>> Kevin Butterfield: Good
afternoon. I'm Kevin Butterfield
the Director of the
John W. Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
It's my pleasure to introduce
today's speakers.
The Kluge Center, by the way,
is one of the sponsors of this
year's festival. And we're
proud to help bring America's
most beloved writers here
into rooms like this one.
The Kluge Center works to bring
scholars into residence to work
in the library's collections,
and we are proud both to sponsor
this event and to
join with C-Span
as a partner for this project.
Our next panel is Dig In,
What Food Says About Us.
It features Cheuk Kwan, Anya
von Bremzen and Daniela Galarza.
Cheuk is a writer and filmmaker
who co-founded a magazine,
The Asianadian and a film
production company, Tissa Films.
His new book is
""Have You Eaten Yet?""
Stories from Chinese
restaurants around the world.
Anya is a three time James
Beard award winning author
and culinary writer.
Her latest book
is "National Dish,
Around the World In Search
of Food History and
the Meaning of Home."
And our moderator, Daniela
Galarza, is a staff writer for
the food section at
The Washington Post.
Please join me
in welcoming them.
[Applause]
>> Daniela Galarza: Hi everyone.
How is everyone today?
>> Cheuk Kwan: Good.
>> Anya von Bremzen: Excellent.
You had a good trip in.
Cheuk from Toronto
and Anya from New York.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
So nothing beats it.
>> Daniela Galarza: I love it.
I wanted to do a brief
introduction.
If people haven't read the
books yet, I highly, highly
recommend them. They're
selling them here, actually,
and they'll be doing
a signing after this.
But "National Dish."
and ""Have You Eaten Yet?""
I've read in the past few
months and I have fallen in love
with them. I just enamored
with the curiosity and the depth
that you approach the reporting.
I wanted to do just a brief
introduction of each book and
then we'll get into some
questions. And then I want to
open it up to audience
questions too.
So think of questions and we
have these mics available and
we'll call people up.
So Anya's book, "National Dish,
Around the World in Search of
Food, History and
the Meaning of Home."
She writes, "We all have an idea
in our heads about what
French food is or Italian or
Japanese or Mexican
but where did those
ideas come from?
Who decides what makes a
national food canon and national
dish Von Bradford sends out to
investigate the truth behind the
eternal cliche
We are what we eat.
Traveling to six storied food
capitals, going high and low,
from world famous chefs to
scholars to strangers and bars
in search of how cuisine
became connected
to place and identity."
And then, "Have You Eaten Yet?"
Stories from Chinese
restaurants around the world by
Cheuk Kwan from Cape Town,
South Africa to small town
Saskatchewan. Family run
Chinese restaurants are global
icons of immigration, community
and delicious food.
The cultural outposts of far
flung settlers, bringers of
dimsum, Peking duck and
creative culinary hybrids.
Chinese restaurants are a
microcosm of greater social
forces. They are an insight
into time, history and place.
In his book, Cheuk Kwan, a
self-described card carrying
member of the Chinese diaspora,
weaves a global narrative by
linking the myriad personal
histories and stories of chefs,
entrepreneurs, laborers and
dreamers who populate Chinese
kitchens worldwide.
As I was reading this book,
I realized how timely it is.
But books take years to
develop from pitching to
conception to actual writing.
What encouraged you or inspired
you, and why did you write these
books today in
the early 2020s?
>> Cheuk Kwan: I
actually started--
I made a documentary
series called
"Chinese Restaurants" 20
years ago, and at that time
it was, you know,
it was kind of a--
And people call it a landmark,
but it's sort of a study of
diaspora. But using
food as a trope.
And then I was encouraged by a
lot of people and say, why don't
you write about your memoir?
Like how you went about the
world, you know, from Amazon to
Arctic to document
your things.
So during Covid, I thought,
okay, I'm going to do something
about that.
I'm never a writer.
I never knew I was a writer.
I was an engineer
for many, many years.
And so I thought, okay,
I'll try my hand at it.
And and that's how it is.
That how the book came about.
>> Anya von Bremzen: My idea
also goes back a very long time.
I was a concert pianist in my
very, very, very past life.
And then I had a hand injury
and I ended up writing a
cookbook called "Please to the
Table," which came out like
30 years ago in 1990.
And it was about the cuisines
of the former USSR where I was
born in Moscow, which
was in former then.
And as the book went into
print, the USSR, you know, the
Evil Empire just went bust,
completely combusted.
So people were joking to me,
Oh, why don't you make your book
a tear off calendar?
Because like Latvia separated
Ukraine separated, Kazakhstan
separated. So it was like, okay.
And then I kept going back to
these post-Soviet spaces
over the next 20 or 30 years.
And you kind of literally saw
nations in the making, you know,
in real time, you know, with
the national narratives,
national identities and
national cuisine where before
they used to be part of the
empire. So it was always in my
mind, you know, kind of to
do a project, you know,
that has to do with food and
specifically in national
identity. But the push that
kind of made me do it now was
the globalization was on the
one hand getting so intense
that, you know, I had
burgers in Uzbekistan and
Sushi in Quito.
On the other hand, I think this
intensity of globalization makes
us seek out the locavore,
the particular our roots.
So like, there's this process
that, you know, the tug and pull
the globalization and, you
know, extreme locavoreism are,
you know, part of the
same process and two sides of
the same coin. And it really
was interesting to me to look at
this very famous dishes like
pizza, ramen, mole and tortillas
in Mexico, tapas in Spain.
And see what they tell us
specifically about how national
identities are constructed,
because everything is a
construct, as we know.
