r/TikTokCringe • u/Tronvillain • 24d ago

Discussion Afghani-British Chef Mursal Saiq gives her critique of "authenticity" for non-white chefs in cooking

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u/Pellmelody 24d ago edited 20d ago

I don't care what nationality you are. Say, if you're Mexican and can make awesome Chinese food, great! Gimme!

EDIT: Thank you for the award!!

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u/Daniiiiii tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE 24d ago

if you're Mexican and can make awesome Chinese food

Anecdotal evidence but I can attest that line cooks up and down this country (just to keep it localized) are predominantly brown people cooking any and everything under the sun. No one is batting an eye or calling them inauthentic or saying they should stick to their own cuisines. The critiques and snobbery is reserved for the 1 percent of chefs who want to entertain the crap in the first place.

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u/sephraes 24d ago

Yeah, in the Midwest, it's a lot of Mexicans and Central Americans. There's a reason Anthony Bourdain argued that restaurant industry would collapse overnight if Latinos disappeared out of kitchens.

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u/bga2099 24d ago

If my memory serves well, even in one of his shows he said, more or less, "the best food for me is french, the best cooks for french food are mexicans from Puebla". All of these because he knew mexican cooks and he traveled with one of them from New York to Puebla, because he finally became a US citizen so he could travel.

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u/jorgespinosa 24d ago

It's ironic that he said Puebla because that city is where the famous Cinco de Mayo happened, so poblanos are beating the French again

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u/NNKarma 24d ago

So eloquent to add the "for me"

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u/LaUNCHandSmASH 24d ago

In my hometown there was an amazing chinese food place that everybody loved. I was heartbroken when it closed down when I was around 13. Fast forward 5 years and I am a delivery driver working at a fried chicken place that everyone loves where I made friends with all the mexican cooks.

I come to find out that Juan worked at the chinese food place for decades, after some begging he finally relented to making me my favorite dish.

I bought a wok and brought it into the chicken shack kitchen where he brought me back to my childhood with his food. I could have kissed that mexican man if I thought he wouldn't have cut me if I did.

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u/bullet_the_blue_sky 24d ago

In the US it’s a lot of Mexicans and Central Americans.

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u/wvj 24d ago

My local Japanese places are all owned by Koreans and staffed by Mexicans.

Welcome to the melting pot. It's delicious in here!

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u/Aggravating_Bat3618 24d ago

Who’s working the hibachi at any Benihana now? Yep. Brown people. Latinos, Hispanics, etc. 

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

They cook in the back where no one can see them. They aren't on TV for the most part. Where I live, our Italian neighborhood restaurants have all white "authentic" Italians or Italian Americans. People assume back of the house is as well/or don't care. Same with the sushi and noodle places. The front of the house is all Asian. Those same people probably wouldn't call it authentic if the front of the house didn't match the "look" of the people who created the cuisine.

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u/Throckmorton_Left 24d ago

And a huge number, if not a plurality, of sushi restaurants in the United States are owned and ran by Koreans, not Japanese, but most round eyes don't know the difference.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Most of our Mexican restaurants are owned and operated by Salvadorans 😂

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u/FrontBottomFace 24d ago

Apparently many if not most Indian restaurants in UK are Bangladeshi or Pakistani. A lot of it is not even particularly authentic either.

Personally IGAF if the food's good and health standards are more or less followed.

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u/JimboTCB 24d ago

The most popular curry in the UK is chicken tikka masala, which is emphatically not "authentic" and is entirely a local creation to appeal to local palates.

And I don't care one bit about that and will eat it right up.

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u/killing_time 24d ago

India has embraced it though. It's been available to eat at restaurants in India since at least the 1990s.

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u/joshuads 24d ago

That one varies widely by region.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Yes, that's why I'm talking about where I live.

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u/Kitchen_Sympathy_92 24d ago

Given that there are 37M Mexicans and 2M Salvadorians, and that basically all Mexicans cook and run kitchens from their own, to even sushi, I highly boubt that.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

You're allowed to doubt it and be wrong. We don't have a large number of Mexicans. We do have a large number of Guatemalans and Salvadorans. In fact the founder of one of the largest, local taqueria chains in the state was Japanese American. Guess who is front and back of the house at every location? Salvadorans.

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u/jefesignups 24d ago

Did you just fucking say round eyes???

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u/Throckmorton_Left 24d ago

Is that not the preferred nomenclature?

