FYI - This was about 5.5 pages double-spaced, thought I would be environmentally friendly by posting online instead of printing!
Justin Royal – Menu Project
March 4, 2008
Chef Wang’s Asian Buffet – Murfreesboro, TN
Twenty, possibly even ten, years ago, mentioning the words “Chinese food” in Murfreesboro, TN would have yielded responses such as “You mean fried dog and fortune cookies?” At the time, responses such as these were at least somewhat understandable: Asian Americans comprised a shockingly low percentage of the Murfreesboro population, and most ideas of what “Asian” food was were based primarily off of frozen dinners at the local grocery store.
Yet in the past decade, Murfreesboro has topped many lists of America’s fasting growing population, with a huge first- and second-generation Asian American population (mainly Chinese and Laotian) – one primary reason being Nissan’s main production plant opening in a nearby city, whose jobs paid well and required hard physical labor rather than proficient English skills.
As the Asian American population in Murfreesboro began to grow, so did its food outlets. A few family-owned eateries opened to cater exclusively to the Asian community, but the vast majority of white residents remained clueless as to what “Asian” food actually was. Clueless, that is, until the restaurant industry discovered an ingenious way to make white patrons feel ‘cultured’, adventurous, and knowledgeable about Asian cuisine without having to use chopsticks, AND to consume shockingly large portions of food in shockingly low amounts of time – Asian buffets.
While Asian buffets exist all across the country, they serve a unique role in Murfreesboro – for many residents, they embody all they will ever know (and will care to know) about Asian food. At this point, it should probably be noted that Asian is nearly synonymous with Chinese, but restaurant owners feared the schema of “Chinese” food would discourage many potential customers for fear of accidentally consuming cat, dog, or some other domesticated animal. To this end, many Murfreesboro-ers’s definition of Asian food embodies the following food: General Tso’s chicken, Chinese donuts, sweet n’ sour chicken, lo mein noodles, and 5 other variations of chicken that have been cooked in gallons of oil and loaded with nearly toxic levels of MSG.
Eating at Asian buffets in Murfreesboro, and listening to the other patrons, is simultaneously interesting and comical: “Asian food is so good!” “How do Asian people eat all this food and stay skinny?” Many patrons don’t realize that out of all the people in the restaurant, probably 1-2% are actually Asian Americans (who are most likely there to work and not eat). The industry is wildly successful: how else could you deliver a taste similar to the greasiness of McDonald’s but let customers brag about expanding their culinary horizons at the end of the day?
Chef Wang’s is the most well-known of the Asian buffets in Murfreesboro, and I chose to examine their menu because they actually do offer a few menu items found in authentic Chinese restaurants, the most notable being a few types of the dumplings you can find at dim sum. Walking into the door of Chef Wang’s, you are greeted and seated by a hostess wearing a Japanese kimono (even though there is not a single Japanese menu item), and automatically given plates for the buffet (unless you specify otherwise). As a local restaurant reviewer described, the restaurant provides “a family atmosphere, with traditional Asian music playing in the background.” (traditional Asian music? I mean, the musics of India, China, Japan, and all the other Asian countries are all SO similar, let’s just use one adjective – Asian – to describe all of them!) Service is minimal, with server-customer interactions usually limited to the server toting away the dozens of dirty plates accumulated at each table.
The actual menu at Chef Wang’s is relatively straightforward – basically, for those who want their entrée prepared fresh (instead of sitting on top of a food warmer for the past six hours), or for those with smaller appetites, any buffet item can be ordered a la carte. The buffet costs $5.99 for lunch and $12.99 at dinner – the price increase being attributable to the all-you-can-eat crab legs served at dinner. I do have to give the restaurant some credit for the fact that preparing such large quantities of food is no easy task. Different reports have calculated anywhere between 120-150 buffet items available at any given time. As mentioned before, may of the “authentic” items on the buffet are usually some type of meat drenched in oil, garnished by a few decorative vegetables – stark contrast to the standard diet of many Asian countries, in which plain rice accounts for the majority of daily calories, and meat is a garnish, not a main course. Luckily, for customers too scared to venture into the unknown, the buffet also includes classic American foods such as macaroni n cheese, chicken fingers, Jell-O, and pepperoni pizza. Convincing one’s friends to eat at Chef Wang’s is usually no problem due to the inclusion of these foods – those with less adventurous taste buds can be comforted by knowing that Chef Wang’s also serves “real food.”