I mean, we take
things for granted.
But nations didn't even exist
until the 19th century.
You know, the modern
idea of a nation.
>> Daniela Galarza: Now, that
gets into my next question.
I mean, both of your books
touch on similar intertwining
themes. And one of
them is identity.
Anya, you write, "At my table,
Barry and I are passionate
economic culturalists. We
make gefilte fish for Passover,
Persian pilaf for Nowruz and a
ham for Russian Orthodox Easter.
The Polish philosopher Zygmunt
Bauman has a great phrase for
this very common postmodern
globalized condition of not
committing to a single identity
or place or community.
Liquid modernity. He calls it.
A life where there
are no permanent bonds."
That may be true for many of us
in the audience, but both of
your books also demonstrate how
crucial food is to our sense of
self and our sense of home.
Why do you think there's this
push pull, this desire to cook
from a global pantry while
also arguing over things like
authenticity and
cultural appropriation?
>> Cheuk Kwan: I call myself a
card carrying member of the
Chinese diaspora. I was born in
Hong Kong, grew up in Singapore,
had middle school in Hong
Kong, high school in Japan,
and then the states for
university and in Canada and
many places in between.
So I travel quite a bit.
And but more importantly, I see
myself as crossing a lot of
national boundaries, but also
crossing a lot of cultural
boundaries as well as
linguistic boundaries.
When I move when I was 12, when
I was 15, and then of course
coming to North America.
So and all along, as you
understand, by the way,
you're going to all get
very hungry after this talk.
[Laughing]
You know, Chinese food is part
of my upbringing, but along the
way, I was, you know, brought
into other national food where I
lived. And of course, the
globalization we talk about,
so you have hamburger in Japan
way back, you know,
so that's the kind of thing
that I carry myself and I start
looking at food as kind of the
identity of a lot of people.
I know. Anya, does
that kind of reverse?
I do it the other way around.
I say here's a food called,
"Chinese food."
If I dump it into Africa or put
it into South America, what will
it become? So what I see
is stories of assimilation,
integration, adaptation and,
of course, resilience of the
Chinese diaspora,
of having to survive.
Only one of my-- I
went to 15 countries.
Only one of my Chinese
restaurant owner was previously
a cook. Everybody else was
not even close to a kitchen.
So that tells you the kind
of survival that Chinese
restaurants allow an immigrant
into a new country to survive
and then grow their family
and became citizens.
>> Anya von Bremzen: I think
what the original question was,
why do we kind of keep
cling to these dishes
that we think express
our identity?
I mean, again, it's what we
talked about before.
As globalization gets more
intense and we all have these
complicated hyphenated identity.
You know, I was born in the
Soviet Union, but I'm Jewish,
and we immigrated and I
have an apartment in Istanbul
and I travel for work.
So one kind of has this, you
know, liquid modernity,
this cosmopolitan
sense of oneself.
And so many people now with
digital nomadism people, I
mean, you just see,
you know, this little diasporas
all over the world.
But, you know, at the same
time, we have this intense urge
to connect food to place.
And food is just the most
visceral and the most immediate
expression of something of
home, whatever that home might
be of family of table.
But I would also argue
that their food has a lot of
commercial value and identity
has a lot of commercial value.
I mean, think about it.
A lot of these protectionist
mechanisms started kind of in
the 90s with neoliberal, you
know, globalized politics and
economics. Suddenly
pizza was everywhere.
So of course, the Neapolitans
established an organization,
Verace pizza napoletana
to say pizza must be like this
and like this. And you cannot
make it another way.
And, you know, because they
felt like, you know, their
cultural capital, their
national capital, the regional
capital was, you know,
the same thing.
You have slow food
at the same time.
You know, suddenly nostalgia
and culinary nostalgia came into
vogue. And this kind of on the
one hand, the forces of this
grass root identity and
patriotism and on the other
hand, this intense marketing,
is fed a Greek or Bulgarian?
Is yogurt Turkish or Kurdish?
You know, all this stuff.
You know, there's a
lot of money involved.
Not to ruin everyone's,
you know, sentimental feelings
about their food.
>> Daniela Galarza: Now once
you look behind the taste
and the flavor of everything,
it becomes very political.
You know, you mentioned
Pizza Margherita
and how idea of
authenticity and hyper
regional Italian food
started spreading.
And Cheuk, in your book, you
demonstrate how Chinese food is
a way for the people
who've opened these restaurants
to express their identity, to
maintain it, to preserve it and
to create a sense of home.
But there's a key
difference there.
And we talked about this a
little bit, but like how have
the home countries from these
places either encouraged or
abandoned their
diasporic communities?
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Yeah. Should I?
Because, you know, it's
actually a very interesting
question that I
haven't thought about.
I mean, just to say
something about the diasporic
communities and I'm sure Cheuk
would have his own-- we sort of
have this cliche, you know,
oh, an immigrant comes to
another place and he misses his
mom's food and he opens a
restaurant. But, you know,
people open restaurants for all
sorts of reasons. And again,
you know, there are commercial
and sometimes it has nothing
to do with home cooking.
And sometimes the model is not
the mom, you know, that he left
behind or she or but it's, you
know, a person down the block
who opened a successful
Ecuadorian or Chinese or
Ethiopian restaurant.
But with diasporas, for
instance, there is an argument
that Italian cuisine as a
national cuisine was born in
diaspora because there
was no Italy until 1860s.
It was a collection
of duchies and
principalities and the
unification of 1860s kind of
created this nation where one
didn't really exist before.
So all these people emigrate
because of poverty, the chaos.
