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11/2019 - The Seal of Authenticity: Monosodium Glutamate, Racism, and Culinary Culture at Dutchess County Chinese Restaurants

Pretty sure that if a college professor had asked me to stop putting colons in the titles of my essays, I’d have committed ritual suicide on the spot.

Full disclosure; the assignment here was a theoretical ethnographic proposal. I never actually conducted any of the participant observations or interviews detailed.

Chef David Chang stands, stained with sweat, atop an astroturfed stage at the 2012 MAD symposium. For his stiffness, you wouldn’t believe this was the same charismatic, 40-something Korean-Virginian who founded Momofuku: a restaurant series consisting of upscale Asian eateries covering nations upon nations’ worth of cuisines, bars, and a bakery serving up sweets made with sugar-saturated “cereal milk” and cookies crammed full of corn flakes. Duly known and acclaimed for two Netflix food tourism series--Ugly Delicious and Ugly Delicious: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner--wherein he swears up a storm alongside celebrity guests and stuffs his face with everything from fresh mangosteens to lamb cooked in hot, buried beds of sand and smoke, David Chang lacks all the ease he exudes on television here at MAD. His breath is quick; he paces, hems and haws between phrases before spitting another burst of information; his table onstage is messily adorned with cryptic beakers of white powder and disposable pipettes. David Chang is discussing monosodium glutamate, and for all his apparent nerves, it is not the first time he’s done so. “In the late sixties,” Chang says, scratching his temple, gaze downturned, “an Asian man wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine saying that he found a pattern everytime he eats Chinese food with his friends: he got these terrible sort of conditions. It was in the editorial letter. And nobody questioned it. It just became part of American food culture that MSG is bad for you” (Chang 2012). Chang is describing what is presently known as MSG Symptom Complex, but more tellingly coined in the 1960s as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”: a series of symptoms including headaches, sweating, and flushing which have been “anecdotally ascribed to monosodium glutamate,” per the British Medical Journal (Ebert 1984). In truth, MSG can be found in all kinds of cuisines that see little symptomatic complaint--Chang carries on with his neurotic speech, beginning to scratch compulsively at his wrist: “When we dry age beef, when we eat that beautiful Iberico ham, when we eat a wheel of parmesan, when we eat soy sauce, when we’re reconstituting dried mushrooms--these are all food groups that are extraordinarily high in natural umami”--that is to say, glutamic acid, an amino acid found in all living bodies and a necessary component in bodily proteins (University of Rochester Medical Center Health Encyclopedia, “Glutamic Acid”). MSG is merely a powdered salt made from glutamic acid with a rounder, more savory flavor than its standard table variety: umami, as it has come to be known in recent years (the Google search term “umami” began a steady increase from its previously low levels around October 2007). Marmite, a popular yeast extract spread in the United Kingdom and Australia, contains 1750MG of monosodium glutamate per 100G of the sticky, tar-black breakfast ooze--and yet its parent brand, Unilever, “wriggles away from the subject under questioning. ‘There’s no MSG in Marmite,’ says Unilever’s customer care line. Pressed, this becomes ‘no added MSG’—and then you’re assured that the MSG that is present is ‘naturally occurring’” (Renton 2006). Marmite, parmesan cheese, raw tomatoes--none of these foods naturally packed with glutamic acid seem to come under the same fire as one’s favorite local takeout box of lo mein. Not to mention no affliction by the name of Marmite Syndrome or Cured Ham Syndrome or so on seem to have ever floated about the culinary sphere. So if monosodium glutamate isn’t the root issue behind Chinese Restaurant Symptom--and the reputation that precedes it, resulting in a notorious Western contempt for Chinese-American eateries--what is?

THE ABSTRACT

America’s historical context of East Asian culinary and ethnic stereotyping blatantly states the foremost answer to the previous question is racism--which it is--but I would like to delve into a more specific instance of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome and its miasma of white paranoia in the following ethnographic proposal. For the sake of laying all possible cards on the table, the culture of American gastronomy to this day suffers misconceptions and stereotypes which inconvenience, endanger, and estrange persecuted racial groups in the same way jesting slurs or microaggressions between acquaintances do. To return to Chef David Chang, the American-born, Korean Momofuku founder stated in the closing lines of Ugly Delicious’ seventh episode, “Fried Rice,” that “there are foods that I grew up loving, but I was embarrassed to publicly love. It’s easier to be ignorant, and it’s easier to cast aside things.” Similarly, the previous episode of the series, “Fried Chicken,” delves headfirst into the racist stereotypes that prevent African-American culinarians--such as Chef Edouardo Jordan of Seattle’s Salare--from publicly preparing or even enjoying the charged poultry dish (Ugly Delicious 2018). Discrimination by way of food is not new. But in two majority white towns, can as little as the choice to dine or not dine at a certain eatery signify a larger issue of racial bias? That is what I seek to find in this ethnography, locally based in the disparate dining rooms of two Chinese restaurants within the Bard College vicinity--Red Hook’s Golden Wok, and Rhinebeck’s Lucky Dragon. Between intensive survey methods, interviews, and anthro-historical research into the nature of culinary culture and its potential use in racial discrimination, I hope to answer questions of gastronomy, race, authenicity, and, of course, whether MSG is really worth the fuss.

