The Art of Eating in New York

[Fat Guy]

There's a fine line between being sensitive to the needs of your customers and pandering to the lowest common denominator. It's an interesting subject indeed. If I don't tackle it, perhaps someone else will.

[mags]

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.

I'm afraid I agree with you a bit less than you think, docsconz. Yes, I agree that copies are inherently "inauthentic." But that's basically because I think -- or at least I think I think, ask me tomorrow -- that authenticity, like uniqueness, is a quality that can't be split. That is, something can't be "a little authentic" or even "more authentic" than something else.

Well, let me backtrack a bit. What I think is that something -- a meal, a building, a poem -- is authentic to itself. A meal of Italian recipes cooked in a New York City kitchen isn't 67% an "authentic" Italian meal or 48% or 99%, but it is a 100% authentic rendition of itself, a perfectly authentic rendition of a New York City meal in the Italian style.

I haven't read Walter Benjamin in 20 years, but I think he suggested that the entire notion of authenticity is a creature of the slick fellas in marketing, designed entirely to make people dissatisfied with what they can afford to consume -- whether that's art or a meal -- and forever chasing sufficient pennies to purchase the "authentic" experience.

In other words, authenticity is bogus. So I'm with Fat Guy. Who the fuck cares?

[Pan]

Mags, I care sometimes, but only because, to take one example, whatever inauthentic Malaysian food is served up in Malaysian restaurants in New York is nowhere near as good as real Malaysian food served in Malaysia. If it were equally good, I don't think I'd care.

Also, while your points about authenticity are well taken - and poetically expressed, I'd say - I still think it's possible to talk about food as being more or less removed from its original taste and context, however one wishes to qualify that.

[Fat Guy]

Pan, I think your use of the term "original" highlights the failure of the authenticity contingent to recognize the full significance of the evolving nature of cuisine. The tomatoes-in-Italy example, though tired and already trotted out plenty, is to me fundamental to any such discussion. I simply find it absurd to speak of "authentic Italian pizza" as requiring "San Marzano tomatoes." Likewise, Malaysian food as served in Malaysian restaurants in Malaysia today is at one point on a historical continuum that dates back to the days before capsicum peppers came to Asia from the New World. So while I think it is possible, and even desirable, to make comparisons based on time, place, and ingredients, and to define the nexus at which we find a given dining experience, I think that calling Malaysian food in New York "inauthentic," if I am taking your meaning correctly, takes us back to the same old problem I've been addressing here all along. Now, if the Malaysian food you're having in New York is bad, that's something worth decrying. But if it's good, who cares whether or not it accurately imitates what is served a million miles away in an entirely different context? Indeed, my guess is that much of the bad Southeast Asian food in New York would be improved by less attempted mimicry and more of an embrace of local products, adaptation, and experimentation.

I certainly enjoy going into immigrant communities -- and after all what culinarily relevant community in America isn't an imigrant or imported one? -- and experiencing the cuisines they've brought to America with them. But my enjoyment is not based on a belief that by visiting Chinatown I am taking a vacation in China. To me, Chinatown is a wonderful, rich, valid world and culture unto itself, rooted in China but now part of America. Whether the food I'm eating at a given restaurant is something I could find in China matters very little to me from an enjoyment standpoint; at most that knowledge would serve to satisfy and inform my intellectual curiousity, but it would not affect my sensory experience of the meal.

Now, I've never been to China. At least I don't think I have (the last time I said I hadn't been someplace my wife reminded me that we had once spent 5 weeks there). I can see how someone who has spent time in China, as you have I think spent time in Malaysia, would find imitative cuisine attractive from a nostalgia standpoint. But as I said before, if life works out such that the only way I can truly experience Malaysian cuisine as served at Malaysian restaurants in Malaysia is to get on a plane and go to Malaysia, I'll be fine. I'll hope to go there someday.

[Pan]

Fat Guy, I don't think we're fundamentally in disagreement. As I wrote:

I care sometimes, but only because, to take one example, whatever inauthentic Malaysian food is served up in Malaysian restaurants in New York is nowhere near as good as real Malaysian food served in Malaysia. If it were equally good, I don't think I'd care.

I also was careful to add:

I still think it's possible to talk about food as being more or less removed from its original taste and context, however one wishes to qualify that [emphasis added].