They emigrate to the Americas,
to South and North America, and
they start opening places.
And what was peculiar to Naples
like pizzeria becomes kind of
more of an Italian thing.
Meanwhile, what's happening in
Italy, they don't want to lose
their diaspora. They encouraged
them to get second citizenship.
They create commercial
organizations encouraging
consumer patriotism.
So all these Italians are
buying, you know, parmigiano and
tomatoes from Italy.
So they're kind of making a lot
of business there.
There's Dante Alighieri
societies to teach standard.
New standard Italian
Florentine, Italian--
The children of the diaspora who
spoke Neapolitan or Calabrian.
So you have, you know, the state
of Italy that intervenes a lot.
Meanwhile, China, nothing.
Right? They just, you know, so
it's a very different sense of
patriotism and of
association with home.
So how was it with Chinese?
>> Cheuk Kwan:
Well, Chinese food actually is
I call it kind of
misnomer because
China has officially recognized
55 ethnic minorities within its
boundaries. You know, the
Uyghurs, the Tibetans,
Mongolians, Koreans.
And then, of course, they each
have their own distinctive
cuisine. And 92% of the 1.5
billion Chinese are of Han
ethnicity, which is like me.
So we also have our own
regional cuisines, you know,
from the north, from the west,
from the east and so forth.
And throughout the 5000
year history, all this get all
co-mingled. And you can't tell
anymore whether this is from
this ethnicity
or that ethnicity.
So for a lack of a better term,
when we exported around the
world, this is like the
generic Chinese food.
And of course, in America's the
first wave of immigrants came
from southern China.
So everybody here would have
tasted the Chinese American
food, which has its origin in
Guangdong and Fujian provinces.
So it's not until in the 70s
and 80s when I went to New York
and I tasted the first Hunan
restaurant, you know, that came
to North America.
And of course, that's when I
discovered myself because I've
been living eating Cantonese
food all my life.
I didn't know that there was
such things as Hunan food.
So it was in New York.
I had my first Hunan cuisine in
just like two provinces away
from me. Right? So that's the
kind of thing that, you know,
a very, very complex kind of
formation story of Chinese
restaurants. And then if you go
across that balloon and go
around the world, then you get
formation of what I call
globalized Chinese food.
When we talk about this, a
national dish called soups,
shriniwas French soup in
Madagascar, it's nothing but
wonton soup. It
was brought in by
Chinese immigrants and was
adopted as the actual national
cuisine. And people eat it for
breakfast, for dinner and for
lunch. And I guess we can talk
about chicken tikka masala as
the National Food of England.
[Laughing]
And of course,
General Tso's chicken.
I can tell you, was never
heard of before in China.
It's a New York invention.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
With the chicken tikka masala.
It wasn't random that was
adopted as a British national
dish because, you know, it's
something that came out of
diaspora, something
that was really popular.
But the British government and
the British authorities made a
very conscious effort to kind
of replace, you know, the good
old, you know, roast beef,
which was, you know, the
previous national dish
with chicken tikka masala.
Why? Because they wanted to
show it was part of the whole
Cool Britannia or was so kind
of cosmopolitan was so,
you know, on a
diversity kind of thing.
So these things, you know,
happen with a lot of political
interventions, not
always, but often.
And again, it's marketing
and it's nation branding.
How, as a nation, do you
want to present your image
to the rest of the
world? And Britain.
Yeah. We're all about
multiculturalism.
>> Daniela Galarza: Yeah. I
mean, from a different angle
that Singaporean fried rice
you discovered in India.
Cheuk, can you tell that story?
>> Cheuk Kwan: Yeah. I traveled
to India and I opened the menu
and said, Singaporean
fried rice.
I'm from Singapore. I never
heard of Singaporean fried rice.
[Laughing]
And there's also Singapore
fried vermicelli, of course,
that was never you know, we
don't have that in Singapore,
but it's kind of what people
think of, you know, because they
put a little bit
of curry in there.
They said, Oh,
that's Singaporean.
And so they call it
Singaporean fried rice.
So I was just as surprised to
find that on the menu of India.
So, you know, it's that kind of
adaptation that you talk
about, but also about
transcending boundaries.
You know, fried rice is a very
typical Chinese invention, but I
argue fried rice is the most
versatile dish you can have.
You can have vegan fried rice,
you can have, you know, pork and
all kinds of things.
And of course, Indians invented
the Singaporean fried rice.
>> Anya von Bremzen: But this
begs the whole question of
what is authentic. You
know, it's it's all relative.
I mean, to an Indian
communities who internalize it
as Singaporean fried rice and
who eat it all the time, or to
the Africans who eat, you
know, the soup [Inaudible]
it is an authentic
part of their diet.
And who is to argue
that it isn't?
>> Cheuk Kwan: I can tell
you the story of Hakka Chinese
restaurants in Toronto. Hakka
is a minority ethnic group
that meander around the world,
and they spread
all over the place.
South Pacific, Caribbean, South
America, everywhere else.
And they went to India for
maybe a couple of hundred years.
So a lot of these people
now migrated into, say, Toronto.
They opened what they call
Hakka Chinese food, which is
basically a Indian version
of Chinese food.
So if you go to any Hakka
Chinese restaurant in Toronto,
you will not see Chinese there.
You will only see salvation,
taxi drivers or families,
because if you ask them, that's
the Chinese food they know at
home. Back in India.
So therein lies the whole thing
about what's authentic to them.
The authentic Chinese food to
an Indian person would be the
one they were cooked
you know, in India.