THE HISTORY

Cuisine is inherently staked in nationality and ethnicity; food is the simplest method through which one may become acquainted with a foreign culture, and hospitality represents base human needs to nurture, give, and accept kindnesses in turn. Sydney Mintz writes on the subject in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History:

[A person’s] food preferences are close to the center of their self definition. People who eat strikingly different foods or similar foods in different ways are thought to be strikingly different, sometimes even less human. Ingestion and tastes… carry an enormous affective load. What we like, what we eat, how we eat it, and how we feel about it are phenomenologically interrelated matters; together, they speak eloquently to the question of how we perceive ourselves in relation to others (Mintz 1963).

Mintz’s anthropological methods of historical analysis serve significant inspiration for my ethnographic study as far as contextualization goes; an analysis of Chinese cuisine in America is one that requires, at the bare minimum, historical explorations of Chinese migration, assimilation, and an understanding of the interplay between lower-class white, Chinese, Jewish, and Black communities within America--not to mention the role of cuisine as an ambassador between said cultures. Yong Chen discusses urban Chinatowns and their popularity with working-class American tourists as a catalyst in the creation of Chinese cuisine designed to appeal to American tastes:

The growing appeal of Chinatown among non-Chinese leisure and pleasure seekers was not a development to rejoice over in Chinese American history. This phenomenon followed the destruction of most of the once-thriving rural Chinese communities, and the subsequent urbanization and occupational marginalization of the shrinking Chinese population… The fast-growing economy at home [in the United States] generated more wealth and leisure as well as a swelling army of tourists, hungry for new things to see and savor. A steadily increasing number of these travelers, especially those in the lower-middle and working classes, went to Chinatown to sightsee. It is in Chinatown that many American mass consumers discovered Chinese food (Chen 2014).

Chen later refers to the creation of Chinese-American cuisine as a “democratic process,” and the tale of its spread “one of the most successful grassroots marketing stories in American history” (Chen 2014). The creation of Americanized cuisine opened the doors to nearly as much criticism as non-assimilated gastronomy earns--claims that it is a watered-down form of its original; it is inauthentic. Chinese-American food is inherently consumerist; that much is true, if Chen’s statement above is any indication. But the question of authenticity is far more common, and far more damaging--not only on a minute scale amongst nonwhite business owners who may risk losing customers, but also through the larger lens of microaggression and racial discrimination. What gives Chinese-American cuisine its hyphenated label is a slough of specificities that only a history of migration and resulting discrimination can provide: a pervasiveness of cooking styles and ingredients from the Guangdong province due to its large population of emigrants throughout history (in part due to its coastal locale), Western vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, and onions, a greater emphasis on soy sauce and other salty, savory enhancers to appeal to the Western palate, and “phantom menus” at NYC eateries like Manhattan’s Hop Kee, which feature foods commonly liked by ethnic Chinese patrons such as liver or chicken feet (Maurer 2009). Indeed, we will find in our proceeding introduction of the local restaurants of study, as well as additional commentary from David Chang and other voices in the culinary world today, that authenticity plays a seminal role in the definition and perspectives of American Chinese restaurants. That is, of course, not to imply Chinese restaurants are unique in this regard--sociologist Stephen Christ is responsible for research clarifying the subjectivity of authenticity in American minority communities, specifically Mexican immigrants working in the service industry. On an episode of The Academic Minute with Lynn Pasqueralla, president of Mount Holyoke College, Stephen summarized his study thusly:

The power to define something as authentic rests not with the restaurant owner but rather in the hands of American consumers who have had little experience or knowledge of Mexican food or traditional styles of preparation. The owner of a Mexican restaurant may claim to have the most authentic facility because his chef is from Mexico or he has more employees from Mexico than any of his competitors… When we examine the history of other ethnic foods such as pizza and hamburgers, and apple pie we find that they originated in Europe; yet, these foods have been brought into mainstream American culture. The same thing is happening with Mexican food and culture. When you think of assimilation, it’s not Mexican immigrants coming in and getting absorbed into American culture, but rather adding to it—they bring their own contributions and shape the culture in which they’re settling (Christ 2015).

In the same sense, the judgement of a Chinese restaurant’s authenticity rests not in the hands of its owners, regardless of their race--this will come into play later--but in those of its patrons, in spite of their likely lack of awareness of Chinese cooking methods and regional cuisines. As such, my study will rely heavily on the opinions of diners from the Red Hook and Rhinebeck areas.