As I said, there are degrees of difference from the original taste and context, however one wishes to define and qualify those. I don't think that we should pretend that everything is equally similar to or different from the way one would expect it to taste in the place where the style originated - again, however you want to qualify that.

But also, look at the context: Mags was saying that it's impossible to produce an authentic copy of something out of context. In that context, how can I be faulted for using the word "inauthentic" to describe anything and everything?

Finally, I have to say that when I go to a Malaysian restaurant, I prefer to have food that is as similar to what I could eat in Malaysia as possible - again, because the less similar it is, I've found, the worse it is. If it were delicious, I wouldn't much care whether it tasted "truly" Malaysian or not. But the problem is that it's unavoidable for me to compare what I'm eating to Malaysian food in Malaysia, which is a high standard of comparison.

[Fat Guy]

the less similar it is, I've found, the worse it is

If this is an empirical statement based on an open-minded assessment, I have no beef with it. If the continuum of excellence in Malaysian restaurants in New York is such that the ones that conform most closely to a certain style are serving better food than the ones that don't, so be it. The reality is that issues of culinary creativity rarely pop up (there are of course exceptions, but they tend to prove the rule) in the context of smaller, local, ethnic restaurants that are largely oriented towards high levels of output (at least relevant to their kitchen sizes) of cheap, tasty food. Such places are probably better off sticking to some basic templates, though I think there can be forms of adaptation, particularly in terms of local ingredient substitutions, that are, if not exactly creative, at least indicative of a desire to improve through adaptation and assimilation.

My concern is with a self-fulfilling prophecy you didn't put forth, but which many other people do make or imply: "the less similar it is, the worse it must be." Once we fall into that trap, the analysis becomes suspect. Because in the limited time I've spent in Southeast Asia, the top chefs there have been doing what the top chefs everywhere else have been doing: they have been departing from tradition and cooking creatively. In that regard, there is a bit of an authenticity time warp that I see in New York once I've visited other countries. La Cote Basque kept an aura of authenticity about it until its last gasp, yet you couldn't go to Paris anytime in the past 20 years and find a restaurant like it. Balthazar is said to evoke a Parisian brasserie yet the brasseries in Paris that it evokes are mostly theme-parkish recreations courtesy of the Groupe Flo. The dim sum served at the traditional Chinatown dim sum parlors is hardly indicative of the best dim sum being served today in Asia; rather, I would argue that Dim Sum Go Go, which I've heard many people call inauthentic, is far more reminiscent of what is actually happening in Asia today. All over Asia, the new important restaurant ventures are looking West -- the foie gras flows like water into the palm.

[Pan]

Actually, food in the east coast state of Terengganu, Malaysia (especially in villages) is much improved, partly because of increased wealth among the population, but also partly because the country has been suffused with Thai influence in recent years.

I also agree with you that well thought out substitutions of good local ingredients are fine. That topic puts me in mind of the asparagus dish contest Monica Bhide et al. set up on the India Forum. Asparagus isn't a traditional Indian vegetable, but it's a very good vegetable. In terms of Malaysian food, I prefer American hothouse cucumbers to the more bitter cucumbers I remember from my first trip to Malaysia (I don't remember the cucumbers being particularly bitter last August).

[Bux]

My copy of the Art of Eating finally arrived. I think it might help this thread to note, for the sake of those that don't subscribe to AoE, that Davis came to focus on "authenticity" after seeing a commercial in Las Vegas advertising "Italian food so authentic, you'll swear you were in New York." Davis then asks "What is is about New York restaurants that convinces so many people the food here is more authentic, and better, than the food served anywhere else?" I might choose to argue that such advertising might well hold sway with a large percentage of those who choose to visit Las Vegas in the first place, but maybe not with the rest of the world's population, but lets accept that it gave cause for Davis to consider authenticity as a factor in NY's restaurants.

When he gets around to tackling the issue a page later, he says he believes there's a higher value placed on authenticity in New York, than elsewhere, including other great restaurant cities. I'd have a hard time arguing that point. On the whole, we do pride ourselves on having more authentic ethic foods, by which I tend to mean less dumbed down ethnic cooking, than most other cities. Davis cites as examples, Paris and Tokyo, he's not taking aim at the American heartland or what some might see as a soft target. He's picked two great food cities outside America. Both France and Japan have dominant food cultures and populations that have historically been rather xenophobic and chauvinist. Foreign foods in Paris and Tokyo have historically been tailored to meet the public taste. Did ethnic food in NYC escape this fate because of our strong ethnic communities, our own weak sense of local food, some innate ability to respect things for what they are or some other reason I haven't yet considered? Does it matter? The truth is that we not only allow a greater freedom of style, but we encourage and patronize those restaurants that foster it. Great for New Yorkers, I think. This is the background from which we can discuss Davis' authenticity as being tied "to a particular place or culture."