So when they come searching for
the home cooked
Chinese food, that's
what they're looking for.
>> Daniela Galarza: Yeah.
I mean, identity of shifts,
all of these ideas of
authenticity. It's sort of why
we've moved away from this
search for authenticity,
because it doesn't matter, the
bottom line is, deliciousness.
You know, Cheuk, you started
your journey just going to
Chinese restaurants directly,
but you didn't just eat food in
Chinese restaurants.
You know, sometimes
you had family meal
with the restaurant owners.
And Anya, you ate with all
kinds of people in all kinds of
places. What are some of the
differences between food made in
a home versus food
made in a restaurant?
>> Cheuk Kwan: You know, a
cliche way of saying is that
you get too much oil
in your restaurant
and Chinese food restaurant
or you have MSG
in the Chinese food.
You know, there's obviously
home cooking that your mom makes
or your grandmother makes that
you don't serve your customers
because that's not what
they're looking for.
So a lot of times we ended up
eating meal with the staff
because after the customer
has gone home, you don't have to
make what they want to eat.
So you start making home
cooked meal for your own.
So that's when we had the best
food, obviously in Norway or
in Brazil, you know,
whatever it may be.
But, you know, in a sense,
I think in a tiny Chinese
restaurant, what they try to do
is to once they once they get to
the place, is to
adopt what they know.
Okay, we used to eat this dish.
Okay. You know, let's try it on
our customers and then customers
might say, oh, you know,
we want more chilli.
So you start adapting.
Okay. General Tso's chicken
came from the fact that a chef
from Hunan was working in a
Chinese restaurant, and he
decided that, Oh, I'm going to
make something called General
Tso's Chicken. Of course,
General Tso's a real person, but
he never heard of his
own chicken before.
[Laughing]
But that's how General Tso's
Chicken became an American food.
>> Anya von Bremzen: But
I think a lot of the dishes,
for instance, that I wrote
about, like Pizza, Ramen,
they're specifically
kind of dishes
that you don't
really make at home.
I mean, who makes pizza, right?
I mean, it's a professional--
You know, there's this kind of
professionalization of the
food industry.
And this is very often the
public face of any given
cuisine. And a lot of the
dishes, you know, don't exist at
homes or people don't make them.
And how you kind of sell it and
commercialize it and present it
to the rest of the world is
very different from what you eat
in the confines of
your own home.
And, you know, to me,
there are some public foods,
you know, like burger,
pizza, whatever.
And there are private foods
that you make as part of a
family meal. And of course, you
can make anything as a part of
the family meal. But I think,
you know, to me, the very
different aspects of cooking.
>> Cheuk Kwan: That's a great
answer. I never thought about it
but that's very true.
That's very true.
Whole public face of
Chinese food that you see.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Yes, it was very interesting.
I live in this incredibly
multicultural
neighborhood in New York,
Jackson Heights.
And we have a Thai temple.
And at 11:00 every day, people
come and feed the monks
and the monks, you know, from a
branch of Buddhism where you
kind of just sit and you kind
of, they can't decide anything.
You know, you just kind of
bring the food and they can't
express any interest.
And but there's so much food
and the ladies as well,
you know, they actually like
smoothies and lint chocolates.
But there's this massive
amounts of Thai food that people
home cooking that people bring.
And then everyone ends up going
to the kitchen and eating it.
And, I mean, I know
Thailand really well.
I've been there a lot.
I'm always shocked at how
completely different the home
cooking. I mean, you have a lot
of blood, a lot of, you know,
pork, a lot of just things that
you just can't even imagine you
would never see at the
restaurant because, you know,
there's this kind of sense--
There's a sense of
boundaries, right?
I mean, a lot of and a
lot of diasporic restaurants
like, okay, we can't serve this
to Americans or to whoever.
You know, they're not
going to eat blood.
They're not going
to eat this or this.
And so, yeah, it's it's a very
different expression of eating.
>> Daniela Galarza:
And of identity, right?
Like the public facing
the restaurant is
what you've decided is
safe enough to present.
And the private is
what's really home.
What you really are.
But yeah. Anya, you touched on
this earlier about how young
Italy is. And well before we
had national identities, we had
a strong connection to
religion. And we think of food
as something that
brings us together.
But it's also been a powerful
tool of exclusion.
What are ways that religious
dietary laws have affected
national cuisines and what have
things you've touched on in your
book, but also in your
research elsewhere?
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Well, again, as I said, I mean,
the idea of a national
cuisine is really something
of the 19th century and later.
But before that, you had all
this other kind of
identifications. Right?
You're identified according to
your religion, your ethnic clan,
your language.
And the religion is one of
the strongest kind of sources of
prohibition and taboos because,
you know, think of the Jews and
the Muslims who can't eat pork,
thinks of the Catholics
who impose pork.
And in my chapter on Seville,
on tapas, I have a whole story
about Jamon, which
is very fashionable.
Right. The Jamon and how much
is tied to Catholicism, because
after the Jews were expelled
from Spain in 1492 and the
Muslims had to go underground,
how did you measure the
sincerity of one's conversion?
Because whoever stayed, the
Muslims and the Jews stayed in
Spain, they had to convert. But
were they really, you know, good
Catholics? So the Inquisition,
believe it or not, had all these
tests for people, you know,
they would like, you know, try
to see if people would eat pork.
And, you know, I read hours and
hours of inquisition proceedings
from like the 15th century,
in the 16th century.
And food is such a
powerful identifier.
Oh, yeah. And then she looked
at the bacon and she looked
disgusted. So she must
be a fake Catholic.