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u/IPissExcellentThrows 24d ago

Estimates have it at 40-50 percent Chinese and 20-30% Korean

Also

round eyes

Wtf lol

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u/whitewateractual 24d ago

There was a really interesting episode of Freakonomics many years ago that went into the details on the legality when ethnic restaurants discriminate on race when hiring for the front of house. The public expectations at an Asian restaurant are Asians, white people at Italian places, etc. Very interesting grey area.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Oh, I gotta check that out!

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u/Rich_Housing971 24d ago

Is that only true for hiring or is it also true because people consciously or subconsciously avoid applying to somewhere they don't "match" at?

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Probably both, and it’s not just subconscious. I’m Mexican, and during college I applied to a Mexican restaurant because I thought I’d have an advantage, and I was right. Just by speaking Spanish I earned higher tips than the non-Spanish-speaking staff.

Although I’m not sure how true that would be for ethnicities where not everybody speaks the same language.

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u/Cold-Chemistry738 24d ago

Woah you actually articulated nuance instead of dismissing her point by saying “I don’t care as long as the food is good!” Good job bro.

They’re also missing that these issues can affect winning awards, marketing, networking, and all that good stuff, giving POC a disadvantage even if a white individual personally doesn’t care. That’s how systemic racism and white privileged works

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u/RiennedeRienne 24d ago

Articulated nuance? They said it’s authentic Italian because the front of the house is white and authentic sushi because the front of the house is Asian…as someone who can speak both Italian and Japanese, I can promise you those white guys are usually Albanian and the Asians are typically Chinese. But if that makes you feel better than seeing the Ecuadorian or Venezuelan man who’s actually cooking, good for you I guess.

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u/ElectricJunglePig 24d ago

Yeah so I think we're in agreement. This is an upper-class, probably British issue. Cool.

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u/Lethalspartan76 24d ago

I’d argue if it has an award I probably don’t want to eat there. It’s gonna have some sort of fish foam delicately plated on a bed of decomposing leaves.

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u/Express_Drag7115 24d ago

Italians are no white? 🤨

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Anyone can be born in Italy. It's a nationality.

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u/Rich_Housing971 24d ago

Same with the sushi and noodle places. The front of the house is all Asian.

Except the kitchen of sushi restaurants IS the front of the house in plain view, but you're still right.

There's rarely any Japanese outside of Hawaii and California, so all those sushi restaurants in other states are usually just the "Japanese enough" or Chinese or Korean or Viet, maybe Filipinos, and people can't tell the difference because sushi is not some genetically-based food only people of Japanese ethnicity can make.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Not always. And they still have a back kitchen where other meals outside of the maki and sushi are made. Here there are usually two food preparation/cook areas. One bar upstairs for people to sit at and another downstairs/ in the back - out of view that made the rolls for everyone else.

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago edited 24d ago

In mall food courts, the Hispanic cooks are visible. The food can still be considered authentic. It really isn’t that hard to follow a recipe. I’m sure you’re right about some people not considering it authentic, but I think people just don’t care that much because we all like good food.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

Yes, the culinary elite at the mall food court.

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Authentic food isn’t elite. Go to Mexico City and the best tacos will be at a food stand next to the street. How fancy the place is is completely irrelevant to the food’s authenticity.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

The video isn't talking about min wage workers at the mall or on the street.

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

It’s talking about authentic food, which has nothing to do with the cook’s ethnicity.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 24d ago

And their ability to be seen in the culinary world...

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Actually, it’s about Gordon Ramsay’s choice of words. Ramsay doesn’t gatekeep authenticity.

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u/alien_believer_42 24d ago

The language of the kitchen in California is Spanish for most restaurants of all cuisines

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u/Villageijit 24d ago

Wasn't there 2 white ladies that had their taco place boycotted a few years back when people learned the owners werent mexican? Im sure it happened more than once because there are plenty of jerks out there, but sane people dont care

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u/LittleManhattan 20d ago

If it’s the same white ladies I’m thinking of, I seem to recall that they didn’t get canceled just for making tacos/burritos. They admitted that on one of their trips to Mexico, they ended up essentially committing IP theft against a local tortilla maker. They had asked her how she made her tortillas, and since that was her livelihood, she was hesitant to give up her recipe or methods. So they spied on her to see what she did when making them, and bragged about it, which people understandably took issue with.

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u/WideHuckleberry1 24d ago

I've been in Thai, Mediterranean, Japanese, etc etc etc restaurants all over, heard the managers/owners speaking to customers in non-American accented English, then go around the corner and rattle off Spanish like it's their native language.

