so it's hardly just NYC. It's not even a trend in world capitals. For the past half dozen years we've been traveling and eating in Spain with an eye towards neuva cocina. From Galica to Alicante and from Catalunya to Andalusia, we've been feasting on food that is distinctly Spanish, but hardly traditional. I'm not sure you can define authentic French or Spanish cuisine without tying it to a region and a period in time.

Edit to add: Casa Momo seems not to offer authentic Spanish food, but at the same time, it's not any less authentic than many of the best restaurants in which we've dined in Spain.

Edited June 5, 2004 by Bux (log)

[Marlene]

Now there is the Fat Guy I knew from long ago. So why exactly aren't you writing something like that for TDG?

[Mayhaw Man]

Now there is the Fat Guy I knew from long ago. So why exactly aren't you writing something like that for TDG?

He already has all of the yogurt he wants.

It's funny. I was thinking just the other day that I had not read a good Fat Guy Diatribe in a while. I chalked it up to your being busy with the book, but obviously you have just been laying in wait working up the right stuff. Nice Work. Very enjoyable.

[mags]

I thought this was a terrific piece. I particularly liked the notion of New York being the city that embraces, actually flaunts, its polyglot-ness, its essential mutt nature.

[docsconz]

This is a very interesting discussion. If a restaurant is striving for "authenticity" say to provide an ambiance, ingredients and traditional recipes from a location and fails it is either a bad restaurant because it cannot complete the task, perhaps because it cannot get adequately good "authentic" ingredients or it is inauthentic because it is not familiar enough with its model to get it right. If, however, a restaurant uses a cuisine as a model, but does not strive to strictly emulate that cuisine then it is "authentic" to its creators ideals whether or not they actually work. This probably applies to most restaurants in NYC.

[Fat Guy]

John, I think ultimately the answer to the question "is it authentic" should be "who gives a crap?" The question should be "is it good?" As long as food writers and consumers are handicapped by the now thoroughly outdated and inappropriate (at least for New York, and probably soon everywhere) view of imitation-as-authenticity and authenticity-as-goodness, authenticity will be a distraction from creative excellence rather than a component of it.

And so, in thinking about how to rescue authenticity from the Smithsonian and use it as a living concept that supports excellence, it appears there is something common to the best inauthentic, polyglot, mutt-like, joyous New York restaurants: a sense of self-reliance, self-confidence, and conceptual independence and integrity that derives more from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island than from the restaurants of Paris, Florence, or Tokyo.

[Rachel Perlow]

I agree with Marlene. That should have been a TDG article, then it could have been submitted somewhere, like next year's Beard awards.

[Jinmyo]

Agreed.

Still not too late to do it.

[docsconz]

I see nothing inherently wrong in trying to recreate an authentic experience from another place and time, though it is actually very difficult if not impossible to accomplish. Even if the same ingredients with the same freshness from Venice can be obtained anda restaurant designed to evoke a sense of place of Venice it still isn't Venice and therefore as good as it may be it will still fall short. Of course for a lot of people who love Venice and have great nostalgia for it or others who may never get to the actual Venice it may be better than nothing and therefore useful.

So, Steven, in answer to your question "Who gives a crap?", I would say people with a romantic notion of time and place who wish to evoke a sense of nostalgia for what was or what might be. If it is done well, it is a useful ideal for some.

So, as far as the question "Is it authentic?" is concerned, I would say, authentic to what? It depends on what the restaurant and the customer are trying to achieve. As you say, Batali, by his panitalophilism, is not really authentic to Italy, but with his New World sensibilities is authentic to himself and New York.

[Jinmyo]

I think that the idea of authenticity was of great value a decade and more ago. It spurred a greater rigour in kitchens which had been doing very poorly executed simulcrums.

But it's now basically meaningless.

The only authentic regional cuisines are found in those regions.

(And Venice smells bad.)

[docsconz]

I think that the idea of authenticity was of great value a decade and more ago. It spurred a greater rigour in kitchens which had been doing very poorly executed simulcrums.

But it's now basically meaningless.

Why is it meaningless? To some, perhaps, but not others as I explained above.Whether an "Italian" restaurant in NYC is truly "Italian" doesn't matter so long as the food is good and they are not portraying themselves as the ultimate in "Italian" authenticity. But it does matter to someone who is looking for more than just whether or not the food is good if they are trying to evoke a memory or a mood or an experience real or imagined. There may be a lot of fantasy involved, but that doesn't make it meaningless.

[David Lerner]

Part of the authenticity of eating in just about any restaurant in Italy is the attitude toward food. I frequent Lupa and Po, respect Babbo, and enjoy Il Mulino once a year, but Col Legno reminds me more of eating in Italy.