THE SCENE

Exactly five miles apart on U.S. 9 North sit the small mid-Hudson Valley towns of Red Hook and Rhinebeck. Both essentially consist of one intersection of attractions and shops before miniature metropolitan appeal in boutiques and bakeries fizzles out into farmland, quiet suburban neighborhoods, primary schools, and firehouses. Drive three minutes outside either downtown area and you’re bound to see at least one apple orchard or horse out in its pasture. Both are majority white, with Rhinebeck clocking in at 91.3% and Red Hook marginally lower with 90.1%. Median household income is about $5,000 dollars higher in Rhinebeck than Red Hook’s $75,963; 30% of Rhinebeck’s population consists of citizens over 65 years of age, whereas Red Hook’s seniors only make up 16% of the township’s populace (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). And, most importantly, each downtown area contains exactly one Chinese restaurant.

Red Hook’s is Golden Wok. A staple amongst Bard students and within the greater Red Hook community for as long as most professors and alumni can remember (that is to say the year of Golden Wok’s opening is nowhere to be found; the earliest review on TripAdvisor, at least, is from 2011), Golden Wok sits smack between the Red Hook village hall and Cancun’s, a Mexican restaurant which also sees regular patronage from Bardians. The front of house consists of a single dining room decorated with the usual Chinese-American fare: maneki neko figures, or “lucky cats,” small stone Buddha, panda cameos, gold-leafed, ornate wall scrolls, framed newspaper clippings singing the eatery’s praises, and an all-around bounty of red and gold standing out amongst green linoleum floors and faux-jade countertops. The back wall behind the counter is plastered with photos of each of the restaurant’s many menu items--Cantonese-style fried shrimp, chow mein, steamed pork dumplings, crab rangoons with crispy shells and a piping-hot cream cheese filling--and patrons order from the visual list before taking a seat wherever they please, gazing out towards the Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union as they wait for their ample portions. In my limited experience eating at Golden Wok, folks generally prefer to order takeout whether or not they actually plan on leaving the restaurant; leftovers are inevitable, and the stacked styrofoam boxes and translucent plastic bags in which the restaurant delivers its goods make transport efficient and easy. Golden Wok does not offer delivery, but the recent appearance of GrubHub’s services in the Red Hook area allow for Bard Students and snowed-in locals to send for their moo goo gai pan from the comfort of their own home. Golden Wok currently has a 3.7 star rating on Google Reviews. Positive reviews mention efficient and friendly staff, delicious food, and a pleasant atmosphere, while negative reviews cite the opposite: rude, unprofessional, unhygienic employees, exorbitant prices, and food that made them sick the following day. Meat entrees fall at a median price of $8.85, with a few special entrees (such as lobster fried rice) barely exceeding $10, and appetizers never exceeding the spare ribs’ price of $12.35.

Traveling south to Rhinebeck takes us to Lucky Dragon, a self-proclaimed “farm-to-chopsticks” Chinese restaurant that opened in the spring of 2019. Previously located at 38 W. Market Street, a mere block east of Rhinebeck’s main intersection, Lucky Dragon is currently relocating to a larger space and will be reopening in 2020. The address and layout are presently unknown, and thus I will be referring exclusively to Lucky Dragon’s original location in this description. A bi-level restaurant space in a renovated streetside townhouse, Lucky Dragon boasts an “apothecary bar”--a modern cocktail mixing-and-serving space inspired by the booze-infused cures of snake oil salesmen in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Bobrow 2015). The restaurant’s interior is warmly lit in spite of its relative all-day darkness, ceilings decorated with industrial Edison bulbs wrapped in egg-shaped cages of chicken wire; tables are made from glossy, stained wood; the air between the first and second floors is filled with multicolored paper lanterns, their tassels hanging teasingly down over the bar and dining room. Food is ordered from clean paper menus of red and white, and served on coordinated ceramic dishes of the same hues. In warm months, patrons can sit outside on the patio and order drinks from the full outdoor bar; when it snows, they tuck inside, surrounded by cozy wood floors, walls, and ceilings alight with a warm glow. There are dim sum specials on Saturdays and Sundays featuring a selection of different dumplings, potstickers, and shumai (flower-shaped, open-topped Cantonese dumplings), and patrons who pre-order for a large party can dine on a Peking duck feast for $80 per bird and accompanying side dishes, such as bao buns and fried rice. Lucky Dragon strikes one as a particularly inspired eatery in Rhinebeck’s collection of winners like Terrapin, Liberty, and Aroi Thai, what with its cheeky Instagram page, friendly bartenders, and weekend specials. And perhaps inspired is just the word to describe the place, considering the Lucky Dragon website specifically describes it as such:

Lucky Dragon is a ‘farm-to-chopsticks’ Chinese restaurant in the heart of Rhinebeck village, from the award-winning husband and wife team behind The Amsterdam (author’s note: The Amsterdam is an American restaurant just down the street from Lucky Dragon). Inspired by the owners’ love for the classic Chinese restaurants in their native Toronto, they decided to bring their own version of these bustling institutions to their Hudson Valley home” (getluckydragon.com).