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.

To argue that the creative cuisine of our best chefs is also authentic and that it's authentic to the chef's own spirit of cooking is fine, but to a great extent it's arguing about the definition of "authentic" rather then anything else. We all have to be careful not to argue that an elephant is an animal with a long trunk as opposed to being an animal with very thick ankles. We can all successfully make our points and go round in circles as many internet discussion do. I'd allow Davis' concept of authenticity to stand. It's a popular one that serves well enough. I'd argue that that the same weaknesses or strengths that allow us to accept and demand foreign foods that are "authentic," allow us to do the same with the foods from chefs with strong personal philosophies and individual creativity. New Yorker's don't particularly like watered down food, or at least there are enough of us in NY to support interesting food that's authentic to a time, a place, or a chef.

One might argue that NY didn't welcome Ducasse very well with AD/NY, and I might argue that his style of three star Michelin experience in France is not all that French, but I can't argue that in some way, AD/NY didn't bring something to NY that we didn't have and that came from somewhere else. If nothing else, the luxury of dining at your table for the whole night is not authentically a New York experience and as experiences go, it's not a matter of style over substance, but one of style and substance. At the haute cuisine level, it's hard to separate the food from the meal and Ducasse has probably raised the bar in terms of dining in New York.

[mags]

Bux, you may well be right that I, at least, have been splitting some serious linguistic hairs, though the notion that "authentic" equals "the opposite of dumbed-down" still bothers me. I guess I'm troubled by the idea of "authenticity" itself being dumbed down, that a simulacrum comes to be regarded as not just better or worse than the model on which it's based, but as the same thing.

Pan, you've talked about how your scale for "good food" in a New York Malaysian restaurant is essentially identical to your scale for "similar to Malaysian food in Malaysia." That suggests that all the food you ate in Malaysia has been good, and that's terrific (and let me know next time you're going there, so I can force you to let me tag along). I've spent a bunch of time in China, and while I've had some great food there, I've also had some really awful food. A Chinese restaurant in Manhattan that recreated the oil-soaked fermented fish and gluey dumplings I remember at one factory canteen in Wuhan might provide a dandy copy of Chinese Chinese food, but it would still be a lousy restaurant.

I'm afraid I don't think that an Italian meal in New York -- even one prepared according to Italian recipes and made entirely of imported Italian ingredients -- would in any way be analagous to eating the same meal in Italy. I don't think it's "close" to eating in Italy, I don't think it's "sort of like vacationing in Italy." It might be fantastic, might well be better than any food available anywhere in Italy, but it wouldn't be the same, or even part of a continuum. So given that an "authentic" copy is an oxymoron (which is what I'm arguing), the concept of "authenticity" looks to me an awful lot like a stick we choose to beat ourselves with, a way of pumping our own dissatisfaction. Sure, the meal might have been great, but it wasn't "authentic" because the chef didn't use San Marzano tomatoes. The true, authentic experience, therefore, is always to be found somewhere else, on somebody else's plate. As a concept, I don't think it contributes a lot to the enduring happiness of humankind.

[Fat Guy]

We all have to be careful not to argue that an elephant is an animal with a long trunk as opposed to being an animal with very thick ankles.

Either way, there is one in the living room.

Seriously though, Bux, I believe it's always worth agitating for greater linguistic precision. Culinary language and attendant attitudes are still just barely emerging from the "sear the meat to seal in the juices" days, when wive's tales had more currency than the physical or social sciences. In attempting to rescue the concept of authenticity from the reactionary preservationsists at the Chez Slow Foodways Alliance Collective Board, we do more than quibble about language: we expose the underlying concepts that language reinforces.

[Pan]

Pan, you've talked about how your scale for "good food" in a New York Malaysian restaurant is essentially identical to your scale for "similar to Malaysian food in Malaysia." That suggests that all the food you ate in Malaysia has been good

Not all of it, but pretty damn close, with a few exceptions, and it really is pretty normal to get excellent food in Malaysia, so you wouldn't need for me to travel with you, though recommendations from some eGulleteers from the area or living in the area would be helpful (and were helpful to me).

