It felt like yesterday when I left Hong Kong despite it has been almost four years. In this vision, a big chunk of me is looking through the door as M is dicing something on the chunky cutting board. Judging by the intervals, it could be anything. The last family dinner with the family must have consisted of a steamed fish. My father must have insisted. The rubbery fish eyes puffed up as M ladled scorching peanut oil onto the bed of sliced scallion and ginger — a classic Cantonese technique to rid of any fishiness. In this vision, everything is augmented by a strange gravity. Why is it that I still find it hard to believe I have a life elsewhere, here perhaps?
In this puppeteering vision, we veil ourselves with the soap opera blaring in the background. On the table, I spy four bowls of perfectly cooked rice, four pairs of chopsticks, three dishes (“Just serve whatever the number of people minus one”). There isn’t a bigger moral about this vision I can extract from. We eat.
There is a big chunk of me in that vision still, in this day — fueled by the everyday ritual of eating and having to believe there is a greater story to tell. The formulaic quality of eating goes unnoticed by the ones living “within” it, and through the food writer it becomes “Eating” and “Food”. The food writer knocks on the door, uninvited, as he scoops out the rice and starts counting the grains. They ask, “what does this dish mean to your family?”
The truth is, food is never singular but always “in a place” unwittingly, where food has garnered its own history which informs our understanding of issues regarding class, gender, race, etc.
In popular culture, we need not seek hard to connect food with broader cultural implications. In Succession (S2E01) episode titled “The Summer Palace,” the Roy family spends a weekend at their Hamptons mansion but there has been an awful smell coming from inside the multi-million dollar home. Enraged and disgusted by rotting, maggot-infested raccoon carcasses, the patriarch Logan Roy yells at his house staff to get rid of the lobster and shrimp they had prepared to order pizza. “Let’s get pizza!” Logan yells. The next scene cuts to house staff trashing exquisite seafood with no hesitation. In Parasite (2019), the fakes Kim clan scurry their way once the Park family told them about the early return. On the phone call home, Mrs. Park asks for an everyday ram-don — a mixture of Jjapagetti and Neoguri instant ramen but with wagyu beef cubes as an opulent twist (unrelatable, I know). In Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Ninny recounts the queer kinship blossoming in 1920s rural Alabama. Through the screen, food heightens and mocks excess and lack.
In our current zeitgeist that is increasingly catered towards the Algorithm (and by extension, the food media landscape as its by-product), the question of “Can we just enjoy food as they are” leverages little meaning in our current time inundated with neoliberal politics. Attempts to honor meritocracy are domesticated by the identitarian gaze — as history becomes an artifact site; as stories become “content”; and educators become “content-creators”. Simultaneously, food media tells more of an exploitative story of the industry itself than the content it sought to produce. Two years ago in 2020 in the midst of the BLM movement, Bon Appétit (under the management of Condé Nast) came under fire over the racist and toxic workplace.
Since the BA's exodus of former staff members leaving and the ex-editor-in-chief resignation, has BA done enough work to change things around? Investigating the BA drama cauldron, Gimlet Media produced a series titled “The Test Kitchen” — interviewing former BA staffers of color “to be vulnerable, and in some cases, to relive hard experiences they had not yet fully processed.” If this cannot get more ironic, the team at Gimlet was experiencing the same, if not worst, toxicity in the midst of a unionization attempt. Since then the show’s producer has left the show (but neither of them left Gimlet altogether). The miniseries was abandoned, and Reply All — arguably Gimlet’s most critically acclaimed show — was placed on hold.
Food as Consumable Media?
So, how did we get here — from my last dinner at home to corporate accountability? And why should we care? As existing structures of authority recover through NDAs, virtue-signaling, performance spelling, diversity hires — we have to ask ourselves: are there food futures elsewhere?
Whereas Bon Appétit’s “food is political” apology might appease some, attempts to honor meritocracy extends far beyond the subjective and have become more of a structural concern — and identity politics as the long-standing language we have in order to comb through the knots. Yet, we are amnesiac to racial unrest. When “political” becomes an aesthetic; when “BLM” on Instagram profiles becomes a virtue signal — how can food media pivot towards an inclusive future outside these structures of power?
During the 2020 lockdown in Ontario, I recall a huge influx of food media on Youtube and then on other social media platforms — Bon Appétit has a regular four full-length videos throughout the week featuring a “diverse” cast, Alison Roman weekly videos with recipes such as “The Cookies” and “The Stew” (referring to her chocolate shortbread cookie and turmeric chickpea stew recipe); and the infamous “tomato feta one-pot pasta” that keeps on giving.
Somehow when we describe our love for food, there are a few approaches that are intertwined: as a foodie —the curiosity to learn and taste the food as they are; the food realist — the conversations about production, origins, migrations, consumptions; the food media stans — where love for pop culture and food lends into celebrity culture, media, and power. We are not singular but we have always been having these lines of inquiry at the same time.
I try to understand my biases — the “sell-out” desire to fetishize my homeland and drawing a huge stretch between M’s dish for a white audience, and the refusal of it; the curated content on my algorithm reflects my proximity to whiteness and the American empire, and my affinity for female chefs (e.g. Carla Laila Music, Sohla El-Waylly, Claire Saffitz, Priya Krishna). Under the dome that is the Algorithm, I challenge myself to think with these in the new year and forward:
Support local food writers, vendors, retailers, content creators, etc.
While you are there, tip if you can (it does not have to be monetary)
Diversify your food media by following marginalized creators and their stories
Eat seasonally
Check out local community fridges (if any)
In a new vision, M’s tomato egg stir-fry is standing next to the Algorithm. They are real yet near ethereal. What language and logic do they rely on to communicate? Who are the interlocutors? How do spoken narratives challenge the authority of the written form? Get the brown eggs, they are more flavourful / Divide the white and the green parts of the scallion / Do you know how to core the tomatoes?
What if diary milk becomes the “seventy-five cents substitute”? What if we share? It’s absurd, I know.
Check out also these earlier Please Remind Me posts: