(film reel clattering) - Hello, and welcome to today's news briefing, co-hosted by "Feet in 2 Worlds", and Ethnic Media Services.

I'm Sandy Close, EMS director.

Our topic is the growing influence of ethnic foods.

It's striking to me how many food sections in mainstream media spotlight ethnic foods for the picnic tables.

What's more American than apple pie?

Maybe an assortment of Thai desserts, or Indian sweets created by food entrepreneurs across all racial and ethnic communities.

This is a fun topic today!

And, our moderator, of course, is the veteran, award winning journalist, and author Pilar Marrero.

I turn it over to you, Pilar.

Go for it!

- Thank you, Sandy.

We all have expertise like Sandy said, and we all have favorite foods and we all have seen our own community foods change and transform here in the United States and influence other people.

I see people eating arepas and never knew what they are!

So, you know, the same thing happens with all foods.

Quincy, welcome.

This is your stage now.

Quincy Surasmith, managing editor of "Feet In 2 Worlds" and producer of "A Better Life" podcast, season two.

He's also the host and producer of "Asian Americana."

Welcome.

- Thank you.

You know, I guess to start us off-- I do a lot of reporting and research about Asian American specific cuisines, culture and history.

And, something that comes up a lot is this idea of a balance of what gets to be a classic American cuisine or a classic American history or culture in general, and this idea of what gets to be traditional and authentic.

And, I want to explore and unpack this.

First, let's just name a few things that come from Asian American cuisines.

And, these may seem a little stereotypical but we'll dig further, that have become kind of classic American foods.

Because, a lot of foods that come from, I think all sorts of immigrant communities, that are in the US become not only part of the food environment and tapestry in the US, but they adapt and change.

And, I want to encourage people to think about that adaptation as not just coming from outside pressures, not just because of who is maybe a middle class, white customer base, because that is not the only customer base.

And, that's not the only reason these people make this food.

But, some classic examples are chop suey.

Right?

Which a lot of people will, we can discuss this soon, does come from Chinese American restaurants and is not a traditional Chinese dish in China, but is made by Chinese Americans in the US.

Fortune cookies I think are a classically American food because you do not find those in China!

You do not find-- I mean, they are a Japanese cookie traditionally, but even then it was not an everyday cookie.

It was, like, a special occasion cookie, right?

Fried wonton; "Chinese chicken salad", quote/unquote; the California roll-- again, not of Japanese, Japan origin, but invented in Little Tokyo by Japanese Americans in Los Angeles in, I think, the late '60s or early '70s, the California Maki.

Or like how things become very normal in Seattle, if anyone's been there, teriyaki chicken with rice and a salad with a thousand island dressing on it is a very classic Seattle lunch.

And, I think a lot of these come from ingredient changes and substitutions that are made, but again, they are made by people in the community, right?

I think other examples that are much more modern that may become part of what we think of as classic American but also classic Asian American cuisine.

I have a friend, Johneric Concordia who runs The Park's Finest BBQ in historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles that is mixing Filipino flavors with LA style, like LA/American style smoked barbecue.

And, it's really great.

There's a Bopomofo Cafe up the street from me that makes mapo tofu tater tots.

I do want to say that I made mapo tofu over fries as a kid, but they are selling it at a much wider scale than me!

Or like Indian Curry pizzas, right?

Or south Asian Curry pizzas.

That's a thing I've seen in Artesia near where I grew up.

That's a thing I've seen in the Bay Area.

And, South Asian curries have their own complex history of how they've evolved over different places and by who's cooking them.

But, even when we think of like crossing other communities, the Vietnamese shrimp crawfish boil that has become chains, like, Boiling Crab and such come from Vietnamese American communities that are in the Gulf Coast and have learned the food ways there and adapted with their own flavors more.

Even subtle things, like when you think about Korean barbecue, right?

I think in Korean restaurants the short rib cut is called "LA galbi", which is like referring to the Los Angeles style of cutting that meat!

And, some-- then these are examples of things that change and shift here because of cultural influence and because of what is available.

And, I think I want to ask or encourage people to think-- a lot of people then think 'but then, what is authentic?

', and 'what is real?'

And, I want to say, it's all real; it's all authentic.

"Authentic" is different than "traditional."

Traditional is a certain thing, and I want to respect that.

But I think sometimes, at least in the Asian American community, people ask, "well-?

is this traditional?

