Sunday 23 January 2011

Culinary tourism?

Some diners from Kingsland Road to Stamford Hill could be seen as culinary tourists, desiring ‘real’ experiences through the participation in different ethnic culinary traditions. The restaurants and cafés ‘perform’ this ethnic authenticity by highlighting ‘genuine’ characteristics and customs from ‘home’ (Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983). Themed restaurants like this turn a service into an experience (Pine & Gilmore 2002, 2007), and this experience must feel authentic, or it will be judged as fake. However, this authenticity is inevitably a social construction—one person’s real is another’s fake. Business owners also face their own complicated negotiations through this territory. They may want to offer a representation of a specific collective identity and display their own personal values associated with their particular heritage, but the customer is always right, therefore concessions will be made. So, if the customer wants vegetarian spring rolls, without the inclusion of ground pork, they appear on the menu to satisfy demand, and to take account of local tastes in the global world.

This commodification of racial ‘otherness’ has also been explored by bell hooks in her article ‘Eating the Other: Desire and resistance’ (1992). She argues that a range of discourses and practices lead to the celebration of ethnicity as ‘a spice, a seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.’ With this comes thoughts of ‘the Other’ and ‘the exotic,’ and this culinary tourism could perhaps be reframed more sinisterly as culinary colonisation. Though in some instances, I too have felt very much ‘the Other’ myself, particularly when entering the traditional kosher food shops at Stamford Hill.

Many of the Turkish restaurants in particular, produce much of their external signage in Turkish. Particular characters that do not exist in the English alphabet pepper the windows, doors and walls, creating a visual language that displays cultural difference via the typography. Another local yet global experience within Hackney.





The Vietnamese restaurants also display evidence of typographic cross-pollination, with many choosing to use the typeface Choc on their fascias. Drawn by French designer Roger Excoffon, the face is based on the traditions of Japanese brush calligraphy.



Many of these issues of authenticity are entangled and difficult to separate, not just in theory, but also during the practice and experience of the eating itself.



Are the lucky cats in the windows, or on the bars, of the Vietnamese shops and restaurants there because that is what one expects, or because the owner wants to ensure the protection and continued success of their business? Are the shrines with the paper money there for show or for honouring the dead? Is it what I and other customers expect, or is it actually a private act being played out in a public place? Are the women in Sömine just making the bread for the day, or are they ‘performing’ for the customers and at the same time signifying that the bread is homemade and thus ‘real’? Are the television sets part of the experience too, or are they for bored customers or idle waiting staff? Sometimes I think you can tell. For example, the television in the Hanoi Café was positioned in the corridor between the bar and kitchen, not a space a customer would pass through. There was one chair in front of it. This was there for the waitress during the slower hours of the afternoon, it was not for me. Although the television in Tropicalia is positioned so that both customers and staff can watch, it does not seem to be performing any other function than providing information and entertainment, often via Brazilian channels. Timur Ögüt (2008) suggests that the bread making women in Sömine are not providing an act of ‘staged authenticity’ (MacCannel 1973), as they are dressed in ordinary clothes, oblivious to customers and working as if cooking at home. I wonder if this is always the case though, as some of the cafés place the women directly in the window. This doesn’t seem an inconsequential positioning.

I think what I enjoy more is an ordinariness, rather than an authenticity. Although perhaps, that is how I define authenticity myself? In my eating experiences I have found ordinariness amongst my Turkish breakfast at Sömine, (regardless of the bread making women and whether or not they are significant), the Roti Stop, and at the curry stall at Ridley Road market—and this is not to say that either of the experiences were not also extraordinary in some ways. Just that there was a lack of pretentiousness somehow, a sense that the business was in the business of satisfying a basic human need, rather than providing me with some kind of pre-ordained ethnic experience.

Mixed up cultural mezzes

BODRUM CAFÉ BAR

61 Stoke Newington High Street

Helloumi, red peppers and spinach on toast, served with salad, and a fresh orange juice


The menu at Bodrum seems a bit of a cross cultural mix. There is a Turkish section at the back with the usual hot and cold mezzes, but at the front it starts with a range of fry up variations. I decide to go for something that seems a bit ‘Turklish’, as its got helloumi cheese in it, but it is served on sliced white toast.



