The Indispensable Culinary Middlemen and Women
“I think we’ll use your handout in our staff training sessions,” said one of Rick Bayless’ team, without so much as a “by your leave.” Or a “may we?” “Hmm,” I thought, “that’s not right.”
This was in the mid 2000s. Rick Bayless had brought his staff to my home in the city of Guanajuato in central Mexico to learn about the culinary uses of cactus and agave.
My dining room table was laden with dishes made with the Opuntia (prickly pear), the kitchen table with Ferrocactus (barrel cactus). In the living room were the products of the Agavaceae (including pulque and mezcal, but much, much more). In my study were the Myrtillocactus (old man cactus) and the Stenocereus (pitaya), Hyocereus (pitahya), and Lophophora (peyote). And apart from the display and the tastings, I had prepared this eight-page handout. Afterward, we all crossed the street to Las Mercedes, run by my walking companion Luz and her husband for a meal that showed how wonderful xoconostle-based salsas could be, or creative uses of nopales.
Rachel, Luz, Rick Bayless, and Jesus at Las Mercedes
Was the handout ever used in Rick Bayless’s training sessions? I have no idea, though I rather doubt it, for reasons I will explain.
But I tell this story because so that I can use it to talk about how complicated the transfer of culinary knowledge actually is.
Rick didn’t just turn up at my house. On the one occasion I had met him previously at a meeting of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, I’d said he was welcome any time he was in Guanajuato. He didn’t go to Guanajuato, he replied, because it had nothing of culinary interest.
No, in arranging his tours, Rick Bayless, who was up to his ears running and promoting restaurants, relied on Marilyn Tausend who had a business called Culinary Adventures. Marilyn lived in Seattle so she too needed the help of knowledgeable people in Mexico, both Americans living in Mexico and Mexicans. And it was she who persuaded Rick to come to Guanajuato for a couple of days and, since I think I was the only person she knew in the city, she asked me to suggest destinations, experiences, etc. I loved the place and so I did.
There was no ready-made knowledge of the cactus and agave kitchen. For a number of years I had been pursuing the uses of cactus and agave because I was fascinated by the ways people wrested delicious food from the scant resources of the arid high plateau of central Mexico,
I had turned to multiple sources, including: the faculty in the Agriculture Department of the University of Guanajuato in Irapuato; markets; my walking companions; the young women who worked for me; regional Guanjuato cookbooks such as the Compendio lexicográfico de los alimentos en Guanajuato and Cocina tradicional guanajuatense as well as Recetario guanajuatense del xoconostle; the local enterprise stands at the International Agricultural Fair in Irapuato; and the classic paper “Maguey Utilization in Highland Mexico” by Jeffrey Parsons.
Picking garambullos with my walking companions on the old camino minero above Guanajuato
In short, as in many (not all) cases, no single local source for the cuisine, in this case the cactus kitchen as I called it, existed.Why would there be? My walking companions were interested in nopal recipes, the entrepreneurs were developing xoconostle liqueurs, and the agricultural faculty were experimenting with drying nopales for the Japanese export market.
The Bayless visit thus involved a chain of transactions between a series of people. Every link in that chain cost someone time, energy, and/or money. Every link in that chain was at the same time profitable to that person.
Rick gained the germ of new ideas (and hence profits) to keep his restaurant fresh as well as a deepened knowledge of Mexican cuisine for books and TV shows. For this he paid Marilyn.
Marilyn like the money and loved travel in Mexico but like any successful tour leader she worked really hard before and during to find quality, access, and make life easy for the visitors.
The young women who worked for me enjoyed the break from routine, the respect given to their skills with biznaga and xoconostle, and the extra pay. In return they worked longer hours and lugged bottles of pulque and aguamiel in on the village bus.
My neighbors and I had a mutual exchange going, my side being to offer recipes for the lemon bars and brownies they had encountered on their trips to the States.
And finally, Luz and Jesus were delighted to be paid to offer a meal especially when they learned that Rick was one of the US’s best known exponents of Mexican cuisine. In return they worked extra hard to create an appropriate meal.
