Random thoughts on Tradition

It gets harder and harder these days to describe a restaurant whenever somebody ask me what kind of food they serve. Ok, so there's the typical ethnic varieties, which are simple - Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican ... Then there are the specialties like Seafood or Vegetarian ... Not counting fastfood, what about the rest of them? With the better chefs experimenting with using ingredients from other cultures, it has became really hard to pinpoint the type.

There are descriptions like Continental, California Cusine ... What is "Continental" anyway? What about "Pan-Asian"?

French restaurants are serving pasta. I had a really excellent risotto dish from a French Restaurant recently, with meyer lemons!

Fusion is equally confusing as it really doesn't tell me much.

These days, when people ask, I usually just tell them whether the place is fancy, casual, nice ... whatever; and that the place is kind of like whatever other restaurant that we both know about.

There was an article on the paper a little while ago talking about how the newer, better chefs are using unexpected ingredients to "kick it up a notch", as Emeril would say. In this case, it was Fish Sauce!

Why not? Afterall, the Hispanics have been using chocolate in their mole sauce for a long time now, and it's damn good.

I was talking about "traditional food" last night with a couple of friends. For some of the newer countries, there is really nothing food-wise to identify with. What exactly is the traditional Amercian food? What about Australian? I mean, I think we eat pretty well. But when you ask any average person what American food is, I think most would think Hamburger or Hotdogs. But how many of us eat that stuff on a daily basis? God, I hope not!

After all that, I guess the lesson, if any, is that we should not try so hard to put things in such strict order and just enjoy them as they are.