The owners of Chef Wang’s are perfect examples of food pornographers – they KNOW what they are putting on their buffet lines is a far cry from real Chinese food. Yet, by embellishing their buffet plates with Chinese characters and listing their buffet items in Chinese (with English translations), they try to lead customers into thinking that they are having an authentic and novel cultural experience. Not surprisingly, a good friend who speaks and writes Chinese fluently that few, if any, of the translations are accurate, most of the characters are non-existent, and that many of the English words used to describe the menu items don’t even translate into Chinese. When I asked her if she planned on saying anything to the managers, her response was, “Why would they care? Have you ever seen any actual Asian Americans eating in here anyways? The customers don’t know if the translations are right.” In a sense, what she says is true – if white patrons can continue eating the “exotic” menu items at Chef Wang’s without knowing that what they’re actually eating may be impossible to find anywhere in Asia, and without knowing that the Chinese-English translations are completely fake, does it really matter in the end?
Yes, it does matter, because especially when language barriers are involved, we learn much of what we know about a culture based on its food. Logically, false information about that culture’s food leads to false information about that culture in general. Furthermore, ensuring patrons that they are eating the “real stuff” leads to potential catastrophes later on – imagine going to eat dim sum with a Chinese family after assuring them that you “loved the dim sum at Chef Wang’s!” How would you feel after a plate of chicken feet arrives at your table, and everybody expects you to be the first person to dig in? How would you feel after finally going to a REAL, authentic Chinese restaurant and asking the waitress why General Tso’s chicken isn’t on the menu?
The aforementioned situations are realistic possibilities that not only embarrass the consumer but frustrate those in the restaurant industry who are NOT food pornographers. The mother of my best friend owns a small Vietnamese grocery store, which includes a small eating area that serves dishes such as pho and bun rieu. These authentic Vietnamese dishes don’t fit Murfreesboro’s mental schema of Asian food, and often lead potential customers wondering where the ‘real stuff’ is. Luckily, there’s still a venue for her dishes because of the ever-increasing Asian American population in the city. Ms. Senboutarath feels no need to disguise any aspects of her dishes in an attempt to appease the white customer’s palate, and while she’s made a comfortable living for herself and her family serving a predominantly Asian American clientele, white customers typically regard the place as “too ethnic” and uncomfortable. In some ways, their feelings are understandable – are struggling with potential language barriers, dealing with unfamiliar menu names, and not understanding relevant manners and etiquette really worth the prize of “true” ethnic food, when an all-you-can-eat buffet with an atmosphere as comfortable as McDonald’s is right down the street?
In conclusion, I by no means suggest that Chef Wang’s, or any other “Asian” buffet, is an offense to the restaurant industry or the Asian American community – clearly, they’ve succeeded in providing a relatively affordable and fast way for anybody to consume a month’s supply of MSG. But what happens when the only knowledge whites have about Asian food is based solely on these buffets? The menu items are clearly not accurate depictions of the standard Asian American diet, but they provide the typical Murfreesboroan’s sole image of what Asian food is, and consequently, who Asian Americans are. Furthermore, because housing in Murfreesboro tends to be segregated by race, eating may be one of the only venues for communication. But by never venturing into eateries like those of Ms. Senboutarath’s, some people remain under the impression that Asian American women wear kimonos every day, and that Asian American families eat General Tso’s chicken, Sesame Beef, and strawberry Jell-O for dinner.