Maybe this far down Stoke Newington High Street we are on the fringes of the concentration of Turkish cafés and restaurants, so perhaps it is hedging its bets and playing to a broader clientele. We sit outside facing the road, but at the moment it is quite quiet, and there isn’t a constant stream of passers by. Three children play on the steps of Professional Nails, two doors down. I am surprised to see they are open, I wouldn’t have thought there would be much demand for nail painting on a Sunday. A guy crosses over the road with a bag of spinach from Akdeniz Gida Pozari—I think that is probably for my breakfast. The other customers inside all seem to be English and most are having fry ups. An older couple, in their Sunday best, stand outside for a cigarette before they leave. Its quite a contrast to breakfast at Şömine.



Turklish: A mixed up cultural mezze
Alison James (1997) defines food creolisation as a form of cultural blending in which a mix of ingredients, styles and influences come together in a single meal. These blurred boundaries are easy to find once you start thinking about it. Chips and curry sauce and jacket potato with chilli con carne at one end of the spectrum, ‘fusion’ food at the other. Perhaps my favourite example comes from my time spent working at Nottingham Trent University. Most university catering departments provide a range of sandwiches so dull and tasteless that there is little to get excited about, but at Nottingham Trent, the lunch landscape shifted in the form of the onion bhaji sandwich. Granary bread, some tomato relish and a few lettuce leaves, along with sliced onion bhajis—it is a multi-cultural masterstroke, and one that sits nicely alongside my Bodrum Café breakfast.

Cook and Crang (1999) suggest that this process of hybridisation and re-localisation, spurred on by the multi-cultural culinary diversity available in places such as Hackney and the ‘circuitous geographies of flow and connection’ help construct a new contemporary Britishness. One that includes being able to pick up a frozen pack of doner kebab meat with chips and curry sauce, ‘just like from your local takeaway,’ from your local supermarket.

However, having said this, I’m not sure any food type could truly be said to be totally specific to one particular country. For example, as Sunanta (2005) points out although most people believe in an authentic Thai cuisine, it has actually been a product of transnational interactions for centuries. For example, in the 15th century, Khmer cooks introduced Indian food, such as curries; fish sauce, which is a crucial ingredient in almost every Thai dish, is a Chinese invention; 17th century contact with the West left a culinary legacy in Kanom Thong Yip, a Thai dessert modified from a French or Portuguese dish; and chillies were introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century and in combination with fish sauce, galangal, and lime, they give a distinctive flavor to Thai dishes today.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Homoerotic wrestlers and Dire Straits

TROY CAFÉ BISTRO

124 Kingsland Road

Humus, enginar, börek, imam bayaldi
and a fresh orange juice


The outside tables are all taken by men watching Brazil against Portugal in the World Cup on the screen inside the café. We take a seat at a table that is below a wall full of seemingly homoerotic photographs of oiled men wrestling with each other.



On closer inspection the accompanying text reveals them to be photographs of Turkish oil wrestlers* from the Kirkpinar festival that is held in Edirne each year. The owner, who has come over to take our order says that he oil wrestles and has done for twenty years. Apparently it happens all over Turkey and five days ago there was even some happening in Clissold Park. We order a selection of mezzes, he says that at home they eat a lot of enginar—a mix of gherkins, artichoke hearts and olives—to clean the liver. Apparently if you drink a lot, like he does, it is very good for black liver. Whatever that is.





He is a friendly, chatty guy and goes on to tell us that he is originally from Istanbul, but that he has been here for twenty seven years. He doesn’t live in Hackney though, but south of the river. He and my friend marvel at the new overground that has cut both of their journeys north from an hour and a half to twenty minutes. The food arrives, he proudly tells us it is all homemade—enjoy darlings.





As we linger over our dishes, which are all delicious, I realise that Dire Straits has been playing on a loop since the football finished. This is in contrast to most of the other places I have been so far, where music from ‘home’ has been playing. I wonder if it is more ‘real’ to play Turkish music, or is it less real. Stereotypical images of curry houses, with their flock wallpaper, also come replete with piped Indian music. Maybe places that pipe in music from ‘home’ are more for the tourist who wants an ‘authentic’ cultural experience? Perhaps there is someway of telling which music is ‘real’ and which is for show? The Turkish radio station in the Garden café seemed real, as did the quiet Turkish music in Şömine, in fact both of those seemed to be more for the staff than the customers. Dire Straits though, surely that couldn’t be anything other than real. Even for Dalston, that can’t be irony.