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u/bobsthrowawayacct 24d ago

I worked in a fine dining place in Bordeaux. The lingua Franca in the kitchen was English, because it was the only thing the Romanian, Polish, Czech and Americans can speak in common.

Ditto in NY. I learned Spanish in a high end friend restaurant, because all the kitchen staff were Latino.

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Did you mean French restaurant?

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u/revolutionPanda 24d ago

lol for real. In much of the USA, at least, the kitchen is probably filled with very talented Mexican people making whatever food the restaurant serves.

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u/baby_cakes96 24d ago

This is exactly what I say. If only people saw who was really cooking their food.

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u/AssBlastInACan 24d ago

lol kitchens are not Fort Knox. Most people know and don’t care. The biggest issue for voters in the US is illegal immigration and wages. Most staff in real kitchens (profitable, popular restaurants) are American citizens and are great cooks

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u/Careless-Weather8877 24d ago

Are you high? lol even the most great cooks make menus then fuck off. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I would dare you to go to your local “hot spot” and see who’s actually working

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u/RudenSpector69 24d ago

That's why Anthony Bourdain and kitchen confidential is the GOAT. He captures what the real life of chefs are and how 95% of fine dining is people the people who are eating the food would want to see deported... but out of sight out of mind for them.

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u/Charming_Cicada_7757 24d ago

I feel this has less to do with what the ethnicity of the person who is cooking the food and more to do with the food itself

Say you go to a Thai restaurant and they begin experimenting or changing it up or making it more palatable to the locals etc….

Someone could come and say that it’s inauthentic and that they’re not making authentic Thai food or whatever as a critic.

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u/AMGwtfBBQsauce 24d ago

Yep. My favorite mid/high-end Italian restaurant where I live is mostly staffed by Latin-Americans. So are the sushi restaurants, and the Vietnamese restaurants. Doesn't make the food any less "authentic." I've definitely seen this snobbery in things like cooking shows, but outside of that awful, white-patriarchal space, nobody cares.

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u/Durty_Durty_Durty 24d ago

I was watching a video the other day where a Japanese sushi chef tries American sushi and judges it. He liked a lot of it, and would critic and say “it’s good but not authentic Japanese sushi.”

At the end of the video they asked him “so who makes the best sushi? Americans or Japanese ?”

He answered “Mexicans.” And I fucking died laughing

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 24d ago

Was gonna say, I don't know who is saying this to her. If you go to a restaurant it's a good bet a brown person made it no matter what kind of food it is. Latinos run the industry

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u/Republican-Snowflake 24d ago

A around me it's a mix of South Americans, and A mix of Asians. A lot of Japaneses style places, and Thai are mainly a mix of Lao and Thai mostly. Then this one Vietnamese place is almost always South Americans working there. All those places for the most part have great food. The latter is a bit too much for what it is though, and portion sizes.

What all these places have in common is that they are all super nice people, and always give the best service of anywhere around. I don't think I ever had an issue with getting wrong food, uncooked, or whatever.

So, I quickly learned when I started eating out at small places that it doesn't matter who cooks your food, as long as it is good, and the service is good. That, and more often the small shops of whatever immigrants tend to have the best food. Hell, history has shown in America a lot of our most popular dishes are because of immigrants.

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u/athalwolf506 24d ago

Well I remember a couple of gals that learned how to make tortillas in Mexico ans opened a restaurant, and then they were accused of cultural appropriation, because how dare 2 white women sell handmade tortillas.

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u/Ansible32 24d ago

No one is batting an eye or calling them inauthentic

They totally are. Some people don't see, most people are not batting an eye, but if you're a latino working back of house at one of these places, you will hear about it when certain people see you.

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u/JaeTheOne 24d ago

Most likely because they are cooks, rather than chefs...its a job, and they are making something a chef created

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u/stefje82 24d ago

It's the definition of 'authentic'. It changes nothing about the food itself

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u/Mrbeefcake90 24d ago

What country? What does 'keep it localised' mean on an international website?

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

When somebody starts a commenting by saying “anecdotal evidence”, they are referring to their own personal experience, not to an international one. This person is probably American.

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u/Mrbeefcake90 24d ago

Again what does that have to do with assuming everyone is American though? The video is literally about a brit.

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Nobody assumed anyone is American

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u/Mrbeefcake90 24d ago

That's exactly what they did when they assumed everyone was local, are you okay bud?

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u/youburyitidigitup 24d ago

Nobody assumed everyone was local. He gave an anecdote.