I was disappointed in the quality of Chinese food I ate during my trip to China in 1987, with the exception of Hangzhou generally and certain eateries specifically. People were generally poor, and ingredients weren't comparable in quality to those used for Chinese food I had previously had in the 70s in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, and at the beginning of the 1987 trip in Hong Kong. I'm going back to China this August and expect that the increased wealth in the cities may be reflected in improved food.

[docsconz]

I'm afraid I don't think that an Italian meal in New York -- even one prepared according to Italian recipes and made entirely of imported Italian ingredients -- would in any way be analagous to eating the same meal in Italy. I don't think it's "close" to eating in Italy, I don't think it's "sort of like vacationing in Italy." It might be fantastic, might well be better than any food available anywhere in Italy, but it wouldn't be the same, or even part of a continuum. So given that an "authentic" copy is an oxymoron (which is what I'm arguing), the concept of "authenticity" looks to me an awful lot like a stick we choose to beat ourselves with, a way of pumping our own dissatisfaction. Sure, the meal might have been great, but it wasn't "authentic" because the chef didn't use San Marzano tomatoes. The true, authentic experience, therefore, is always to be found somewhere else, on somebody else's plate. As a concept, I don't think it contributes a lot to the enduring happiness of humankind.

Mags, you certainly are splitting some serious hairs. I agree, authenticityis subservient to whether a restaurant is good or not good in what they produce regardless of how "authentic" it aspires to be. Sure it can never be exactly the same thing as the original model, but I don't understand your reluctance to allow for an experience to approach a model, albeit on an asymptotic line. Sure, there are many models to which a restaurant aspiring to be "authentic" can choose, some good, some not so good. An Italian cook from Italy , cooking Mama's (or Papa's) recipes using the same ingredients from Italy that Mama would have used in a setting evocative of the original locale using native plates, glasses, decor, etc. is pretty if not totally "authentic". It is another question entirely as to whether the food or the experience are good, better or worse than something less authentic, but for someone who for whatever reason wishes to experience that, it has some value.

[docsconz]

In attempting to rescue the concept of authenticity from the reactionary preservationsists at the Chez Slow Foodways Alliance Collective Board, we do more than quibble about language: we expose the underlying concepts that language reinforces.

Given the inclusion of "Slow Food" in your "Collective Board", I think your linkage of it in this context illustrates a major misconception of what the Slow Food Movement is all about. It is not about "authenticity" or "reactionary preservationism". It is about maintaining biodiversity and diversity of food preparation. There is certainly an element of preservationism involved, in that preserving culinary traditions is important, although in no way does it discourage creating new traditions so long as they are traditions committed to quality and diversity. Slow Food is against the homogenization of the world's food. It is about enjoying life and making sure that the generations that follow can enjoy it as well.

I believe language has a lot of nuance and rarely are things so clear cut as perhaps we'd like them to be. I tend to believe more in shades of gray than black and white.

[Fat Guy]

As a formal body of thought, the Slow Food concepts do indeed include what I consider to be enlightened views of assimilation and the melting pot:

Our society is now a melting pot. This is a fact which influences our culture, but also our eating habits, and, as a result, we are experimenting more. The obvious risk is that not all the results will be up to standard. Nonetheless, peoples on the move have always developed their traditions - gastronomic traditions included - through crossovers with others.

At the same time, I have found that of all possible affiliations, those who are involved in the Slow Food movement are the most likely to also be members of what I earlier called "the authenticity police." Perhaps most members of the movement don't fully understand its conceptual underpinnings -- certainly most of them don't completely grasp its deliberately veiled politics -- but as an empirical matter the Slow Food people do tend to be mired in preservationist notions of authenticity.

[docsconz]

While you may be correct that some and maybe even many people who are interested in or followers of the Slow Food Movement may be members of "The Authenticity Police". it does not necessarily follow that that is what the organization is about. Having been to a Slow Food Congress, that has not been my experience at all.

My point about authenticity is that while it should not be the be-all and end-all of whether or not a restaurant is good, it does have value as a concept (to some more than others) and is therefore not a bad thing when taken as such.