I mean, it was literally like
this. And then you could get
waterboarded or, you
know, set on fire.
So yeah, I mean, religion is a
really powerful indicator of,
you know, this expression,
we are what we eat.
>> Cheuk Kwan: I think it's
less so in China just because
I mean, China has
its own religion,
but there's nothing
compared to Buddhism
that came in the 600 AD
right after the founding.
So but, you know, as a Buddhist,
if you don't eat meat
or that's fine.
Right. And you just
pick other dishes.
And there's also Jews that
came in the 10th century into
what they call the Kaifeng Jews.
They settled in
one part of China.
And then, of course, they have
their own dietary restrictions,
but that's fine. So the
Chinese are more kind of
welcoming of diversity.
Eating habits than I
think most Europeans.
>> Daniela Galarza: And
adaptable. Right, Cheuk?
In Istanbul chapter,
you talk about the Muslim
communities that the Chinese
became part of and it became
part of their identity, but they
changed their
cuisine for that, too.
>> Cheuk Kwan: Yeah, All you
do is eliminate pork and then
no alcohol in the restaurant.
But then the owner
complained that,
wow, the modern Turks,
they don't care anymore.
They just come in demanding
pork and we turn them away
because that's the
way the modernity is
encroaching on everybody.
>> Daniela Galarza: Yeah. I
want to back up a little bit.
Why do you think people
open restaurants?
>> Cheuk Kwan: Survival for
me, I think for the Chinese.
>> Anya von Bremzen: Yeah.
You mean why ethnic diasporas
open restaurants
or why generally
people open restaurants?
>> Daniela Galarza:
Ethnic diasporas.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Yeah, I think a lot of it
has to do with survival.
And I mean, you see different
diasporas operate very
differently. You know, for
instance, a lot of the Hispanic
people, you know, they work
already in the restaurant
industry. Right.
So they kind of come
across us, you know, and then
they would go back to the
neighborhood and open.
I see, for instance, Thai
diaspora in my neighborhood.
And we have like a very intense
and it's kind of fashionable.
There's a lot of just young
people and they go back to
Bangkok and they take a cooking
class and they sort of create
these spaces where, you know,
they do these Thai desserts.
For some people, it's just a
way to provide nourishment to
the rest of the diaspora.
Like when I came from the USSR,
we left without the right of
return and we had to abandon
our citizenship.
It was the Iron Curtain day and
you know, this Russian, Jewish,
you know, Soviet melting pot
restaurants on Brighton Beach
was the only way that we could
eat the food that we missed.
And yes, I mean, but
ultimately, yes, you have to
make money. Right.
>> Daniela Galarza: But it
creates these communities.
That was something--
Cheuk, you were talking
earlier today about how
you avoided Chinatowns
in your research.
Talk a little bit more
about that, how you--
>> Cheuk Kwan:
That's my pet peeve.
[Laughing]
No, I when I made the film, I
want to break the barrier,
a stereotype barrier, just like
when I asked my publisher not to
bring any Chinese
stuff on my cover.
I don't want Golden Dragon.
I don't want Red Lantern on my
cover because I want to break
the cliche of what
Chinese food is.
And to a lot of North Americans,
at least, you know,
Chinese food is also almost
always associated with
Chinatowns. And I just want to
get out from there.
And besides, you get more
interesting stories going
outside of Chinatown than I did
my North American story in a
little town called
Outlook, Saskatchewan.
So, you know, 1000 people, but
there are two Chinese
restaurants there.
And there are stories about,
you know, anyway, I won't go
into that, but
it's the kind of--
That story was like the Chinese
restaurant was open very late.
So teenagers come in after
the movie, just for coffee,
apple pie. And so it became
a community center.
And I wanted to show that
kind of the role especially an
ethnic restaurant serve, you
know, as a community kind of
gathering. You know, you go
into these Italian restaurants
and you see old Italian men
coming in and having big
family meal, and that's their
community center, you know.
So I wanted to show that
aspect of--
>> Anya von Bremzen:
But in a way, the aspiration,
the sign of making
it is attracting
the people outside the diaspora.
So, okay, so you broke
through that, you know,
ethnic ghetto, and then,
you know, you made it big
and now you have 34 restaurants
across seven continents.
>> Daniela Galarza:
A sign of success.
>> Anya von Bremzen: Yeah.
[Laughing]
>> Daniela Galarza: We talked
about how it's impossible to
talk about food without
talking about politics.
And both of you addressed this
very directly in your epilogues.
You can talk about
that a little bit.
>> Cheuk Kwan:
You want to go first?
>> Anya von Bremzen: Yeah.
So my book is in six chapters.
It went through Paris, Naples,
Seville, Istanbul, Oaxaca
to look at all these national
dishes. And since I live in this
multicultural neighborhood in
Jackson Heights, my idea was to
do an American feast to
do Thanksgiving in this
neighborhood where
it was 186 languages.
But then the war broke out in
Ukraine and everything changed.
And I started questioning.
I started this book kind of
comfortable with my own
globalized cosmopolitanism as a
Russian speaking Jew who
traveled and suddenly there
was just this intense, tragic
conflict. And food is always
part of these things.
And my epilogue is about
borscht, which is a Slavic beet
soup that we all make in the
Slavic world and that I grew up
eating. And in fact, when I
heard news about the war,
my mom's borsch was
sitting in my fridge.
But Ukrainians claim correctly
that it is a Ukrainian national
dish. And even before this full
scale invasion, there were all
the spats between
Russia and Ukraine.
Who does it belong to?