Indeed, the proprietors and chefs behind Lucky Dragon are very distinctly not Chinese. Chef Alex Burger “draws on his experiences living and cooking extensively throughout Asia for the menu at Lucky Dragon, which is filled with his own takes on Mandarin, Cantonese, and Sichuan dishes made with fresh, local ingredients,” and proprietor Chris Jacobs has been cited in Hudson Valley magazine, claiming that “the goal is to create an authentic and fun Chinese restaurant in the heart of the Hudson Valley.” A mere paragraph prior in the article in question, writer Sabrina Sucato further emphasizes this note by stating that “authenticity is key at Lucky Dragon” (Sucato 2019). Authenticity will make for an important focus in this ethnographic study--namely, what it really means to determine the authenticity of a cuisine.

THE METHOD

David Chang sits windowside in the Glendale, CA location of Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese-American restaurant chain with branches across the globe and one Michelin Star. Across from him: actress and comedian Ali Wong, smiling cheeks resting in her hands as she criticizes their waitress in a low voice. “Too bright. Where you worry that the quality’s bad,” Wong says over Chang’s conspiratory laughter. “You want them to ignore you.”

“I love that part of your standup where it’s like the Vietnamese restaurant you want--a good one is gonna have, like… a copy machine,” Chang chimes in.

“That yellow bucket with the mop inside,” Wong rejoins. “The shelf with the pink opaque soap in the gallon jug. But then the white people like the clean bathroom, the pleasant servers who pay attention and bring you a beverage when you ask them for it… what I wanna know--what percentage that gave it five stars are Asian?” (Ugly Delicious 2018). As the duo carries on snickering on-screen, I am reminded of my own version of the copy machine and mop bucket experience. While visiting Montreal with friends in the frosty spring of 2019, I took the task of choosing each restaurant at which we dined upon myself as the group’s token budding culinarian. Our hunt for dumplings was a strenuous one--afraid to learn a new city’s train system, we walked everywhere our chilly legs could carry us, resulting in more than a few afternoons spent nursing our calves and satiated bellies on the couch of our rental apartment. A hike through Montreal’s Chinatown after a whopping four hours of culture-absorption at the nearby art museum left us at our weakest. Still, with trembling fingers I searched for our target--a dumpling restaurant in the heart of the red-and-gold neighborhood with sparse decor, black metal chairs, and hard white tables covered with crinkly plastic cloths. Per Chang and Wong’s guidance, I knew I’d found a winner when we were seated in the back of the restaurant beside none other than half the kitchen staff, taking their lunch break and serving themselves plates of white rice with oversized silverware. We ordered three bamboo steamers full of dumplings--twelve pork, twelve veggie, and twelve loaded with scalding bubbles of soup--and demolished them within thirty minutes, animalistic and likely attracting the gazes of the staff, the only other patrons in the restaurant with us by the time the lunch hour had ended.

In pursuit of authenticity, whatever that may mean, my methods must involve participant observation. Given permission from the staff at Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon, I will spend approximately 120 hours over the course of two months at each restaurant, with my time split between the dining rooms and kitchens of each restaurant. In the dining room--long shot though it may be, considering restaurants are generally the last places people want to be approached by folks who aren’t bringing them their crab rangoons--I would endeavor to briefly interview patrons prior to or following their meals. Diners picking up orders could be conversed with while they wait for their food. Below is a selection of questions I might ask individual patrons or parties at both Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon:

Do you feel this is an authentic Chinese restaurant?

If yes, what qualities make it authentic?

If not, how might it be more authentic?

How do you feel about this restaurant's atmosphere?

Do you see this restaurant as an important part of the Red Hook/Rhinebeck community?

How is your experience with the staff here?

How often do you come to this restaurant, if you’ve been before?

Do you prefer to eat in at this restaurant or pick up and take out meals? Why?

What is the best Chinese dish on the menu, in your opinion?

Are there any dishes on the menu you’ve never heard of?

Do you ever feel sick after eating Chinese or other Asian cuisines?

Do you often crave Chinese food?

Is monosodium glutamate or MSG in food something you try to be conscious of?

These questions will aid in gauging public opinions of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon beyond that which is shared in online reviews. To help contextualize these opinions and free ourselves of superficial assumptions, additionally, I will also tack general demographic questions onto the interviews, such as:

With which race/ethnicity do you identify (Black/Caucasian/American Indian/Asian/Pacific Islander/Other)?

Do you live in this area (Rhinebeck/Red Hook)?

What is your age?

Interviewees may, of course, choose to skip over any questions listed above or in the survey prior. These three questions in combination with the restaurant-specific questions above may help me see which demographics, if any, have strong opinions or self-imposed authority on the authenticity of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon. Alongside face-to-face interviews, I will also survey the quantity of customers who come in per hour-long period spent in the dining room. What percentage of customers order takeout? What percentage dine in? Do any potential patrons take one look at the menu and reach for their coats? And so on.