Is this authentic?"

And, we try to box it out because we wanna protect our own histories and culture.

But, I think that-- and sometimes that means consumers, customers, ask the same thing.

"Well, this noodle dish"-?

"So this, you know, thing I'm eating?"

And, you know, the New York-style egg roll is a very different food than we get here in California, right?

We don't have that in California, really.

It doesn't make that any less or more authentic.

It's authentic to a different set of cooks, different set of restaurants, different region.

And, these get to grow and evolve in the US.

So, I want to encourage people to think about food as not being put into little boxes, but as kind of signposts to all the intersecting roads it's crossed.

And, the specificity of the region of people, whether it's a region in the US or the region where their families or they themselves are from in these other places; what it's influenced by.

So, instead I encourage people to think about, who gets to make food?

Who is it made for and who is it made by?

Who gets to benefit from making that kind of food, right?

Who gets to succeed and get awards?

I know for me in Thai cuisine, we've been around the US for half a century or more now, but only a certain chef, you know, will get awards and get to be called the "ambassador" of this cuisine.

And, I encourage our media, any of us writing these pieces and stories to explore why does that person get to make changes to the food?

Why does someone-- why does that little family that runs one shop have to make it "traditional" style, or else they're not "authentic?"

And, I'm saying that in quote marks, right?

But, why is it that someone else gets to change it?

Why do we not get to change it?

Who gets to make expensive versions of our food and who gets to make cheap versions of our food and what foods go away as trends change?

I live in the San Gabriel Valley here in Los Angeles where there's a huge Chinese American community, large Vietnamese American community, but that's not one monolith.

That's not one set of people only within that.

This area has a lot of great restaurants now.

But, I, for example on my dad's side am Deju Chinese.

I'm Thai and Deju Chinese.

And, a lot of these Deju, which is sub-like ethnicity and culture and language of Chinese people, one of many!

A lot of those restaurants have been disappearing because they're not on-trend, which I think relates to who gets to make food that is expensive, or who gets to be an ambassador.

So, I'm leading all this.

- Quincy, um-?

- [Quincy] Yeah?

- I'm sorry.

Let me ask a question.

When we talked, you explained in detail how food changes when people come to this country and they bring their food or their idea of their culture, their food; their culture with them.

But, here, they don't find the ingredients and they don't have the right things.

So, they use other ingredients and they transform it.

- Mm hm!

- Italians had foods here that they never had in Italy, for example.

- [Quincy] Right.

- Same with Chinese; the same with others.

So, the availability changes what they do, what they make with it.

Right?

- Mm hm.

Yeah.

I mean, availability does change and that can result in different things, right?

Thai food in the US is much more meat-heavy.

I think sometimes it also is about different communities having to come together.

I think a lot of Italian American cuisine is because there's a certain set of regions that a lot of these Italian Americans come from.

And then, when they first move to the US they are not considered part of the mainstream.

They are not considered white; they are not considered-- at that time.

And so, they end up having to come together to help each other and support each other.

And, they develop a new food out of that.

I also want to mention that we as immigrant communities can also change food sourcing.

A lot of-- a Thai grocery store named Bangkok Market in Los Angeles in the '70s changed how food licensing, and importing and stuff from Asia happened because they were trying to get Thai ingredients.

And so, not only are we shaped by how we source food but we also shape how the US sources food.

And, I think it's an important distinction to make.

- Thank you so much, Quincy.

Let me make sure...okay.

Now, let's bring in Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza.

Her company, Barrio Empire has restaurants in Phoenix, Arizona, and I can see that she had a lot of opinions about things that were being said because she was moving and making gestures!

So now, you have the opportunity, Silvana!

Welcome.

- Good afternoon.

Buenas días, buenas tardes.

- Buenas días!

- When we first started, the word was, 'oh, food is fun.'

You know that little-- came up.

And, I wrote it down so I would 'ooh, stay nice', when you speak!

Because- - No, don't!

Don't!

- Food for me.

I've been threatened before as a chef, like "shut up and cook."

"There's no politics in food."

And, you know, basically "be the little woman in the kitchen and be quiet.

Just feed us good stuff."

But, the truth is that there is a lot of politics in food.

It starts with, for example, for me, my experience and my culture is I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley; Merced, California.

It's the cornucopia of the world.

The fruits and vegetables grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California are found in Japan, are found all over the world.