In sum, one evening of culinary exchange and diffusion relied on multiple middlemen and women, many of whom had worked years to acquire their expertise.
That’s the rule, not the exception. Moving between cultures, interpreting one culture for another, transferring technical skills such as cooking, is enormously hard work and takes lots of skill.
The trouble is that middlemen appear to be doing nothing. The classic case is the merchant. Because they did not seem to be making anything, they were thought to be exploitative parasites. Think The Merchant of Venice. And if it was Jews in Europe, it was equally Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Igbos in West Africa. If businessmen have now gained respect, many still suspect real estate agents (at least until they get into trouble with their sale-by-owner venture). Anthropologists and interpreters are also typically disliked.
That is not to say there are no evil merchants, inept real estate agents, or greedy recipe collectors. But that’s an individual failing, just as there can be reckless farmers, inept artisans, or grasping small business owners.
Cross-cultural culinary brokers are really important. Without middlemen, we would all be the poorer.
Why? In the case of food, food is created by transforming raw materials. It’s a technology. And we know that transfer of technology is one of the very best ways of improving the human conditions.
Many years ago when I was thinking and teaching about cross-cultural transfers in my history of technology courses, I found two books particularly helpful. The literature has grown immensely since then, but both remain readable, accessible introductions.
The diffusion of technology, said Nathan Rosenberg an economist then at Stanford, is “one of the central questions of economic growth.”Part 3 of Perspectives on Technology (1976), 189.
Philip Curtin, about as distinguished an African and world historian as you could hope to encounter , in Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (1984) said
“Trade and exchange across cultural lines have played a crucial role in human history, being perhaps the most important external stimuli to change, leaving aside the unmeasurable and less-benign influence of military conquest.
External stimulation, in turn, has been the most important single source of change and development in art, science and technology.
Perhaps this goes without saying, since no human group could invent by itself more than a small part of its cultural and technical heritage.”
Ha! You are saying to yourself. But recipes?
Well, yes, recipes. Every reader of this blog has benefitted from some middleman in the past who transferred knowledge. About how to make bread. Or how to make noodles. Or how to make cake. Or how to make tortillas. Or how to make soy sauce.
All these exchanges of technique have increased pleasure in eating, the nutrition extracted from raw materials, resilience in the food system, besides creating economic opportunity. No human group, to echo Philip Curtin, has invented more than a small part of its cuisine.
However it’s not always easy to transfer culinary knowledge. Nor is the knowledge always relevant to the audience.
The reason I doubt that my handout was ever used is that, however useful cactus was in arid central Mexico, it was very little use for menu building in Chicago.
A few items (tequila, mezcal) were already well known and indeed the former had been created with the American market very much in mind. Most, though, were unappealing to American taste (pulque, nopales), seasonal and only really exciting where no substitutes were available (garambullos), or even on the endangered list (biznaga).
So my middleman effort, driven as you will have noticed, by the desire to show that Bayless was wrong that Guanajuato had nothing of culinary interest and to be recognized for all the effort I had put in to understanding the cactus kitchen, came to nothing.
But I was wrong to think that my handout should not be used (though asking permission is always appreciated).
Millions would benefit if ways of utilizing the cactus and agave that grow in arid lands were more widely diffused. Many parts of the world would have a delicious, nutritious new vegetable in their repertoire, for example, if only they could learn to prepare nopales as Mexicans do. If culinary appropriation were easy, people in the US, the Mediterranean, and India would have cottoned on to nopales centuries ago.
Culinary diffusion is good, it’s not easy, and middlemen who can straddle two sides have an essential role to play.
This is my way of coming at the current discussion of culinary appropriation (surprise). I chose the example of my one sustained interaction with Rick Bayless because he has been so much in the news but I could have chosen my work on Hawaii just as easily. Lots more to say on this. So please send comments and questions.
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Maria Godoy and Kat Chow on NPR’s The Salt have a roundup of the discussion about when it is OK to profit from other culture’s food..