My hour spent in the restaurants’ kitchens, on the other hand, will be focused on meticulously studying the power dynamics of back-of-house workers in these disparate restaurants. This portion of the study will be contextualized with my previous ethnographic study of a restaurant kitchen at the Culinary Institute of America, where kitchen roles were exaggerated and exemplified to best accommodate the learning of student employees. I will search for similarities between these three kitchens and note any differences between their functionalities and hierarchies. In the case of Golden Wok, several Google reviews of the restaurant implied that the business was family-owned, though no official publications, such as a website or press statement, exist to confirm this. Getting a glimpse behind the kitchen doors will clarify this fact, and help me understand what familial business partnership may mean in the context of a Chinese-American eatery. Additional information will come in the form of the restaurant’s most popular dish(es), possible mission statements, and previous career information from the proprietors of both restaurants, given they are willing to share.

THE PROCESS OF ANALYSIS

Based on my preliminary research and proposed methodology alone, it would seem much of this ethnography’s ideal impact will come from an understanding of what it means, as a dining establishment, to be “authentic.” The word itself is defined as denoting “undisputed origin”--but the fact that origin alone does not seem to play as significant a part in culinary authenticity as of late proves a complication that other anthropologists like Stephen Christ have encountered prior (Oxford Dictionaries). Christ states that a reputation of authenticity is in the hands of the restaurant patrons, and Chef Chang and Wong imply authenticity involves an unapologetic lack of adherence to Western restaurant standards, but do either of these perspectives actually imply what authenticity means in the culinary world? Author and editor at Mother Jones magazine Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn, a Thailand native, offers further insight via the tale of her move to the United States.

As I traveled around the country, landing in New York and then San Francisco, I searched for restaurants that offered the food I grew up with in Northern Thailand—dishes beyond the usual stir-fries, noodles, and rainbow curries. Whenever I found a place that featured a bowl of khao soi—a rich curry noodle soup topped with preserved cabbage, red onions, and fried noodles—sticky rice, or more than one type of papaya salad on the menu, I’d feel exhilarated. If the wait staff brought out a small rack of condiments with sugar, fish sauce, chili flakes, and vinegar—ingredients you’d find on the tables of most restaurants in Thailand—I’d feel a surge of nostalgia. Those were the restaurants I’d recommend to friends. The food was delicious, but it was the details and preparation that reminded me of home (Vongkiatkajorn 2019).

At the very least, Vongiatkajorn’s words act in some kind of concurrence with Chef Chang and Wong: authenticity, in the eyes of Asian patrons, relies much more on practice than it does a restaurant’s menu. However, Vongkiatkajorn clearly conveys this particular form of “authenticity” as a double-edged sword, politically. “I’ve always wondered whether ‘authentic’ was the right marker to focus on. The term felt loaded—a characteristic that many restaurants, especially so-called ‘ethnic’ ones, had to proclaim to draw customers,” she frets. “Who is the word ‘authentic’ being marketed to?” Referencing Sara Kay, another writer from Eater magazine, Vongkiatkajorn goes on to suggest that “using the term ‘authentic’ on review apps such as Yelp can support a white supremacist framework” (Vongkiatkajorn 2019).

Evidently, we have found ourselves at something of an impasse. Chang and Wong, a Vietnamese woman and Korean chef, agree that restaurants of a certain practice and atmosphere--a bit careless, prone to disregarding the typical Western restaurant standards of keeping messes and cleaning supplies alike out of the public eye--are authentic to the highest degree. And Vongkiatkajorn does not necessarily disagree, confessing to the exact same focus on practice over anything as superficial as atmosphere in her search for the comforts of her Thai home--but nonetheless introduces the concerning supposition that authenticity as a topic of culinary discussion relies on racism inherent in American food culture. As such, my primary analytical questions regarding this study of local opinions of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon, two Chinese restaurants which couldn’t be more different, are as follows:

How do racism and white supremacy affect culinary standards in America?

To what does culinary “authenticity,” in the year 2019, refer?

In the end, what really makes a Chinese restaurant--or any restaurant, for that matter--authentic?

Looking forward, will culinary assimilation ever hit its apex, or can we rely on an appearance of diverse, regional cuisine-based restaurants in the future?

Where the hell does monosodium glutamate fit into all this, and why haven’t I mentioned it since my introductory paragraph?

THE UNSATISFACTORY END

We return to Chef David Chang, still puttering about onstage at the MAD 2012 Symposium, since finished with his speech and now answering questions from the audience. A man with glasses and what sounds like a Welsh accent--a little English, a little Irish--has the mic. His words meander, but his question boils down to whether Chang agrees that naturally occurring umami flavor, as in properly cooked meat and mushrooms, is inherently superior--more interesting, more creative--to the cheap white sprinkles of MSG used in Asian kitchens across the globe. Isn’t it a more worthwhile pursuit to strive every day in the kitchen in search of the Platonic ideal of umami flavor? The man speaks with a strange artistic haughtiness--he’s likely a fellow chef, and one who wouldn’t dare rely on store-bought MSG for flavor, no matter how harmless it really is; in his question, he seeks kinship in Chang.