And it was a very tragic
chapter to write because
it brought this whole
idea of national identity
and food in this like,
visceral, extremely perturbing
way, you know, to my own dinner
table, the whole kind of thing
just exploded.
And so I ponder, who does
Borscht belong to and can you
really make a cultural
claim to a dish?
And in fact, Borscht got the
UNESCO intangible heritage
listing, I think, a year after
the war broke out.
And part of it was having to
relinquish who I was because,
I mean, I hated Putin so
much and so did my mom.
I didn't want to speak Russian.
I felt somehow guilty.
I felt like my Ukrainian
friends weren't talking to me.
And the whole idea that we're
all, you know, one day eat
borscht together just exploded.
I mean, I asked the Ukrainians,
I said, do you think Russians
and Ukrainians will ever eat
borscht together?
They're like, not until the
Ukrainians win this war and the
Russians will lose this war.
You know, two generation passes.
And I also asked myself, was I
guilty of any kind of cultural
colonialism as a Russian person
thinking about Ukraine?
Was I being somehow imperialist?
So it led to a lot
of soul searching.
And it just shows how politics
puts food, you know, front and
center in ways that are not
always benign and not always
comforting. And the whole idea
for me of borscht and home as
something I grew up with,
just kind of blew up.
But it was an important
conversation.
>> Cheuk Kwan: My book is
actually all about politics.
Politics of immigration,
politics of racism
and many things else.
You know, when I started
writing the book, it was also
because of a lot of the Syrian
refugees were coming in,
the Iraqi refugees.
And so the North American
society at least, was looking
again at the whole immigration
compared to turn of the
last century, where a lot of
Chinese or Japanese immigrants
coming in or Italian and Greek.
So in that sense,
it's about immigration.
But then in terms of Chinese
immigration, they bring together
with them their history.
So I talk a lot about Chinese
civil war, Mao Zedong, Communist
China, Taiwan and of course
all the politics that
involve in it, including I have
a Chinese Vietnamese
boat person who came on
the boat, escaped Vietnam.
And that's all
about Vietnam War.
So it's all that kind of thing
coming in together.
And then I started writing
earnestly during the Covid.
And then my agent then says,
Cheuk, you have to write about,
you know, anti-Asian racism.
Because that was like after
George Floyd and after all that
stuff. And the pandemic came
and the Asians were being blamed
for the flu that
came in and so forth.
So I say, okay, you know, what
I would do is I would I would
address that antiracism Asian
racism directly because the
racism I addressed before was,
you know, railroad workers
coming in to build the
railroads for North America
and all this stuff.
But now I'm dealing with a
modern day anti-Asian racism
that, again, I mean, I dealt
with the Japanese internment
camps during the World War II.
That was the last kind of what
we see as the last wave of
really anti-Asian, because the
Japanese were treated as enemy
aliens and they were all put
into internment camps during the
World War II. So in that sense,
I'm trying to address
sort of upgrade the, you know,
modernize the racism
into the current times.
>> Daniela Galarza: I really
appreciated how you both
wove in your personal
narratives and
your own changing
senses of identity
as you did this research and
reporting and travel that you,
you know, it made you question
your own worldviews.
And and I found that really
insightful and powerful.
We've done a lot of talking
about these broad topics.
I write about food and recipes
and cooking in really small way.
I wanted to ask you,
you know, do you think that
thinking deeply about what we
eat actually connects us to
others? You know, we're always
saying like, oh, if we just sit
down at a table together,
everything will be okay.
We can solve the world's
problems over a meal.
Or is that just sort of wishful
thinking that food writers
like me talk about?
>> Anya von Bremzen: But
that's what I addressed with
Borsch, for instance,
chapter. I mean,
you know, the Palestinians
and the Israelis
are going to eat some hummus
and, you know, resolve
everything. I mean,
it's a very hopeful and very
potent trope that food
brings us together.
And, you know, I actually
started researching, you know,
where does it come from?
You know, and people traveled
a lot for political reasons.
So you had someone, you know,
that came to make some kind of
peace deal. And of course,
you had to have a meal.
But it really does have to do
with people traveling long
distances. And like before you
kill them, you had to feed them,
you know, I mean, literally.
So, yeah, this whole idea of
sharing food and also these
communal feasts, like even in
pre-neolithic times, you know,
I've recently
visited some sites.
Food was a sign of power and
distributing it so they would
kill, you know, some big animal
food was sacrificial.
Right? So like there's so many
symbolic moments where food was
important and that whole idea,
okay, let's, you know, kill the
lamb and, you know, talk things
over and divide it between
people, you know, in
a hierarchical way.
So that's that's where the
whole idea comes from.
Right? But whether it's
true or not, but we want to
believe that is true.
It's something important for us
to believe in, because if we
don't believe we can share food
and talk things over,
what do we believe in?
>> Daniela Galarza: The world
becomes a very cynical place.
>> Anya von Bremzen: Yeah.
>> Cheuk Kwan:
There's a Chinese proverb called
loosely translated as
Food is human nature.
Or to eat is human nature.
I won't mention the act because.
But but the thing is that, you
know, the Chinese, of course,
believe in food and, you know,
the whole medicinal, the whole
Chinese medicine practice comes
from, again, a saying,
disease comes
from your mouth.
So basically you ingest
whatever into your mouth.
So but the cure also
gets through your mouth.
So Chinese believe in a lot
of herbal medicine, a lot of
very natural cure.
But mostly it's about Qi, you
know, the whole life balance of
yin and yang and
I derive a lot of that.
I brought in a lot of that
from, you know, basically from
my own experience.