Mr. Bayless was just here with me a couple of months ago, so your post really resonated with me. And of course I constantly ask myself many of the same questions you (and others) pose about “appropriation” as I slog through my next book.
Yes, it’s difficult and it’s so easy to make mistakes, put one’s foot in one’s mouth. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessary.
Hola Rachael, Your post prompts me to think of the many parallels with the diffusion of books, both as physical artifacts and as ideas. Ye olde middleman (editors, designers, distributors, sales reps, etc) is not very visible there, either. Multiple participants and diverse motivations as well.
Absolutely, Catherine. I hadn’t thought of the book market. And you as much as anyone know about the importance of translators. Thanks.
great article. I have been based in Italy now for 32 years, and although not as academic, have shared my knowledge over the years with many home cooks, chefs, writers etc. Always nice to know where the info goes! I often think about showing the Sicilians what the Mexicans do with nopales etc. The island is covered in cactus!
Go for it! I persuaded people to eat them by not identifying them as cactus. What lovely lemony green beens, they would exclaim.
Rachel, I love this piece. To create an analogy from the world of art, many years ago, in the 1980s, the renowned theatrical director Peter Brook mounted a nine-hour production of the Indian epic, written in Sanskrit, the “Mahabharata.” This was an epic production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He deliberately cast actors of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. His translation was from the translation into French of Jean Claude Carriere, the writer.
Brooks’ idea was to show that the story and the meaning of the work was universal. I am also put in mind of cross-cultural performances of Shakespeare in China and also the work of the American playwright Arthur Miller, both translated into Chinese and both popular in China. Of course, the Kabuki comes to Lincoln Center and is invariably sold out, with posters of the lead actor in the lion mane wig and full Kabuki makeup. Perhaps one of the most difficult art forms to export, Chinese opera, is usually hugely popular in New York.
The entry of contemporary Chinese artists into the global art scene is one of the great stories of the last twenty years, in which Chinese painters and other visual artists,such as the great Ai Weiwei, have mastered the vocabulary of contemporary art created in post World War II America that has become the art language of the world. There are stars of this world, but there is none so great as Ai Weiwei, who is the most famous artist in the world, especially because he thumbs his nose at the Chinese system and he uses the modern media to do it. Only when he is outside of China. There are expatriate Chinese artists who spend half the year in New York and half the year in the trendy art section of Beijing. We are in an era of unprecedented artistic borrowing and learning. Perhaps the greatest example of cultural borrowing was in Japan,which borrowed its high culture in total from China and then developed a uniquely Japanese strain of it. The Japanese are proud of it.
Of course, the high literary culture of Japan was completely conducted in Chinese language, the classical language. Until a woman named Lady Murasaki came along and wrote the first novel, arguably, in the history of the world, “The Tale of Genji” in colloquial Japanese. It was a masterpiece. Then men of the Heian court were still using the brush to create literary work in Chinese.Cultural borrowing in literary forms has been going on for millennia.
Exactly, Diane. Thanks so much for the long thoughtful addition. And it’s not easy, as many think, to assign hierarchies of privilege in this kind of borrowing.
Exactly. I thought the instance of one Asian culture, Japanese, borrowing from a second Asian culture was particularly illuminating. Especially since China wanted to be imitated. “Come and be civilized” was the message of the imperial court. It was a hallmark of Chinese foreign policy for two millennia. China was civilization. Everything else was barbarian.Borrowing forms, borrowing language, borrowing design, borrowing ritual, borrowing architecture. As an homage. The Chinese were far from upset about it. They loved it.
Agreed, Diane. I think where some would not agree with us is that the Japanese were borrowing from a more powerful state. What they object to is when a more powerful person/state/group borrows from a less powerful one. I’m not sure it’s always possible to be clear about where the power lies.
I agree with you. This power dynamic that you describe raises the question of the colonial legacy. Especially in South America. Certainly in Asia. Much has been written about the post-colonial experience and how it shapes modern history and cultural interactions.