Obviously this man doesn’t know Chang very well. Chang responds:

“[I’m] presuming that, when you make a dish, you’re gonna use salt, right? Fleur de sel, Maldon--something to season your food. My question to you is, why wouldn’t we season that with MSG? It is a salt in itself, as well. Most of the salt you use is not natural. It’s denatured in itself. [MSG] literally makes food more delicious. Why would I not add it? (Chang 2012).”

The issue of monosodium glutamate inside culinary circles parallels that of authenticity outside them: in essence, all we’re doing in running circles around the lack of esteem MSG possesses as an ingredient or the paradoxical shabbiness non-professional reviewers determine gives a restaurant authenticity is enclosing the Asian culinary experience within a box that simply doesn’t exist at French, Italian, or Greek restaurants. In that sense, the foremost challenge I will face in this ethnographic study is seeing the purpose of it all, and taking into account that, no matter what the reviews of a restaurant may say, nor the quality of its atmosphere or service--such scrutiny is, in and of itself, a manifestation of systemic racism and xenophobia which is only subtle to the practitioners of said discrimination. If I am to be complicit in the racism that makes standards for quality, “authentic” Chinese eateries so astronomically impossible, then I must endeavor with every fiber of my anthropological being to use the results for good, and to make known the racial discrimination which assigns Chinese-American restauranteurs an expectation of dual carelessness and perfection. Our only reassurance can come from a certainty of change--something that seems like a high hope in certain socio-political concerns, but is never far away for a culinarian. “All of this is still based on cultural beliefs, food myths,” Chef Chang says in closing his speech at the Symposium. “And if anything, the past 20-some-odd years since Harold McGee, since Ferran, since Heston, all these great chefs started cooking--almost everything that we’ve held to be true, culturally, about food, have proven to be wrong” (Chang 2012).

REFERENCES

Bobrow, Warren. 2015. “How the Apothecary Gave Birth to the Modern Cocktail Movement.” Eater. https://www.eater.com/2015/3/20/8157777/the-rise-of-the-apothecary-cocktail

Chang, David. 2012. “MSG and Umami.” Speech, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 2012. MAD Symposium. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji74pUeMayg.

Chen, Yong. 2014. Chop Suey, U.S.A: The Story of Chinese Food in America. Columbia University Press.

Christ, Stephen. October 14, 2014. The Academic Minute. WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ebert, A. G. "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome." British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) 289, no. 6458 (1984): 1626. www.jstor.org/stable/29517576.

Godsey, Cynthia, Diane Horowitz MD, and Rita Sather RN. “Glutamic Acid.” Health Encyclopedia, University of Rochester Medical Center. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=19&contentid=GlutamicAcid.

Google Trends. 2004-Present. “Umami.”

Lucky Dragon. 2019. https://www.getluckydragon.com/

Maurer, Daniel. 2009. “Chris Cheung Reveals More About the ‘Phantom Menus’ of Chinatown.” Grub Street, New York Magazine.

Mintz, Sydney. “Food, Sociality, and Sugar.” Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. 1963. Penguin Books.

Oxford Dictionaries. Date unknown. “Authentic.” First Recorded Use: 14th Century. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/authentic?q=authentic.

Renton, Alex. “My Mate MSG.” Prospect Magazine, May 2006, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mymatemsg.

Sucato, Sabrina. 2019. “Dine on Dim Sum and Dumplings at Rhinebeck’s Upscale Chinese Eatery.” Hudson Valley, Eat & Drink.

Ugly Delicious. 2018. “Fried Chicken,” “Fried Rice,” and “Stuffed.” Directed by Morgan Neville and Eddie Schmidt. Netflix.

United States Census Bureau. 2018. QuickFacts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/rhinebecktowndutchesscountynewyork,redhooktowndutchesscountynewyork/RHI125218

Vongkiatkajorn, Kanyakrit. 2019. “What Restaurant Reviews Really Mean When They Say ‘Authentic.’”

#essay #2019

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ruinitpop · 4 years

Text

2500+ mostly unedited words on why I love Simple Plan

Here we go, I’ll try not to ruin it:

Come with me back to my childhood. Far enough back that you might not remember when you first saw something that is extremely important to you, for me apparently that’s 2002. The live-action adaptation Scooby-Doo comes out that summer and it has what I like to call “kick ASS pop-punk soundtrack”. I remember liking the movie so much that my friends and I definitely tried to reenact the entire thing on the playground one day. Anyway, Simple Plan had a song on the soundtrack, It was Grow Up and it plays over an establishing shot of Spooky Island. Yes, I’ve seen the movie several times and I know the song by heart.

Go forward a year and another movie comes out with a “kick-ass pop-punk soundtrack”. It was 2003...anyone have any guesses? Steve Martin fans in the room? It was Cheaper By the Dozen, a movie kind of about a book that I don’t know if anyone has actually read. But the movie is great, I love it. You may not think so but I reserve the right to life things that are objectively bad. (See my love of the live-action Scoo-Doo movies) Anyway, Simple Plan had a song on the soundtrack. It was I’m Just A Kid and it plays over the scene where all the kids have their first day at the new school and some preppy asshole shouts “MY LATTE!”.