You know, I kind of watched my
mother cook, so okay, that's
fine. But then when she brought
me up, you know, your
grandmother, your mother would
keep saying, oh, don't eat this,
don't eat that. You know,
you get sore throat, you'll get
this, you get that, you get
diarrhea, you know. So it's all
that kind of thing. But Chinese
have a big belief in that food
can cure you, but it's also to
give you the life balance,
the yin and yang
balance in your own body.
And so there are food that I
should not eat because I'm of
this type and there's other
food that I should eat more
because that will help me with
this and so forth.
So it's all that kind of thing.
You learn lifelong, you know,
just subliminally and osmosis.
And then you kind of--
>> Anya von Bremzen: I mean,
food is astonishing power
as a symbol, as a commercial
thing, as you know, on every,
I mean, we eat at
least three times a day.
And so we invested with
whatever we want to invest it
with. You know, it's political,
it's historical, it's personal,
it's intimate, it's public.
You know, everything that we
went through.
And it's just an amazing
vehicle to talk about other
things, which is what we've
both done in our books,
you know, their food books,
but they talk about
all the other aspects of--
>> Daniela Galarza: Wonderful.
Wonderful entry point.
And food is communal.
And on that note, I wanted to
open it up to questions from the
audience. I'm sure
people have questions.
Please come up to the
microphones and we'll just
switch off between
the two sides.
Yeah, please.
>> You mentioned slow food
earlier and I know there are
Chowchilla and their
symbol is kind of relatively
well known worldwide,
probably not as well known
as they would like it to be
as this kind of trendy thing
returning to these
old food ways.
Do you think that's
really going to be a fad?
Is something that's going to
disappear as we become more
globalized or do you think
there's something inherently
appealing or perhaps comforting
about returning to these
historical food ways?
>> Anya von Bremzen:
No, I mean, I think absolutely
they were the symbol of,
acting against globalization,
and it's something that was
happening in the 90s all over
the place, you know, the
ransacking of McDonald's and
saying, you know, the kind of
culinary nostalgia movement.
And it's been incredibly
powerful and it's been
commercially extremely forceful.
You know, I mean, see all this
explosion of small producers
that sell their stuff for, you
know, $79, you know, for
four ounces, and then people
buying it with this story.
I mean, we want to attach a
story to a food, to a dish.
And if it's a story about some
farmer, you know, that fought
all this, you know, nasty
forces and prevailed and then so
much the better. But it's a
huge commercial engine
at this point.
>> So we've talked a lot about
food and how it connects to the
diaspora. Iam a member
of the Cuban diaspora.
And usually when I talk about
Cuban food, the first thing
people talk about is a Cuban
sandwich, which does not
actually exist in Cuba.
We do not have the ingredients
to make a Cuban sandwich in
Cuba, but it's become such a
big part of what we as Cuban
immigrants see as our food.
In your journeys, have you all
experienced how food has brought
the diaspora together and kind
of in a way isolated the
countries which were from?
>> Anya von Bremzen:
It's actually very interesting
because I did a book about Cuba,
and believe it or not, I mean,
I don't know when the last time
you were in Cuba, but Cuban
sandwich is hugely trendy in
Cuba, and they're doing it with
all these artisanal ingredients
and saying, well, we invented
it afterwards, so let me put
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's actually there's a name
for this phenomenon is called
the Pizza Effect.
When something travels abroad
or, you know, is invented
abroad, but then comes back to
its own country of origin
as like the thing.
And suddenly the Cubans-- the
Cubans are literally saying
they used to say, well, we don't
know what this Cuban Cubano is.
And now like, yeah,
I mean, it's ours.
Of course, you know.
[Laughing]
>> Thank you.
>> Hi. First of
all, I wanna say,
I don't normally judge
a books by their covers,
but both of your covers
are freaking amazing.
Like, they look great.
Like, I want them on posters.
My question is, after
writing these books, has your
either sort of at home cooking
experience or sort of the
restaurants that you seek out,
how have they changed?
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Cheuk, you want to...
>> Cheuk Kwan: My view of
the restaurant has changed
>> Or like is there anything
that sort of changed in your
kind of culinary experience,
either like cooking or like sort
of the restaurants
do you seek out?
>> Cheuk Kwan: No, and
a lot of people ask me
what is authentic Chinese food?
That was the first question
they asked me 20 years ago
when I made my film.
My my definition of
authenticity kind of evolve.
And right now, if you ask me
today, I would say
authenticity comes
from your memory.
What you grow up eating
that's authentic to you.
So like sweet and sour chicken
balls for Americans might be
authentic Chinese food, right?
But that's fine.
I'm not going to judge
whether, wow, you know,
you're not eating
the right food.
Right. So I think
that's how I look at food
these days. Instead of being
very imperialistic kind of
Chinese food, you know.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
With me, I mean, it's weird.
It weirdly made me crave junk
food. Well, not junk food.
Like, you know, like writing
about pizza in Naples and blah,
blah, blah. I mean, the first
thing I came when I
came back to New York is
I had a New York slice.
And it's like, this is our
slice and it's authentic
and I love it. And I can't
be separated from it
or even, you know, eating
ramen from a pocket.
[Laughing]
>> Daniela Galarza: I love that.
As I was reading your books,
I got hungry so
many times. Please.
>> I don't think you talked
about geography having a huge
role in what makes something
authentic or Italian
versus German or...
And yet the geography of where
certain vegetables can
grow or where certain animals
are raised has a big impact on
what then becomes
ethnic or original.
Can you talk about that a bit?