In your average restaurant in Italy, there is one seating, spread over three or so hours. They don't seem to have considered the idea of turning the tables three times a night. In New York, we frequently reach the end of our bottle of wine before we quite finish the meal, even if we eat in an hour. Somehow in Italy the one bottle of wine almost always seems to last through the meal, even if it has an extra course or two (okay, maybe we did start with a little Prosecco or spumante). It's just the pace they set. To me, authenticity isn't solely about the food, it's about the time you eat and the way it's served and the expectations and the rituals. I love living and eating in New York, and the food is delicious, but I frequently get more pleasure from a meal in a "lesser" restaurant in Italy. This is one kind of authenticity that New York restaurants are unlikely to ever achieve.

P.S. And the tomatoes are another problem here for authenticity, frequently even in foodie restaurants - tasteless tomatoes that a pizzieria in Turin would be embarassed to put in a simple salad.

[Fat Guy]

I'd like to go on the record as being officially in favor of nostalgia. But in my time and place -- turn of the 21st Century New York City -- nostalgia and authenticity are rarely synonymous. Indeed, I would prefer to have them be entirely separate concepts. I believe we can only be impoverished, culinarily and intellectually, by an overly nostalgic, derivative, and imitative view of authenticity.

I'm content to live in a world where, in order to experience a place, you need to travel to that place. Not that I have a choice: as you say, John, it is very difficult if not impossible to reproduce even a hint of Venice outside of Venice.

I think it's too easy to dwell on the imitative-authenticity aspect of Alain Ducasse New York and to say, as Mitchell Davis does, that ADNY is authentic because it “so accurately recreates the experience of eating in a Michelin three-star restaurant in France.” That assessment, to my mind, very much elevates form over substance. Because if you look at what ADNY actually serves, and if you start to explore Ducasse's writings and statements on the subject, what you will see is an homage to New York and to American ingredients. Ducasse's book, Harvesting Excellence, is an entire volume devoted to American ingredients and is rife with language along the lines of "With the enormous range of products in this country, the creative potential is boundless," and "the flare and individuality of the multiple cultural influences in the United States have set the stage for modern American cuisine." Ducasse's fine dining restaurants in New York, Paris, and Monaco offer much in the way of similarity, but to me what makes them authentic is Ducasse's insistence on adapting to local ingredients and culinary styles rather than forcing the unabridged Le Grand Livre de Cuisine d'Alain Ducasse on everybody everywhere. The affect of the United States on Ducasse cannot be overstated: as you move outside his fine dining empire and start examining his Spoon and Mix projects, the American influences are undeniable, as are the American influences on his management style and theories. Nor do I think it is any coincidence that the guy who was the top chef before Ducasse was the top chef, Joel Robuchon, is exhibiting New World Ducasse-like inspiration at his new Paris restaurants.

But while Ducasse and Robuchon -- not to mention Ferran Adria and every other chef I can think of who could possibly lay claim to being at the top of the heap -- long ago moved on from obsolete imitative notions of authenticity, the food media and a large part of the consumer base are still applying a 19th Century system of analysis to the cuisine of the 21st Century. So Davis's otherwise excellent guide is almost unbearably suffused with self-conscious and defensive-seeming hedges like "The combination of the pasta and the entree in the same course (let alone on the same plate) is a bow to American eating preferences."

[docsconz]

Steven, I don't believe we are disagreeing, but perhaps looking at the same thing from somewhat different angles. I don't think that there is anything cutting edge going on in the world that is based on "authenticity" in which the model is somewhere other than the place and time of that particular restaurant. Per Se is not The French Laundry, because it is in New York even though the Chef and apporach to food are the same. The overall experiences are inherently different. But that doesn't mean that there isn't any value in a restaurant attempting to be authentic to another time and/or place. It doesn't have to be cutting edge to be good, nor does it have to be 100% authentic (impossible) to have a sufficient degree of "authenticity" to be enjoyed for its own sake. I think one problem in considering authenticity is the frequent lack of realization that there are multiple variations on authentic. It is difficult enough within the city of New York to come to an agreement as to what makes "authentic" New York Style Pizza!

[mags]

I'm wondering if, by suggesting that an imitation or recreation can ever be "authentic," we're not actually bastardizing the notion of authenticity. A road-show production of some Broadway dazzler may employ many of the same elements present in the original production -- certainly the same notes are being hit, the same lines being spoken, the same dance steps being executed -- but there's a reason why "the bus-and-truck version" is not a term of approbation. If the "New York, New York" casino in Vegas had been done to scale, would we regard it as an "authentic" version of Times Square?

"Authenticity," it seems to me, isn't just about hitting the same notes (or following the same recipes), however slavishly, anymore than the concept of Times Square, to which such ticky-tacky homage is being paid, resides solely in a recreation of the physical appearance (at a particular point in time) of one New York City intersection. What's missing is context, without which any "artifact" -- whether it's a meal, a building, a book -- is a mere curiosity, like one of those quaint, lifeless museum dioramas of "Life Among the Iriquois." Amanda Hesser was right in a way, you know: Her grandmother COULDN"T experience an "authentic" Italian lunch without having the hunger for it that is produced by eating a tiny breakfast, and that hunger is part of the context. So, too, is the unspoken, even unthought, acceptance of the hunger that arises from the knowledge that This is the Way One Eats (or doesn't eat), and the way one's compatriots are eating (or not eating) all over town, the way one's ancestors have eaten (or not eaten) in the past.