Ethnicity and authenticity

It is perhaps fully expected that ‘ethnic’ restaurants provide a theme park like approach to their brand experience through interior design, graphic design, staff dress and music. After all one, goes to a restaurant not just to eat in a functional, fuel like sense, but for a richer experience. I am sure we all have our favourite haunts, and the ‘ambience’ of a place is often a key part of our decision making. But can too much ‘authenticity’ lead to a sense of inauthenticity, or perhaps to a Buadrillard-like simulacrum of the hyperreal? My experience to date in Hackney leads me to think this is a complex, and inevitably contradictory, area.


*
Seen as the national sport of Turkey, oil wrestling is popular all over the country, but the most famous festival is the Kirkpinar, held in Edirne each year since 1360. Legend has it that the sport was established at this time during a campaign by the Ottoman sultan Orhan Gazi, to invade Thrace. Led by the sultan’s son, Süleyman Pasha, forty warriors seized several strongholds. At night, to relax, the soldiers began to wrestle covered in oil. Two brothers, Ali and Selim Pehlivan remained locked in combat, with neither able to gain the upper hand. The rest of the soldiers went to sleep as the brothers continued to wrestle. On waking the troops found that the brothers had fought for so long and so hard during the night that both had died. They buried them both under a fig tree in the field and continued their raids. Six years later they returned to the burial site and found that several springs has appeared around the tree, so they named the place Kirkpinar—literally forty springs. Until 1975 there was still no time limit imposed on wrestling matches at Kirkpinar, but since then bouts have been limited to thirty or forty minutes, depending on the category. The wrestlers wear tight, short leather trousers called Kispet, that are made out of water buffalo or calf leather. They cover their bodies with oil to make holding difficult and according to tradition, wrestlers oil each other’s back using an oil kettle. Around 2,000 wrestlers compete each year, with the winner being crowned Baspelhivan of the year and taking the title Champion of Turkey.

Breakast: A cultural signifier?

SÖMINE

131 Kingsland High Street

Turkish breakfast: Eggs, cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, bread, butter, jam, honey and Turkish tea

Şömine is at the crossroads with Shacklewell Lane, so to get to it I have to walk past the end of Ridley Road market. It is another hot, sunny day and Kingsland Road is busy with shoppers. I almost feel that I am abroad as I overhear so many different languages and accents. The restaurant is nearly empty of customers, just a father and daughter at the table behind me. Two Turkish women sit at tables at the back of the place and make the flatbread for the day. I notice that they are open twenty four hours and that breakfast is served from two in the morning. I wonder if the customers then are getting up for a night shift, or on their way home after an evening out.

My tea arrives in a glass mug with four lumps of sugar. I drop three in. Its a golden brown colour and the sun streaming through the open windows makes it glow. The breakfast arrives. I like the way the slabs of butter are used to separate the runny honey and jam from each other, and from the cheese. I start with an olive, and wonder if there is a correct order in which to eat it all. I know that I will go from savoury to sweet as that is what I am used to. A steady stream of people are coming in, but most either want something to take away, or are staff. I think the shift must be about to change.



The windows are all wide open and as I lean my elbow on the ledge, I watch people standing just outside, waiting for the lights to change so they can cross the road. As I sit, I wonder if breakfast is the one meal that really defines us as a particular culture or country? I notice that I am the only English person in here, unlike last night when the only Turkish people were the staff. Is this because it is breakfast, or because Şömine, with its formica tables, is not deemed ‘restaurant’ enough for non-Turkish customers?



So, is breakfast a cultural signifier?

I suppose I, and many others in England, will often go out for a curry, a pizza, or some noodles, but more often than not going out for breakfast means a traditional fry up. Sausage, bacon, eggs and tomatoes, or maybe beans, with white toast and a cuppa. Perhaps, if you are more traditionally inclined, and not too squeamish, some black pudding also. Even I, with over twenty years of vegetarianism behind me, confess to sneaking a chunk off a friend’s plate in the not too dim and distant past, but then again I’m not your usual vegetarian. From builders’ caffs to gastro pubs the fry up is known as a hangover cure, the best way to start a day’s labour, and a great companion to the Sunday papers. But how English is a full English? Is it definably so? Well, as I eat my way through Hackney, I am starting to think that not only is a fry up significantly English, but that breakfast in itself might be the last remaining meal that retains some sense of cultural signification. We may be culinary explorers from midday onwards, but before then seems strictly fry up, cereal or toast, or perhaps a croissant or two, but that’s only from over the pond, so I'm not sure it really counts. Sticky rice or Bánh Mì? Ham and cheese? Cornmeal, oats, peanut and banana porridge? Olives, cheese and jam? No? I thought not.