But as a student of the Silk Road history, I have observed the borrowings and inter-mingling of many cultures–Indian, Greek, Chinese, Western, Jewish–across centuries, borrowing and appropriating being a facet of life along the Silk Road. The trade was dominated by Muslim merchants for centuries and the inter-mingling was a product of trade. Especially but not exclusively the spice trade which is intimately related with cuisine. This was the Islam of the marketplace and it came in peace, not by the sword. Then international traders got into the act when the roads were opened.
The Silk Road was the dominant artery of trade between East and West for centuries. Along the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road, around the dreaded Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert, the cuisine is renowned for its many influences. This is in the oasis towns which were the main stops along the caravan routes. China exported silk, porcelain, tea and spices and also items of manufacture. It is awful to transport porcelain by camel, but there was a vast market for it in the Middle East.
The ocean-going trade grew up later and came into prominence later. This was the so-called Maritime Silk Road. A far better way to ship porcelain.
I mention this because it seems to me to be a different model, one of trade and the marketplace, rather than one of dominance, such as in the treaty ports of China, where the West enforced the opium trade at the barrels of guns on gunboats.
Does one count the absorption by the British of the cuisine of India as an appropriation? India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire for close to three hundred years.
Diane, Thank you for yet more examples. And yes, cross-cultural encounters span the spectrum from coercion to cooperation. This makes the question of benefits really tricky–how large a circle do you want to include? Sorry if this is a bit sketchy but I am still thinking through this.
Thanks, Rachel. You’ve gotten me thinking, especially since I am the author of thrillers set on the Silk Road, China’s Wild West. My heroine is an archaeologist who has discovered the art of a lost Buddhist civilization. She deals with the cross-cultural influences in the art itself, painting and sculpture, plus the texts. The expedition employs locals, who are of Turkic descent, Shia Muslims. So I hope I am not going off your topic, but sharing my own responses with you from my own scholarship and experience. I salute you.
The Silk Road was where the caravans from Central Asia entered China. Close to the old capital of Ch’ang-an, present-day Xi’an. This is where Khubilai Khan sent a group of envoys to escort Marco Polo and his father and uncle to the Chinese court, moved near present-day Beijing. It was the land-based entry into China. Because China had not taken to the sea on the Eastern or maritime coast. China’s foreign policy was almost exclusively focused on Central Asia over the centuries. Even today there is a large unpatrolled border of fourteen hundred miles. China borders on fourteen countries and the influences, including the Russian, came in. It was, in fact, the Russian penetration into Chinese territory under Stalin that made Mao fearful of a Russian attempt at dominance. Thus, the rapprochement with the U. S. As you know, the Czars built the Trans-Siberian Railroad that took the Russian Empires borders to the Pacific, across Siberia, China’s neighbor to the north. The Russians had great influence on food coming down into Manchuria.So did the Germans. This was all during the period of the Great Game, with the European powers vying for influence on the Asian mainland. The breweries that make German beer in Manchuria are a perfect example of cultural borrowing, since the breweries have Chinese names but the technique of manufacture comes from Germany.
Rachel, I’ve always found it odd that, while the prickly pear cactus (I’m not sure what its Mexican name is) is widely grown in Sicily, Andalucia, and other similar parts of the Mediterranean, and is treasured for its fruits (called fichi d’India, Indian figs, in Italy), I’ve never seen the nopales used in Mediterranean kitchens. Why do you suppose one use was transferred and not the other?
Nancy, I don’t have a definitive answer. I have appointments this morning but will get back to you on this as soon as I can.
The opuntia paddles have long been used in folk medicine to control blood glucose (which interests me especially) and it was news to me that Italy is the 2nd largest producer of opuntia fruits. Seeing as these plants efficiently convert water into bio-mass (like all water-retaining cacti and succulents), its unsurprising that the drier parts of Italy favour them and use them for erosion control in the form of dense hedging. I think the paddles are also used for fodder in southern Italy which would be a most sensible way of ensuring your livestock ingests enough water when they aren’t close to a water-trough, perhaps?
I know that the Sicilians make a liqueur called “Ficodi” and the Maltese use it to produce a liqueur called bajtra.