[oakapple]

In Fat Guy's efforts to discredit the "authenticity police," I fear perhaps he has gone too far in the opposite direction. I agree, if the food is good, it's a pretty lame criticism to complain merely because it's "inauthentic." But this does not mean that a phrase such as "authentic Italian food" is utterly devoid of meaning. As I noted earlier in this thread, something that's difficult to define precisely can still be meaningful.

FG said:

I believe these cooks demonstrate that authenticity isn't a repetition of history. Real authenticity, to me, is grounded in being faithful to oneself.

I will go ahead and say the opposite. All restaurant meals are derivative. The only variable is the extent of the repetition. If you doubt this, ask yourself how many recipes you can think of that don't borrow something from successful models. Or, ask yourself how many restaurant reviews you've read - or written - that do not make analogies to food served elsewhere.

These analogies are possible because there are reference cuisines that we all recognize as part of our inherited food culture. Next time you see "pizza," "cheesecake," "duck a l'orange," or "porterhouse steak" on a menu, think of what's not being said. There is a shared culture that allows the menu author to put a few words on the page, and let our minds fill in the rest. This wouldn't be possible without a reference model that sets the expectation of what a dish is supposed to be. Some clever chefs delight us by inventing new riffs on familiar models, but others delight us simply by recreating the original model faithfully.

Members of eGullet are atypical. Look how many posts there have been on the Per Se thread, and compare it with the percentage of the general population that will actually ever eat there. The vast majority of the restaurant meals served consist of chefs duplicating reference cuisines or adapting them modestly. The chefs who are regularly "inventing" anything are in the minority. Of course, no two servings of spaghetti & meatballs are exactly alike, but there are a helluva lot more people eating that recognizable dish than are eating Thomas Keller's salmon cones.

Mags wrote:

I'm afraid I don't think that an Italian meal in New York -- even one prepared according to Italian recipes and made entirely of imported Italian ingredients -- would in any way be analagous to eating the same meal in Italy. I don't think it's "close" to eating in Italy, I don't think it's "sort of like vacationing in Italy." It might be fantastic, might well be better than any food available anywhere in Italy, but it wouldn't be the same, or even part of a continuum.

I am sincerely hoping this is a deliberate exaggeration for effect. Do you really mean that there is no analogy to be made between "Italian" restaurants in New York and Italian restaurants in Italy? If so, the proposition is laughably ridiculous. I've eaten a fair amount of Italian food in Italy, and the resemblance is obvious.

[mags]

An Italian cook from Italy , cooking Mama's (or Papa's) recipes using the same ingredients from Italy that Mama would have used in a setting evocative of the original locale using native plates, glasses, decor, etc. is pretty if not totally "authentic".

Hire a really pretty girl with some bodacious ta-tas and curves that would stop traffic. Put her in a carefully styled blonde wig and a white halter-top dress with a skirt that flies up when the subway passes beneath her feet (which are shod in 50s-style black pumps). Pluck her eyebrows, do up her face in vintage Max Factor colors, and ask her to giggle.

Will she look like Marilyn Monroe? Maybe so, if the designer and the makeup artist (and the casting director) have done their jobs well. In fact, she could look almost exactly like Marilyn. If you're insane and have a zillion dollars -- and the young woman is nuts -- you could have a whole bunch of plastic surgery performed; she could be made to look like a virtual carbon copy.

Will she have any relationship to the authentic Marilyn? Nope. She won't have been born Norma Jean Baker, she won't have had any of the same experiences, and -- even given the most skilled plastic surgeon in the world -- there will still be details (the exact vocal timbre, the precise ratio of calf to thigh, the evident combo of self-confidence and self-doubt that comes from having been a walking sexual fantasy from the age of 12) that cannot be replicated.

Furthermore, the experience of walking down the street with this goddess on one's arm will not have any relationship to the experience of, say, taking an afternoon stroll with the Real McCoy. For one thing, it's not 1955, and the environment is very different. The cars on the street look different, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and you're probably not wearing a hat. Furthermore, your young lady's figure, while it may seem delectable to you, is no longer fashionable, and she will not attract the same -- or the same level of -- admiring glances that Ms. Monroe took as her daily due.

My much-belabored point here is that both a person and a meal are made up of much more than that which is immediately evident to the senses. The context in which one encounters the person or experience go a long way toward defining the experience. ("Context" here is a very messy term that I'm using to mean everything from history to expectations to the world outside this specific experience -- who's in the White House? Are women with Marilyn's measurements regularly on the covers of beauty magazines?)

