Shoutout to Windies 3330 Lawrence Ave E, Scarborough, ON
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Debates over what constitutes “authentic” Indian food can sometimes veer into elitism. As Brian Spooner argues, authenticity is a concept that is “determined by the choices and desires of persons seeking to establish, or strengthen, an elevated social position” (Buettner 156). Indian restaurants emerging after the 1980s in Britain claiming authenticity were doing so to contest the many “inauthentic” and “cheap” restaurants made popular in the preceding decades by working-class South Asian migrants, who created and served foods like chicken tikka masala. Attached to the notion of “authentic Indian cuisine” came attempts from elite Indian restaurant owners to separate themselves from working-class Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in particular, as well as Muslims (169). Attempts to achieve culinary “authenticity” also tend to be rooted in nostalgia for an imaginary and unchanging homeland (Mannur 28). Like what Madhur Jaffrey promotes in her cookbook, the value of an Indian dish is often determined by how closely the cook replicates a “traditional” recipe, with deviations making it fraudulent or diluted in quality (30).
This has implications for how fusion foods and foods created by Indian diasporas are perceived by both Indians and non-Indians. Being Indo-Caribbean, my cultural foods are default “fusion foods”. Whether a result of my mixed heritage or just the social intermingling of different peoples in Guyana, I grew up eating curry as much as I did eating West African cook-up, Chinese fried rice, and other dishes that do not have names but are reminiscent of all three origins. Long being considered the “bastard child of the nation”, diasporas are often measured in relation to the “homeland” and are defined by their inability to perfectly replicate their cultural modes (Mannur 42). Shani Mootoo articulates this dissonance between Indo-Caribbeans and India in her book “Out on Main Street”. Mannur provides an excerpt where the narrator is demeaned by a clerk for her inability to give the “real” names of the Indian sweets she wants to order, using instead the terms she knows from Trinidad (43). By asserting herself and her language, “she refuses to publicly affirm an exclusionary, chauvinistic version of citizenship that devalorizes and delegitimizes her experiences” as a diasporic Indo-Caribbean (44).
Though foods like chicken tikka masala is arguably a product of assimilation–arguments that I do agree with in many ways–I also see it as a testament to the strength of diasporas. Is it not admirable that despite their cuisine being seen as malodorous and unhygienic (Buettner 150-151), these migrants nevertheless found a market? As Buettner argues, Asians in Western restaurant sectors are not just passive actors being absorbed by a larger British cultural force. Trying to establish themselves “among a white population that was initially skeptical, if not outright hostile” to their presence required clever business strategies that would allow them to manoeuvre these unwelcoming spaces (147). Like Bengali migrants in the United States who capitalized off Orientalist stereotypes to peddle their wares, these South Asian restaurateurs were doing what they could to survive in the colonial capital. To say that foods like chicken tikka masala are merely tragedies in the history of South Asian cuisine, in my opinion, erases the efforts of the working-class migrants of the mid to late twentieth century.
Like chicken tikka masala, my mother’s curry would fail to be considered “authentic Indian food” by many standards and could easily be dismissed as another byproduct of colonialism pulling diasporic Indians away from their "real" cuisine. But I do not think so-called authenticity denotes quality. I see her curry as the result of a rich and unique history that survived across oceans, with new spices and flavours added along the way to reflect its changing environments. And it just tastes good. Is that not enough?