The mystery is why they stop at cattle fodder. The paddles make such an excellent vegetable and it’s not that the Italians are shy about enjoying a wide range of vegetables. I had not known about the blood glucose but intriguing.
I’ve found this which addresses the effects nopale might have upon blood-glucose levels, after a meal for type-2’s. Have asked my sister to investigate further- she is a clinical specialist in diabetes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25132122
Thank you for this post. I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic, too, and trying to figure out where I stand as a “translator” cookbook author and a business-owner technically making money off of other people’s culinary skills. But your comments about how much work is involved, how many sources must be checked, how many people must be tracked down and spoken to — YES. I get a lot of requests from clients wanting custom tours, and they have trouble understanding the time and effort it takes to gather these sources and really present them in an accurate way that honors the cuisine, and speaks to the integrity of the food and the people preparing it. In fact it’s really made me start thinking that — while I don’t want to do custom tours anymore — there has to be a way to share this culinary information that we gather with the public at large, so at least everyone who needed/wanted the information would have immediate access. Still mulling over how to do that. Anyway, I love your posts, and thanks for giving me something to think about (and respond to!) this morning.
So pleased to have you chime in Lesley because you are on the front line in a way I never have been. I’m not sure access will ever be transparent just because the public/those who are interested in access have to make an effort to be part of the process. Like you I will have to mull this over. And by the way, I haven’t wanted to bother you when you have been so busy but so happy to see the way both the baby and book that you worked so hard on thriving and flourishing.
“Cultural Appropriation” seems to be the angst-of-the-moment. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t wrap my brain about what it meant. Cooking is a pure expression of culture; but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Everyone who stands in front of a stove is pulling on knowledge gleaned from somewhere and someone who has come before them.
Rachel, your post shares the efforts that the ‘middlemen’ make to bring their cuisine to other people. It is just that we acknowledge their contributions to our cooking repertoire. And frankly, it’s necessary as Judy & Nancy mention, there’s no reason not to cook with the Mediterranean cacti. And we all become richer when we share our knowledge.
But the US press seems obsessed with the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous’ insults to cultural correctness. When did we become so very thin skinned?
Dan from Sporkful is skewered because he wonders how to get more crispy rice in his Korean dish! Horrors…a bundt shaped pan! Off with his head! (http://www.sporkful.com/tag/other-peoples-food/). Calvin Trillin has grievously dissed Chinese people of every province with his recent poem in The New Yorker magazine and he even merits a rebuke from the New York Times.
And Rick Bayless can’t riff on traditional Mexican recipes because he’s a white guy and he needs to honor tradition.
So many angels dancing on the head of a pin. This reminds me of the last decade’s obsession with ‘authentic’.
There was a restaurant in Emilia-Romanga, Gambero Rosso. It was one of the best examples of ‘local’ cuisine. Moreno, the patriarch, foraged the hills for many of the ingredients. Moreno likes to talk about his ‘conversion’ from thinking this was poor people food to be abandoned to realizing these dishes should be celebrated and not forgotten.
Giuliana, the chef & matriarch always had a retinue of Japanese stages working in the kitchen. One of the coolest souvenirs we were given from the restaurant were chopsticks with the restaurants’s name engraved on them. The Japanese students had given them to Giuliana and Moreno. That’s not culture appropriation, that’s culture exchange and I’ll vote for that any day.
Judith, I agree with you that worries about appropriation are closely connected to worries about authenticity taken one step further. And like you I find the moralization and politicization of food to be overwrought right now. Thanks too for adding those links. You’ve done my work for me!
Judith, thanks for putting this so well. It was what I was trying to get at with giving the Silk Road model of the intermingling of cultures and cuisines through trade. It’s as though we humans are the hundredth monkey, learning from all the other monkeys. Curiosity and experimentation are a form of tribute, not of theft. Motivation arises in the mind, say the Zen monks.