So, the people who work in those fields, to my knowledge and my experience have always been, for the most part, the Mexican immigrant.

My uncle's bakery was used for the start of the UFW in Delano, California.

I grew up in Merced.

There was, the Salcido as far as the bakeries, were all over the San Joaquin Valley.

At one point, there was 18 of them in the Valley.

And, because of that we have a firsthand experience who our customers were, and they were the immigrant field laborer.

And, watching this as a child, watching our customers come in and ask for help from a 10 year old to translate a form, or to fill out work applications.

It opens up that 'food is much more.'

Our bakery became the tiendita, it became the "little store".

It became the hub for our culture.

So, I knew that as a child, that's my foundation.

We're of service to our community, through our food and our bread.

At age 15, I started cooking carnitas 'cause there were none available and I'm a big fan of pork rinds and fried fat pork.

And, that's a Mexican staple from Michoacán.

So therefore, I sold out every weekend.

So then, I got a little sense of capitalism.

But, I'm a preacher's daughter.

And, because I'm a preacher's daughter, I also have that humanity, going to preach at the migrant camps.

So, on a Saturday we're preaching at the migrant camps and on a Wednesday I'm with my father selling bread out of the back of his truck.

And, watching people bring out crates of tomatoes or crates of peaches to barter with my father for a gallon of milk or some bread.

So, the immigrant hand is very important in the food that we serve.

But, if I take my culture even further back, I go to the gifts that Mexico gave the world.

Starts with corn, the domestication of a wild teosinte, a little sprig that looked like wheat.

And, made it to where masa came out.

And, you can see the food pathways of the masa in the Americas how it went: arepas?

You know, everything that takes masa to the south and then to the north, all the way to North America, corn was part of our food.

You know, the pit cooking of the Mayans that traveled to the north of Mexico.

And, it became a Chichimeca culture which is the pit cooking.

The ingredients, right?

We're talking about tomatoes, chilies, beans, papayas, pineapples.

They got chocolate!

So, all these things were gifts that Mexico gave the world, including the techniques.

Now, let's get into discrimination.

Alright.

For example, America's quote/unquote, food is "barbecue."

In fact, barbecue has its own hashtag: #BarbecueNation.

They have all these festivals for barbecuing competitions but when you go there, and you look for-- I traveled the country, 17 states, studying American barbecue as a Mexican chef.

And, what I found is that there's a white supremacy that has taken over that food.

There is a supremacy moniker that has been put on that food.

Where quite-- it's typical of not assimilation, but more appropriation because that food developed out of the Mexican culture of the Chichimecas I spoke of earlier who, with all good intention, taught the North American how to pit cook.

With industrialization, metal, then came the portable barbecue, right?

And then, the development from Texas into the rest of "America."

And, I use that lightly; it's the "United States."

So, those are food pathways.

Right?

How the Americas took and then claimed barbecue?

But, Americans didn't cook the barbecue.

It was the enslaved, right?

So then, when you study the African American foods-- I posed that question to Dr. Adrian Miller, who has a book called "Black Smoke", just came out this year.

Fantastic, fantastic gentleman, great human being, great scholar doing very important work.

If I had to start over again, I wouldn't be a chef.

I would be a food scholar.

But, too late for that.

It's never too late!

But, having said Adrian Miller's "Black Smoke", I went to Adrian and I said "can you answer a couple questions?

"What does the enslaved have to do with American barbecue?

"If it's '#AmericanNation', and you know, it's white supremacy?"

And, he said it was the enslaved that had to cook it.

So therefore, they got the jowl, the feet, all the horrible parts that the Americans did not want.

I'm sorry- again, I said "Americans"- that the "settlers" did not want.

So, they were the leftovers.

And, it was that Black hand with those West African roots that added that flavor to barbecue.

And, when they realized that the guys out back, the enslaved, were having better food than they were, they included it.

And, furthermore, if you-- I don't understand American food: Southern food?

What's the difference between Soul food and Southern food?

Same ingredients!

Dr. Miller said the same thing.

He said, you can look at Southern food as the bland mother of Soul food.

[audio distorts] And, I just love that.

So again, there is food pathways, how food develops.

Let's look at Mexican food in the United States.

Folks, if you don't know this already by now Mexican food in the United States, is not really Mexican food.

It is more "necessity food."

I think about my grandfather who came in the early 1900s.

By 1919 he was working the fields of Santa Barbara, California toiling desert ground into fertile ground.

