I was amused this
morning. Addressing the early day bodily
demands I flipped through Beijing “City Edition”, which is one of the two or
three popular free mags, here in the city.
Once upon a time, fifteen years ago, the original cooler-than-thou rag
was the “Beijing Scene,” which former U.P.I. reporter Scott Savitt started and
ran till he was unceremoniously tossed out of the country. City Edition was started a few years after
Beijing Scene’s inception by the former head of the U.S. China Business Counsel,
Anne Stevenson Yang. It always took a
more measured, less irreverent tone and, perhaps accordingly, survives to this
day. I haven’t followed the story closely
but I believe Anne sold it years ago and it now competes with the global
standard “Time Out.” and some other local efforts.
I picked my copy up yesterday in town at the Bookworm
bookstore, where I had a meeting. This
week’s cover story, on the dinosaurs of China, was not able to stop me
flipping, nor was the photo of Yao Ming, nor the consideration of Chinese
soccer. But the five star review of a
new Los Angeles fusion restaurant caught my eye. A parent, out in the burbs I don’t have as
many chances as I might sample new restaurants.
But every other week or so I need to book a business dinner and things
change fast, places close, go sour, and, perhaps I’m old fashioned, but for me
these physical magazines are a reasonable standard from which to benchmark new
eateries.
What exactly is Los Angeles fusion to be found in
Beijing? Well, the place mentioned,
Palms, is apparently offering up kimchi-quesadillas and a whole array of
Mexican-Korean style treats. And, per
the rating, it apparently rocks. The
only drawback they were able to identify was that you had to use the public hutong toilet outside. And obviously this fusion style is, little
did I know, already widely metastasizing in southern California where there are
no shortage of hungry Korean Americans who’ve come to love Mexicali food.
Fusion then, is the counterpoint to what I was on about
yesterday. The illusive “authentic”
burrito / pizza slice / dumpling /
kohada sushi . . . Why not put cheese on
a bowl of bibimbap? Why not throw some cutting kimichi into
whatever you’re rolling up in that burrito? Take the stable tastes and 融为一体[1] It ain’t hard to imagine mash-ups like these falling
flat. But in the right hands, cheese,
which is never part of the north Asian diet, or soy sauce that never was part
of the traditional Western diet aren’t hard to imagine enhancing things from
the other worlds.
Tastes were always in migration. Is it true that noodles went to Italy via
China? Certainly it is true that our
other favorite starch champion, potatoes from the New World were introduced to
China in the sixteenth century, and within the next hundred years, had
contributed to China’s dramatically rising population, (as it would in Ireland
one hundred years later) because suddenly hill sides upon which nothing
substantial could traditionally have been grown, were now arable potato
plots. The Bahamas were judged of
approximately equal value to the thirteen colonies, because of the sugar cane. European power projection by the Portuguese
and then the Dutch drove their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and up to Malacca
for spices that were worth more than gold if and when they made home port.
Growing up in Spanish Harlem in the 1950s, timbales player William Correa, a.k.a.,
Willie Bobo, was no stranger to attestation of the authentic. And to survive in the city, any more than a
few blocks below 103rd. St. you necessarily needed to know
adaptation and blending in, within the New York City ethnic cyclone. Of Puerto Rican descent, he came up playing
with Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente and eventually moved out to L.A. where
maybe, just maybe he put some bacalao
and plantains in his quesadillas. A big
influence for Carlos Santana, it comes through clearly on this 1965 disc, “Spanish
Grease”, the title tune of which may be one of the high points and sound like a
pretty straight pathway to Santana’s “Ain’t Got Nobody” from a few years
later. Willie Bobo ended up working with
Carlos a few years on in his short career, during the 70s. He died down L.A. in
1983, succumbing to cancer only a few years older than me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Bobo
Authentic local tastes may prove mutable over a
lifetime. But, they have enough history,
generally to defend themselves as solid blocks of taste, like primary colors.
The “red” of Italian food could never be mistaken for the blue of Chinese food,
or the yellow of Mexican food. The blue
of Irish reels and the red of Yoruban rhythms are quite obviously unique. But combined, in skilled hands, new secondary
colors, and tastes like a green or a purple or a kimchi quesadilla or indeed
New Yorican salsa, (as the name
suggests: ‘to mix’) become possible.
I’ll let you know when I get my hands on one of this new joint’s
quesadillas.
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