As a culinary writer, Greek cookery teacher, translator, and former culinary “guide”, the word “appropriation” is something I know all about. Now I don’t mind if someone uses my recipes or Greek/English food glossaries, although I do hope they give me credit. I in turn always try to credit the origins of recipes, even bits on Greek food history, quotations, etc. to the author – even if they lived 2000 yrs ago! But the most serious mis-appropriation that happened to me was by a well known London cookbook publisher.
At the beginning of this decade I was asked by a well know Greek TV cook and cookbook writer and publisher, to translate her recipes for a high-profile project, literally a Bible of Greek Cuisine [I don’t wish to reveal title, but it is easily found on Amazon and elsewhere] At some point I was asked to write introductions for the chapter sections. i.e. appetizers, soups, salads, meat dishes, fish, sweets, pita [Greek pies] breads, and an extensive glossary. I did extensive research on the historical and cultural backgrounds of the foods and dishes in each particular category. Although I was not the cookbook’s author, I did ask to have my initials shown after each piece I wrote since my name [as author of said intros] would be acknowledged at the end of the book. I thought they wanted general information but to my surprise they ended up using most of my work word for word but without the agreed upon initials, and without bothering to ask me if I agreed. The acknowledgement was made in in the back of the book, but who ever reads what is at the end of a 700+ page cookbook! I was paid for the translations, but receive no royalties and worse, the publisher holds the copyright which limits the use of my own writing and ideas. The book appears to be selling well since publication in 2009 and has recently been made into an ebook. I guess it was sheer stupidity on my part to ever agree to put so much effort into something I had no control over. And I suppose I would probably lose if I chose to sue them.
I am flattered they thought my writing good enough to be included in the book. Strangely however, when I recently sent one of the editors a proposal for my own book, a project about food in Greek mythology, including other information on Greek food history and the role of foods in Greek culture – ancient and modern, etc.- they did not even bother to answer. And yet in their advertisement they use this very feature [i.e. food in Greek history and culture] as a selling point for the cookbook. If there is a lesson here, it is to be forewarned that all’s fair in love, war, AND the world of publishing!
Enjoy your blog Rachel and the comments and experiences of other food writers.
Another long and thoughtful comment from you, Linda. That is a very dispiriting story. I am so sorry it happened to you. But with your energy and knowledge, I am sure that you will find a way to publish your material and will you on to have your work acknowledged in the proper way.
Great post! Maybe you wonder, how many (middlemen) cooks, farmers, bakers, and housewives had given their time, talents and knowledge in order for others to take the glory. But, then we wouldn’t know about all those hidden gems!
Mely, thanks for the comment. And I am so pleased to discover your blog. It makes me homesick for central Mexico. Let me know if you are ever down in Austin.
Great post! It makes you wonder, how many (middlemen) cooks, farmers, bakers, and housewives had given their time, talents and knowledge in order for others to take the glory. But, then we wouldn’t know about all those hidden gems!
Though I and others who have read this post remain a little unclear as to what the full meaning Rachel Lauden is intending, one thing is certain: I am not one of it’s protagonists. What concerns me most about what Ms. Lauden writes is its unstated presuppositions and lack of academic rigor. All of her references about me and my work were either from year’s ago memory or simply made up.
First, let’s evaluate “On the one occasion I had met him previously at a meeting of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, I’d said he was welcome any time he was in Guanajuato. He didn’t go to Guanajuato, he replied, because it had nothing of culinary interest.” I remember that interchange very differently. I mean, really, why would I have said anything like that. I’ve travelled to every state in Mexico, studying and cooking with local cooks. Yes, as my time in Mexico has become more limited, I’ve concentrated more on the places with the most distinctive and richest culinary traditions, places like Oaxaca. But saying I don’t go to Guanajuato because it has nothing of culinary interest would simply never come out of my mouth. Is it the most dynamic cuisine in Mexico? I wouldn’t say that it is. But “no culinary interest.” I’m say smarter than that, Ms. Lauden. Oh, and by the way, it was I who asked Marilyn Tausend to set up that trip, not the other way around, as you assumed.