>> Cheuk Kwan:
I can. About tomato.
Tomato is a South
American fruit.
I mean, fruit. Without tomato,
you don't have Italian food.
That's a cliche,
but that's true.
So people think, you know,
so in Brazil, I was talking
to my Chinese restaurant owner
and we talk about
cashew chicken.
You know, that's a very
typical Chinese food.
And I told him, no, cashew is
actually from Portugal.
Sorry, from Brazil.
So I said, without cashew from
Brazil, you would have no cashew
chicken. So in that sense you
cannot say cashew chicken is
Chinese food because cashew
was never grown there.
So that's like
General Tso's chicken.
You have broccoli,
Chinese do not have broccoli.
So in that sense--
So after a while it get--
if you really want to delve
into it, then nothing
is true anymore, right?
So you just have to forget
about it and say, okay, tomato
exists. So let's
make pasta, you know?
Yeah. So that's my only
answer to this whole--
>> Anya von Bremzen: I mean,
as I was doing research on this,
on the creation of the
idea of a national dish,
you kind of realize how
extraordinarily globalized
the food systems were.
Even in the Renaissance, if you
went to a market in Renaissance
Florence or Renaissance, you
know, or Istanbul in the 16th
century, all this, especially
if you were in the heart of the
empire, all these goods and
commodities and foods were just
moving around the globe,
you know, tremendously.
And they were powerful engines
of commerce, you know, for
instance, spices, you know,
until the 18th century, food of
the aristocracy was really
heavily spiced and all the
spices were imported,
obviously, and they were status
symbols. So in a way, the idea
of a locavore dish of local
food is also quite recent, you
know, and it's probably
in France around 1780s
that it starts coming into play.
Before that, the symbol of
status and power was to have all
these ingredients from all over
the place while the poor people
just ate gruels.
I mean, they ate horrible diet.
>> Cheuk Kwan: Wow. Spices
is the one that drives
European colonization
for the rest of the world.
I mean, that's where
colonization came from
because people were
looking for spices
in India and the Spice Islands.
So and that's what led them to
conquer the rest of the world.
So, you know, it is a history
and politics involved.
>> Thank you.
>> Daniela Galarza: Please.
>> Hi, Anya.
You pointed out the
stereotypical immigrant
narrative of, like, mom's
cooking and that becoming
an easy entry point into
talking about ethnic food.
And I believe you both have
mentioned also your maternal
figures cooking in your life,
how that has kind of played into
your personal life.
But interestingly, I think,
Cheuk, but in the California
Gold Rush, the first people
to own restaurants in
Chinese restaurants
were mostly men.
And still in New York, Asian
American men are one of the most
important forces behind
operating these restaurants.
So I was curious, in your
research, how did the food
industry utilize gender
narratives into increasing this
commercial value that
you said food has?
>> Anya von Bremzen: I think
it's a very interesting question
in fact, I just did an
interview with Eater about the
absolutely grueling labor
outside the U.S.,
behind the maize tortilla.
I think it goes
culture by culture.
In certain cultures, cooks are
women and even commercial cooks,
like in a lot of Thai
restaurants and actually
I researched this, they
will put a woman in charge
of the kitchen. Like I would say
most of the Hispanic restaurants
are men, and it's men
who work in, you know,
kind of fancy
restaurants, let's say,
in Manhattan or whatever,
doing other parts
of the, you know--
And then they opened--
In Chinese restaurants,
Yeah, I think mostly--
>> Cheuk Kwan:
That's a very simple answer.
The Chinese food, Chinese
restaurant owners, because
at that time during the gold
rush, there were no women.
So your Chinese person
cooking Chinese food in the
railroad camps for
the other workers.
And then after the railroad is
done, you move eastwards and
then you settle in London town,
at least in Canada, and I think
in the States as well.
And you open Chinese
restaurants, there are no women
because of the Chinese
Exclusion Act,
both in the U.S. and the
Canada for 50 years.
>> Anya von Bremzen:
Yeah. I mean, but
I would say that in my
experience, and I'm really
interested in this subject,
the diasporas are very, very
different and how
they treat food.
And the diasporic businesses
are very, very different
from culture to culture.
And what their relationship to
the home country is, is very
different, you know, depending
in which circumstances people
immigrated. So it's it's
a very interesting subject.
But you're absolutely right
that we started fetishizing,
the mama, the nonna,
especially in Italian culture.
I mean, the nonna is part
of the national brand.
You know, the Italian grandma.
>> Cheuk Kwan: Nonna's cooking.
>> Anya von Bremzen: Yeah.
>> Daniela Galarza: We have
very little time left, so
only time for one more
question. I'm so sorry.
>> That's lots of
pressure on me.
Cheuk, I know that you're from
Singapore, and I wanted to ask
you about the King
of Fruits, the durian.
I'm convinced that only Chinese
people like durian. Am I wrong?
>> Cheuk Kwan:
I don't know. Let's do a poll.
[Laughing]
I love durian, but I'm not
sure if people know what--
>> Anya von Bremzen:
All over Southeast Asia.
I mean, it's more
like Malaysian.
Yeah, yeah. But...
Thais loved.
>> Cheuk Kwan: I mean,
just to let you know that
Singapore's subway will not let
you bring durian into the car.
>> Anya von Bremzen: I know.
There's a sign like this.
>> Cheuk Kwan: Yeah. No
durian, no chewing gums
in subway cars.
[Laughing]
>> Anya von Bremzen: Time is up.
>> Daniela Galarza: Thank you.
Thank you so much,
everyone, for coming.
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]