One more year passes and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed comes out and it, for a period of time, becomes MY FAVORITE movie. Like, I went on a trip for a kinda nerdy thing I did in 4th grade and we watched Scooby-Doo 2 easily 4 times over the course of that one week trip. AND I’m pretty sure this trip is the first time remember listening to No Pads, No Helmets, Just Balls from beginning to end. Anyway, again, Simple Plan had a song written for the film on the soundtrack. It was Don’t Wanna Think About You and it’s seriously...just...so good! It’s emotional, and it like perfectly accents what’s happening in the movie! I cry when Shaggy says “They’re like totally having a montage in there without us Scoob”

Now I’m just gonna rattle off a ranking of their soundtrack appearances as they appear in my brain:

Don’t Wanna Think About You from Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

Because duh

I’m Just A Kid from Cheaper by the Dozen.

Kinda scandalous for this to beat Grow Up but I like the scene it plays over better

Grow Up from Scooby-Doo.

This could be purely nostalgia-driven but I just love the movie so much and it was basically where so many people first heard them and there is a huge significance to that in my head.

What’s New Scooby-Doo from the show of the same name.

This song is awesome and I remember seeing them play it for what they claimed was the first time in over a decade in Santa Anna California in 2016 and I remember Pierre doing a little intro but not saying what song it was and I looked at my sister and said “holy shit they’re about to play What’s New Scooby-Doo!” so that’s why it’s on this list even though it’s TV and it’s my list I’ll do what I want. That memory warms my cold heart

Christmas List from the Unaccompanied Minors soundtrack

Full Disclosure I still haven’t this movie (what kind of movie guy am I?) but the song is also a bonus track and also full of dated pop culture references like PlayStation2 and DVDs which I love to chuckle at to this day. When I got my first MacBook in early 2012 one of the first things I did was use garage band to split the bonus track off as it’s own track.

Vacation from New York Minute

I had a weird interaction a little over a year ago where a Gen Z kid was randomly singing it and I was like “How do you know this song?” and he was like “oh some Mary-Kate and Ashley movie” and I said “So it is Vacation by Simple Plan. Accept I know it because I love Simple Plan. To this day I have never seen that movie but I know it’s from that movie and this little memory gives that song a special place.

Happy Together, a cover that was produced and on the soundtrack to Freaky Friday

This song it the top cover because it’s actually good AND the movie has grown in a significant tentpole of pop culture

Can’t Keep My Hands Off You from Disney’s Prom

This came out in 2011, I haven’t seen it. I imagine it’s not great but seeing as how the song is pretty good on its own and I have no other attached feelings it goes here on the list. But even this movie appearance isn’t as unsatisfying as...

Surrender from the Fantastic Four (2005)

We all remember this movie, people have mixed opinions. Mine are basically that the movie is fine, there are definitely better superhero movies now but this doesn’t necessarily deserve to be panned at trash or anything. It was 2005 and it’s at least as good and Sam Rami’s Spiderman.

Apparently there is a site for this but it doesn’t include New York Minute but it does include Clockstoppers. A movie I know I’ve seen but I don’t remember noticing there was a Simple Plan in it. There was a cool scene where they pause time next to a sprinkler and they push the droplets around and stuff. I just found this out after I typed my list. You can look at the link but it doesn’t have my opinions on it so why would you?

So, if you’ve read this blog before or maybe even know me in person you know I’m a big movie buff so it’s no surprise that I kinda discovered my love for them through movies. However, Simple Plans music nostalgia goes really deep.

I remember my first MP3 player. It was terrible, I’m going to date myself a little here but it only has physical buttons, it worked like a flash drive so if you didn’t organize your file folders properly it was basically impossible to navigate, and it only held like 100 songs. In comparison, my old sister had a Microsoft Zune. (You know Zune? The thing that Star Lord gets and the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 which was directed by James Gunn; the same guy who did the screenplays for both the live action Scooby-Doo movies that introduced me to Simple Plan in the first place! Which is part of why I’m writing this post!! If that dumb full-circle moment doesn’t give you warm and fuzzies you can stop reading) She had a pretty substantial library already and I had to carefully pick and choose what to put on it and I remember one the first songs was My Alien which isn’t a super popular track but it spoke to middle school me. There were definitely more of their songs from NPNHJB and Still Not Getting Any because self-titled Simple Plan didn’t come out until 2008. Eventually, I got an iPod nano with a whopping 16gb of storage and my life changed! I could hold basically all the music I wanted and that included all three of the Simple Plan albums that were out at the time. I have a very clear memory of making my mom listen to them a few times on the way to/from the orthodontist (which was a 40 minute drive because everything is far away in rural America) and she told me that I was just as good as a singer as Pierre. There’s no way, Pierre is an icon.