In fact, I would say that the past, history, is an essential component to authenticity. In the case of Times Square, even if the casino were willing to recreate not only the buildings, but also the centuries of accretions of pigeon-shit on those buildings, the mingled smells of exhaust-fumes, sweaty people and Tad's Steaks, the sounds of honking horns and grinding bus-gears...even if the casino were willing to recreate the entire sensory experience of "Times Square," it still wouldn't be Times Square. First, because it would capture that particular intersection at only one specific point in time, and "Times Square," the concept, is all about layers of the past -- about the hunger that millions of people have brought, over the years and decades, to that one conjunction of streets. The unseen history of "Times Square" -- the Weejee photos, the Ben Hecht-style reporters in their snap-brim hats, the grubby hawkers touting the enchantments of various ShowWorld lovelies, the gamblers the drinkers the hookers the dancers the tourists the writers the short-order maistros, and the cigarette-ad billboards that puff real smoke! -- is what gives life to the concept and makes it "authentic."

In addition, it wouldn't be "Times Square," because it would lack the unseen present -- all the striving and rehearsing and yelling and napping and slurping coffee and fucking and laughing and working and WORKING that is going on behind the windows of all those skyscrapers every minute, regardless of when someone clicks the camera. Lacking both a past and a present, "New York, New York" is just a stage-set, an amusement for the eyes. Given a similar lack of context, an "Italian" meal in New York -- or Chicago or Mobile or Iowa City -- will only ever be an amusement for the taste buds.

Which doesn't mean it can't be fabulously, gorgeously amusing. Even profound, life-changing. But what it won't be is an "authentic" Italian meal.

Two other things occur to me (but HURRAH! I'm not going to yatter on about either of them!!). One is the extent to which nostalgia (or the satisfaction of nostalgic hunger) demands "only the good bits" -- Times Square without the pigeon-shit. And the other is the argument raised by Walter Benjamin, that clever old Commie, that in the age of mass-production, the entire concept of authenticity is illusory.

[oakapple]

I can certainly agree with FG that cuisines evolve. So-called "authentic" cuisines are simply cooking styles anchored to particular times and places that we decide are important - or that the market has decided are important. It may just be an accident of history that certain cuisines have come to be accepted as reference points, and others have not.

The fact that "authentic French cuisine" is difficult to define with precision, does not make it meaningless. The world is full of terms that are imprecise. What is art? What is classical music? What is modern dance? We don't eschew these terms just because some of the exemplars defy ready classification.

Now, some of the reference cuisines we're accustomed to may, in fact, be poor reflections of the original models. Sweet & Sour Chicken may be an American riff on Chinese food, rather than being something that anyone in China would have recognized, but it is now iconic, and one expects to find it on "Chinese" restaurant menus. On the other hand, it most likely does have some connection to actual Chinese food of a particular place and time. It is more likely connected to actual Chinese food than to, say, Italian, French, or German food.

FG asks:

"John, I think ultimately the answer to the question "is it authentic" should be "who gives a crap?" The question should be "is it good?"

He adds:

I'm content to live in a world where, in order to experience a place, you need to travel to that place.

However, there are cuisines available in New York representing places where I will probably never travel. Going to a restaurant is like a mini-vacation, but a lot less expensive. Like anyone who loves to travel, on some level I have a thirst for discovery. Knowing where a cuisine came from is, on some level, interesting to me. Is the recipe I'm tasting one that a Mexican native would recognize, or is it a made-up dish served in a restaurant that happens to call itself "Mexican?" FG's right that, if it isn't good, the fact it's supposedly authentic doesn't matter very much; and if it is good, to an extent it doesn't matter how the dish was created. Knowing where it came from is still interesting, though.

[docsconz]

Mags, I see that youagree with me that it is impossible for something taken away from its principle context to be 100% authentic. But, I believe that is a given. There are degrees of authenticity that have value to different people for whatever reason. The Broadway touring Co. production may not be quite like seeing a show on Broadway (although that is debatable), but it is a damn sight better and closer to the Broadway experience than your typical community theater production. Not everyone can get to Broadway to see a show even if they live in NYC. Sometimes people have to take what they can get in order to experience something they yearn to for whatever reason. As such, the closer to the model the more authentic it is, even if it can never be 100% authentic. It might not be as good as the model, but then again, it is possible to be even better, especially as regards food.

[cdh]

Very nice essay, FG.

Maybe something to be addressed in another essay might be, rather than the issue of authenticity, the issue of bastardization, or dumbing down. Is New York a town where one can find food seasoned to the sugar and spice balance one would find in the town the food's native to? Absolutely. More so than in most other towns I can think of. But you'll also find any number of restaurants that feel the need to make food "less challenging", or "more like what people want"... which usually equates to less spice, more sugar, and maybe more liquid fat and less solid fat.

My sense is that authenticity complaints are often bastardization complaints couched in more polite language.

Edited June 5, 2004 by cdh (log)