And-- which is a big mistake, because of the water, but nonetheless, he did that.

I envision him carrying some chiles from Durango; some peppers, his home peppers in his pocket.

Using some of those seeds to grow and then eating the rest because they were migrant.

So, they were gonna move from one place to another.

That's how the red sauce develops in the United States.

If you look at food in the United States, there's two things.

It is a red sauce on everything: Mexican food; and it is yellow cheese.

And, those are "necessity foods."

You look at the barbecue sauce.

That's the same thing as that red sauce.

It's the food pathways that has grown into something else.

Discrimination and capitalism, for example, have given us those foods that I just described.

It's the money at the bottom line.

When I first entered- and I opened a Barrio 20 years ago- the number one thing I can see that the consumer was not experiencing: my kind of restaurant from a Mexican chef.

They expected chips and salsa.

I gave them none.

I'm a baker's daughter; I gave them bread.

They expected combination plates: "Where are the chiles rellenos?

Where's the tortillas?

Where's the sauces?"

I gave them none of that.

Instead, I gave them some regional food.

I use it as an opportunity to change erroneous perceptions that North Americans have, not only of the food from Mexico, but of the culture.

That was 20 years ago.

And, that fight is still going!

People are still going tamale [ta-ma-lee] when it's tamales [ta-ma-lehs] or "tamal."

People are still eating their crispy tacos and going to Taco Bell and making Taco Bell America's number one, Mexican food.

When you have a fresh crop of immigrants from Oaxaca in Los Angeles, giving you extraordinary food, from the street food to the highest end chefs.

You have it in Southern California.

You go to New York.

You have people from Puebla in New York.

See, Mexican food is regional.

Chicago, unfortunately, got the Northern Mexican.

Northern Mexican's food is more guisos, and more common.

But, those of you that have Southern Mexico fresh immigration, enjoy the Mexican food that you have in your city.

It is an underground surge that's happening.

I'm sure, Quincy, you know what I'm talkin' about!

And then, there's fusion of cultures.

People of color are marinating their food together.

Then, here's the problem.

Right?

Like, you have the Korean taco.

But, here's the problem.

Then you have capitalism coming in and whitewashing those foods that have surged from the street.

Because they are popular, they are delicious.

And, unfortunately that's what happens.

For example, Peter Piper, about 15 years ago trying to use the ancho chile.

You know, I wrote an article about it: "Peter Piper leave our picking pepper alone."

Because you're going over cultural lines that are really not yours to take, in my opinion.

But, that's the capitalist.

To anybody else?

Go for it; embrace it; enjoy it.

Study it and honor it.

Do not appropriate it.

Check your intention.

What's the intention behind that tortilla?

- Thank you so much.

And, I'm gonna go around and give a last word to everyone.

Quincy, anything you want to close?

- Just encouraging you to think about food as a lens, right?

Not just the story in and of itself.

It's a way to understand, no matter what you're covering, right?

Immigration, labor, business, politics, maybe not a one-to-one.

And, even think about how food stories don't have to just be about restaurants and big star chefs.

It could be about the food we buy in grocery stores, the markets; the unofficial marketplaces too, not just a big store.

And, our relationships to each other's cuisines that are not quote/unquote, like, "mainstream", by which I mean like "white", right?

Like, these immigrant and people of color cuisines interact with each other all the time.

And, I encourage people to think about those stories as well.

- Silvana.

- You know, honestly, just-- there's a responsibility.

It's not just a responsibility to sustain yourself with your wonderful food, but it's a responsibility to the community-at-large.

And, especially the ethnic community.

Know where your money is spent.

I consider myself a quote/unquote, "cultural warrior".

Right?

So, when I see a restaurant that says "authentic Mexican cuisine", or food, on the moniker outside and I walk in and it's got yellow cheese and nothing to do with Mexican, that's where I have issues.

So, as long as I speak up, things will change.

If I stay quiet, then I am condoning that behavior.

I'll give you an example.

When I started Barrio Café 20 years ago, Crispy Taco was king, in Phoenix.

I promise you, Crispy Taco is no longer king in Phoenix, or in America for that matter.

So, knowledge is power both to the consumer and to the taquero.

One more thing.

One thing we say in my culture is: "they want the taco but they don't want the taco maker."

So, with that, I leave you.

- Thank you.

You leave us and forgive the pun, with much "food for thought."

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