Over the course of the last decade, a few Simple Plan experiences have occurred around my birthday and I’m convinced they must know when my birthday is. The first time this happened was 2011 when they released Get Your Heart On! Which might be my favorite album if I was going to pick one but they’ve literally never written a bad song so why actually pick favorites? I remember a friend saying “This sounds like their old stuff and I love it” and I was offended. Like, how dare they slander Still Not Getting Any and Simple Plan like that?

As high school went on I started to have a very stressful Junior year. I bit off more than I could shew academically and one day I had a massive stress attack and I basically shut down but Untitled really got me through, I listened to so much Simple Plan that night but Untitled really helped me calm down and relax enough to get my head straight. While I’m talking about the song I’m gonna mention it was a charity track and the music video WILL make you cry but it’s super important and you should watch it.

Forward a couple more years and I’m in my first semester of college. I had chosen the wrong path at the time and I was in the process of fixing that by completely changing up my education including changing schools and giving up a rather big scholarship. I was feeling pretty good but uneasy about what I was doing at the time and what do you know? Right when I needed something comforting Simple Plan gave me an early Christmas present and released the EP Get Your Heart On - The Second Coming and every track on the EP reached into my soul and helped me process. I also started to GYHO again heavily and Gone Too Soon helped my deal with how much I was missing home and how much I missed a lot of my friends (I know the song isn’t really “about” that but it helped).

At this point in my life, I’ve mostly given up hiding my fandom. I started following the band members on social media and I was VERY closely following the release of the next album. Which I was sure was going to be released by my birthday. (this is the second time a birthday coincidence happened) The band had another plan, which was to hype me up for an album drop and then only release a non-album single Saturday that wasn’t even on the album that came out later! I accepted their gift though because I wanted more songs so desperately! I was so thirsty for Simple Plan content that I also listened to an episode of the Lead Singer Syndrome podcast with Pierre and learned so much about the band and their careers together, it warmed my heart! The album Taking One For the Team wouldn’t drop for almost an entire year! But when it did they also announce their first tour in the US in years!

In early October 2016, I finally saw then live for the first time. I already talked about this, it’s when they played What’s New Scooby-Doo! The place where my sister and I chose to stand was near a stantioned-off area that looked VIP. Before the band went on their families came out escorted by security and watched the set right behind me! That trip was so fun! It was also my first concert ever, I had been to Warped Tour the previous summer but I choose to call that my first festival.

The tour I saw them on kinda just morphed into the 15th-anniversary tour for NPNHJB. Remember when I went on about Scooby-Doo? Yeah reader, it’s been 15 years. I saw Simple Plan for the second time in April 2017 and I was able to convince a bunch of Set It Off (great band) fans to come with me because they were also playing. My roommate at the time said that seeing me at the concert was one of the times they’d seen me happiest. I thought that was very sweet and I’m glad I was able to have that experience with those people. Weirdly enough though, I had just started a new job and my new boss was also at the show. There isn’t much more to that particular story but I still think it’s funny.

After this I closed a chapter of my life by leaving the fraternity I was a part of for most of my college experience. At the alumni ceremony, people often do personal things for those leaving, gifts, speeches, etc. For me, a few of my Brothers played Welcome To My Life. It was one of the sweetest things anyone could have done.

The next time I saw them was on the final Warped Tour. I was so excited! I took time off so I could go and see them in San Diego because it was closer to (this is the 3rd coincidence) my birthday! I drove to San Diego alone and stayed in a hotel alone and had a couple of meals alone and saw a movie alone all so I could see Simple Plan. I did meet up with some friends at the festival on the day of and it was amazing! One of the people is very close to me and we shared a lot of music that day. I waited in line for over an hour at the SP merch tent and I was going to have sign some stuff with a happy birthday but they ended up having to leave the tent to get ready for their set and I nabbed a quick picture with Pierre. They closed their set with Perfect and everything felt melancholy but very “right” you know?

Most recently I saw Simple Plan alone in Phoenix. It was awesome! I was uneasy just seeing a show alone but being in that room with people who probably have a ton of stories just like this one (though probably not so many words) was exhilarating. They definitely had the best set and this time I noticed some of the things they kinda always do at shows. Like Chuck crowd surfing or the same call response to their most popular songs and another rendition of What’s New Scooby-Doo!

This pretty much brings us to the present, thanks for taking this 2500+ word journey down memory lane with me. Currently, I’m feeling upset that the tour planned for this summer was called off because of the COVID-19 epidemic and I kinda have no idea when the album might drop. I am in no way diminishing anything that has happened to anyone else but for me, the current way of the world has taken a lot of what makes me happy away. My career is on hold, I can’t go to movies, and it even took away Simple Plan. Writing this has been mildly therapeutic and that was the point. If for some reason this post reaches the band I just want to thank them all. Pierre, Chuck, Seb, David, and Jeff. You guys are unbelievably amazing! Thank you for being somehow integrated into a lot of things that I really hold dear but most importantly thank you for the music! I can’t wait for more! Now, I’ll leave this train of thought before all this nostalgia makes me sick (get it?).

I tried not to ruin it but this is almost 2600 words so I probably did.

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