Now, about that handout. You are a writer, as am I. People quote from my work constantly (and repost my recipes), as you quote from others. The piece you gave us didn’t have the standard “For instructional purposes only; do not quote” tag on it. So I took that piece to be from one of your published articles, and available, as all my published recipes are, for people to use in classrooms. Which is exactly what we did. Which is more to my point.
First, Ms. Lauden wrote, “Was the handout ever used in Rick Bayless’s training sessions? I have no idea, though I rather doubt it, for reasons I will explain.” And later, “The reason I doubt that my handout was ever used is that, however useful cactus was in arid central Mexico, it was very little use for menu building in Chicago.”
Oh, how wrong she is. Not only did that handout become a cornerstone in many projects here, but it prodded us into utilizing even more prickly pear products here in Chicago. Xoconostle, which comes into Chicago regularly, has become a staple for us, as have all different colors of the sweet prickly pear fruit, colors beyond the common magenta. Ms. Lauden’s handout encouraged us to dive deeply into the hundreds and hundreds of Spanish language regional Mexican cook books in our restaurants’ library to learn more about their uses. It encouraged us to share more about the cactus kitchen with the thousands of guests we get to cook for each year.
You see, some of us have motives far beyond simple profits. Take, for instance, Marilyn Tausend, the driving force behind the small tour company Culinary Adventures, and the person who set up our staff’s trip. In spite of the fact that most of her trips over more than 20 years barely ever broke even, she continued doing them (often to the displeasure of her husband) because she knew that introducing Americans to the true richness of Mexican culture was her way of counteracting the negative stereotype of and prejudice against Mexicans in the United States.
For the last four decades, that has been my driving force, as well. Mexican cuisine deserves more respect that it gets. It is more vast and enthralling than American culture at large has ever thought. I want to change that. And the best way I know how is get delicious bites of it into as many mouths as possible. Once they taste it, a true change in attitude is possible, especially if stories are told about history, culture, and, most of all, beautiful people.
That’s why I spent $30,000 on that trip to take our restaurants’ staff to Guanajuato. If I’d wanted to keep my restaurant fresh, it would be much cheaper to follow the magazines and blogs and social media postings about what’s hot. What we have committed to do for the last 25 years is to keep our restaurant fresh is a most unorthodox way: we take our staff to Mexico to immerse ourselves in that beautiful culture, return home full of inspiration and create menus that we hope will captivate our guests so much that they want to know more. I can tell you that, since restaurant profit margins are among the lowest of all industries, for any one to commit that kind of expenditure reflects a motivation that flies in the face of any business savvy.
Since Ms. Lauden is a historian by trade, I wonder why she didn’t just write to me and ask what had become of that handout? I think her blog post would have had a different tone. Writing history out of mere supposition is never a good idea.
Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns. I regret that you worry that your memories of ten-year old events differ from mine. That seems to me inevitable and, in the absence of independent evidence, something that will remain unsettled.
More important are the points you do not mention, which indicate that we coincide on much of importance.
I speak particularly of our agreement, which runs counter to many recent criticisms of your work, that your role as culinary middleman or cultural interpreter, is of great value. Indeed what better recognition of this could there be than your award of the Mexican government’s highest honor for foreigners, the Order of the Aztec Eagle? As the citation said, this was for your “important work in the promotion and dissemination of cultural expressions of our country internationally recognized, as is the national cuisine in general and Mexican cuisine in particular.”
As I wrote in my post, not only is this work important, it is far from easy, involves significant costs as well as benefits, and can be accomplished only by enlisting the aid of chains of other people, who also contribute based on their own analysis of the costs and benefits to themselves.
Indeed, after I posted that piece I reflected that it described only one half of the effort, the gathering of information in one culture, in this case Mexico. It said nothing of the equal if not greater effort of translating that knowledge into books or menus for a different culture, the United States. That requires assembling another chain of people: recipe testers, copy editors, presses, suppliers, kitchen staff, as well as careful consideration of what is possible, what is acceptable, how to scale, how to describe, how to present. All in all, a very complicated process, and one that makes the question of power diffuse. So I appreciate your contribution.
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