100% home grown, processed, and authentic

I've been caught in a thought cycle recently about what I dislike about food writing, prompted by the issue that I've felt for a little bit that I don't know *how* to write about food, and I don't want to write about it the way others do. 

For a while when I was first exploring food, restaurants and their culture, I very much conformed to the idea of there being a right way to dine - tasting menus, central London establishments, long wine lists. I barely enjoyed a single one and came away unenthused and very hungry. Last year, after accidentally finding a dinner booking via an almost dead tourism website,  I had the best dining experience of my life in a shed on an allotment just outside of Haye-On-Wye, from a kitchen that didn't produce menus. It made me think that maybe I've been led down the wrong path in the food experiences I sought out. But for a long time, it seemed like the only path on which to express a love of food.  There's a culture around food right now that doesn't seem to push for creativity or accessibility, but for an exclusive form of popularity. Quite frankly, it's lead me recently to repeatedly delete the Instagram app off my phone; it's all too unapproachable. 

On top of this, a lot of non-white people who write about food are quickly pigeon-holed by appearance or presentation. If I were to conform to the boundaries and limits some set on non-white cooks, I would mostly cook and talk about Welsh food - a place I've never lived, nor know well. I started writing Half and Half as a way of representing British food culture that isn't pretty or "high" or often considered authentic. But then I see a riff on a 7/11 Katsu sandwich become an Instagram trend when it's made with Iberico pork and sold for a small fortune. And an instant noodle dish referenced in an Oscar-winning film loses all its deep subtextual meaning when it is put on to start up menus. It's difficult not to feel disheartened to see the popular expressions of Asian cuisine be so soulless and so misunderstood.

You sometimes find yourself screaming that you can just say a Mcdonald's hashbrown with hot sauce on a hangover was great without describing the haunting beauty of the Maccas symbol reflecting off puddles on the highstreet. A small kebab place doesn't have to be a hidden gem. I don't care how much you love chilli crisp. I think a lot about Stanich's, the small US restaurant that seemed to collapse under the global eye and the role food writers play in acting like modern-day Columbus' with not only food cultures, but restaurants, dishes, and cooking in general. But I'm not a restaurant reviewer, a professional cook, and quite frankly idk when or how I will be dining out again. My background is complex, and I can't, even if I tried, reduce my culinary background down to a checkable box. I've struggled a lot with not feeling enough like a certain thing, with not feeling like I am able to claim knowledge or authenticity over a specific cuisine, with not being a good "brown" cook. 

Authenticity and taste are personal things, but food writing and consumption continues to push a narrow view of what food, and "ethnic" food is. So in short, I have decided to no longer try to be authentic. I know from experience there are many like me tied to a country they've barely visited, or to cultures it's assumed they embody. Going forward, I want to write more about this and the difficult inconvenience, the joy of inauthenticity and the mundanity of it all. This isn't going to be a newsletter about how bao is a metaphor for trauma, but about how great and comforting El Do Passo hard taco shells are. I hope in this, more people can come to love the imperfect and unprecise nature of cooking and eating when you're at the crossroad of cultures. 


 After that long spin into negativity, here are a few things I have been enjoying this month.