You can't go home again, you can't wade in the same river twice, you can't eat an "authentic" Italian meal in Iowa City, and you can't walk down the street with the 26-year-old Marilyn Monroe. You can do things that LOOK a lot like those experiences, and these things may even give you the same satisfactions you'd derive (or would have derived) from the authentic experience. But they won't BE the authentic experience, and that's fine; they will be authentic different experiences.

Years ago I worked with a very smart and very peculiar director named Nikos Psacharopoulos. I scribbled down a quote of his, to the effect that "Accuracy is not always the most effective tool for conveying reality." A restaurant may use American-grown tomatoes and still give you the same delirious pleasure that you experienced when lunching in Palermo (or that you imagine yourself experiencing). Alternatively, a restaurant may use the most scrupulously sourced recipes and ingredients and place settings and lighting and God knows what, but nevertheless provide a lunch that is worlds away from your image of the true Italian mid-day meal. "Authenticity," in my book, is a quality unique to every person, thing, experience; it can't be divided. And the illusion of authenticity is rooted not so much in the accuracy of the details (the source of the tomatoes, the precise shade of "Marilyn's" lipstick) as in a whole bunch of indefinables, including my lazy fallback, "context."

It seems to me that what you're talking about is whether a restaurant provides a good illusion of authenticity. I don't think that's something I care much about, but if it has value for you, that's fine.

[mags]

Do you really mean that there is no analogy to be made between "Italian" restaurants in New York and Italian restaurants in Italy? If so, the proposition is laughably ridiculous. I've eaten a fair amount of Italian food in Italy, and the resemblance is obvious.

The point I've been trying to make is that merely because something RESEMBLES something else does not make it the same, or even part of a continuum of "sameness."

As for your response to Fat Guy, authenticity does not demand that a thing/person/review/meal/whatever not be derivative. On a purely scientific level, everything in the world is made up of bits and pieces of stuff that's come before. What is unique to each thing/person/review/meal/whatever is the precise combination; even microscopic changes to the mix are what make the difference between you and your twin brother.

I suspect that part of the problem we're having here lies in an unspoken assumption that "authentic" is the antithesis of "dumbed down," to the extent that authenticity has a value judgment attached to it -- which I think is a mistake.

[mikeyrad]

>> accepting that tomorrow's authenticity is always the child of today's inauthenticity.

A example of this is New York or Chicago style pizza. Certainly not the same as what they serve in Naples, but many would argue that our versions are better than the original. Of course, these "inauthentic" renditions have now become their own authentic genres.

[docsconz]

An Italian cook from Italy , cooking Mama's (or Papa's) recipes using the same ingredients from Italy that  Mama would have used in a setting evocative of the original locale using native plates, glasses, decor, etc. is pretty if not totally "authentic".

Hire a really pretty girl with some bodacious ta-tas and curves that would stop traffic. Put her in a carefully styled blonde wig and a white halter-top dress with a skirt that flies up when the subway passes beneath her feet (which are shod in 50s-style black pumps). Pluck her eyebrows, do up her face in vintage Max Factor colors, and ask her to giggle.

Will she look like Marilyn Monroe? Maybe so, if the designer and the makeup artist (and the casting director) have done their jobs well. In fact, she could look almost exactly like Marilyn. If you're insane and have a zillion dollars -- and the young woman is nuts -- you could have a whole bunch of plastic surgery performed; she could be made to look like a virtual carbon copy.

Will she have any relationship to the authentic Marilyn? Nope. She won't have been born Norma Jean Baker, she won't have had any of the same experiences, and -- even given the most skilled plastic surgeon in the world -- there will still be details (the exact vocal timbre, the precise ratio of calf to thigh, the evident combo of self-confidence and self-doubt that comes from having been a walking sexual fantasy from the age of 12) that cannot be replicated.

Furthermore, the experience of walking down the street with this goddess on one's arm will not have any relationship to the experience of, say, taking an afternoon stroll with the Real McCoy. For one thing, it's not 1955, and the environment is very different. The cars on the street look different, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and you're probably not wearing a hat. Furthermore, your young lady's figure, while it may seem delectable to you, is no longer fashionable, and she will not attract the same -- or the same level of -- admiring glances that Ms. Monroe took as her daily due.

My much-belabored point here is that both a person and a meal are made up of much more than that which is immediately evident to the senses. The context in which one encounters the person or experience go a long way toward defining the experience. ("Context" here is a very messy term that I'm using to mean everything from history to expectations to the world outside this specific experience -- who's in the White House? Are women with Marilyn's measurements regularly on the covers of beauty magazines?)

You can't go home again, you can't wade in the same river twice, you can't eat an "authentic" Italian meal in Iowa City, and you can't walk down the street with the 26-year-old Marilyn Monroe. You can do things that LOOK a lot like those experiences, and these things may even give you the same satisfactions you'd derive (or would have derived) from the authentic experience. But they won't BE the authentic experience, and that's fine; they will be authentic different experiences.

Years ago I worked with a very smart and very peculiar director named Nikos Psacharopoulos. I scribbled down a quote of his, to the effect that "Accuracy is not always the most effective tool for conveying reality." A restaurant may use American-grown tomatoes and still give you the same delirious pleasure that you experienced when lunching in Palermo (or that you imagine yourself experiencing). Alternatively, a restaurant may use the most scrupulously sourced recipes and ingredients and place settings and lighting and God knows what, but nevertheless provide a lunch that is worlds away from your image of the true Italian mid-day meal. "Authenticity," in my book, is a quality unique to every person, thing, experience; it can't be divided. And the illusion of authenticity is rooted not so much in the accuracy of the details (the source of the tomatoes, the precise shade of "Marilyn's" lipstick) as in a whole bunch of indefinables, including my lazy fallback, "context."

It seems to me that what you're talking about is whether a restaurant provides a good illusion of authenticity. I don't think that's something I care much about, but if it has value for you, that's fine.

Mags,

I think part of the problem in this discussion is the lack of a clear agreement on what it is that we are considering "authentic". You talk about context and isolating a specific, unique entity. To me it is tradition that is authentic or not and tradition is in fact a continuum or several that remain true to its roots. No, something does not have to be an exact replica to be authentic and in fact may be less authentic if it is, as per your Marilyn Monroe analogy. Tradition is constantly evolving even in its original location. I believe this is really why authenticity is important to so many people. It is not sameness per se, but a sense and understanding of what makes a cuisine, culture or place tick. It is not confined to a geographic location or specific time. I also believe that this is why authenticity is valued in NYC and why it is an illusion in places like Las Vegas or Epcot, which are built on idealized renditions and not truly a part of or respectful of the cultures from which they are taken.

[mags]

Thinking about this. Brain hurts.

[docsconz]

Thinking about this. Brain hurts.

I can relate.

[Pan]

You can't go home again, you can't wade in the same river twice, you can't eat an "authentic" Italian meal in Iowa City, and you can't walk down the street with the 26-year-old Marilyn Monroe.

If you make an absolute statement like "You can't wade in the same river twice," that's just as applicable to two meals in Italy, and even meals of the same dishes at the same restaurant the next day, as to a comparison between Italian restaurant meals in Italy and New York. The reason why "You can't step in the same river twice" is a memorable philsophical statement in that it explains a fundamental truth, but the absolute uniqueness and unrepeatability of everything is only part of the story. You brought up differences between identical twins, but identical twins are a lot less unique than only children. Similarly, there's a pretty good chance that a meal in a good Italian restaurant in New York will be more similar to a meal in an Italian restaurant in Italy than either would be to a meal in a Chinese restaurant in Italy, though there will be certain commonalities between the New York Italian and Italian Chinese meals on the one hand and the Italian Italian meal on the other - though many of the commonalities won't be shared between the New York Italian meal and Italian Chinese meal. These facts are part of the context, too.

[Fat Guy]

But do those undeniable commonalities make a given meal more authentic? What I've been trying to say, and I hope I've made myself clear, is that commonality is a poor yardstick of authenticity. Measuring authenticity by shallow commonality -- commonality of form -- gives us the false authenticity of Epcot. Deeper commonality -- commonality of substance -- is to me far more compelling. In other words, to me Mario Batali's restaurants are more authentically Italian than restaurants that slavishly impersonate their Italian counterparts. Moreover, restaurants that seek to minimize imitation -- so-called chef-driven restaurants where the chef expresses a personal culinary aesthetic in his cuisine -- can be entirely authentic on their own terms. In our New World polyglot immigrant melting pot, they and not the imitators represent the gold standard for authenticity.

[mags]

Oh thank GOD, Fat Guy said it for me!