Menu project

Often when you look in a telephone book there is one section for Asian and if you are lucky there are subcategories such as Japanese, Chinese or Korean. One of my favorite restaurants when I go home is an “Asian” restaurant, the name is Yu’s Mandarin. During winter break when I took my best friend, Eric there his mom told him to take a menu because “Laurie’s family knows Asian food”. The menu is simple and unadorned but the same couldn’t be said for the restaurant. There are golden lions outside the entrance and even more inside to greet you. The waiting area is small but there is a row of seating along the wall. There are Japanese language magazines on a table and even a shoji screen next to the bar. There is a podium that takes your party’s name which always has a red banner on it with golden Chinese characters. The hostess is always a woman and more often than not is a young women in her 20s. She’s usually dressed in a cheongsam or at least has chopsticks in her hair. There are lucky bamboo plants and bamboo planters everywhere along with a small bubbling rock fountain.
The menu is interesting because there is a picture of people cooking and a blurb that reads, “For an unbelievable dining experience, enjoy superior Chinese cooking as you watch our chefs masterfully prepare traditional dishes and house specialties behind a magnificent glass backdrop”. There is no way that this cannot be food pornography. Sometimes you can see a chef hand making noodles through this glass window and it is quite showy. Usually all you can see are chefs turning woks and seeing huge red flames.
The rest of the menu is all in English with Chinese character subheadings except for the last page which is only in Chinese Characters and Korean Hangul script. The items on the Chinese/Korean language menu aren’t clearly delineated as different from the front pages but there are quite different prices and the numbers don’t match up to the numbers on the English menu. I’ve gone to this restaurant with different groups of people one being friends and the other family. When I go with my family we eat at the big tables where they have lazy susans but there are always dishes that I can’t find on the English language menu. Clearly there are two markets that they are trying to cater to. One is white Americans and the other is Chinese, Koreans and Japanese speaking Americans who crave traditional, “authentic” cuisine that may seem odd, unusual or disgusting to the general population.
However, the items that are clearly made for white Americans cannot be clearly separated either unless you or other guests you are dining with know that certain dishes are not authentic such as General Tso’s chicken, Sweet and Sour Chicken and Pork, Orange Chicken, Sesame Chicken, Fried Rice, Crab Rangoon, Mongolian Beef, Chow Mein and basically any fried food especially egg rolls. Most of the “authentic” dishes are more Americanized. The egg rolls for example have thicker skins and are full of meat instead of traditional egg rolls with thin crispy skins filled with carrots, bean sprouts, cabbage and other thinly sliced fresh vegetables. One time I ordered an eggplant dish in English and what I got at the table was heavily sauced, fried eggplant when I was expecting a dish that I had ordered before in Mandarin which was fresh eggplant with a light spicy sauce with fresh basil leaves and boiled peanuts. I find it extremely interesting that the chefs and wait staff will vary a dish depending on who is the perceived customer.
“Traditional” Asian dishes use vegetables as their main focus and meat serves as a garnish but with American food it’s the other way around. They don’t say Americans are meat and potatoes for no reason! Most people assume that “Asian” food is greasy, full of refined carbohydrates such as noodles and rice, and with tons of MSG lobbed on. Asian food doesn’t need to be that way. Asian cultures are full of fresh foods that are locally grown or raised. In Japanese restaurants if the fish for sushi is not fresh then you are in trouble. In Chinese restaurants you are given the impression that the food is not necessarily fresh because there are no indications to tell you otherwise. You can hide taste and freshness with spices, lots of oil, and MSG.
The atmosphere of the restaurant itself is interesting. The wait staff are all male and either Chinese or Korean while the busing staff are usually Hispanic males. In this setting there are few females on staff so women aren’t hyper sexualized as they are in other Asian restaurants. It seems that the décor is more stereotypical of an “Asian” restaurant with a golden Buddha at the front, boxed dolls, Asian wall fans, silk paintings, and glass paintings all over the walls. I feel like they are here to reassure non-Asians that this is an authentic restaurant full of the dishes and décor they have become accustomed to. By marketing to both groups simultaneously they can have save space by having almost like two restaurants in one. They can fulfill the expectations of Chinese and Korean diners seeking Chinese cuisine but also the palate and visual expectations that westerners have created. What is particularly problematic is that Westerners begin to believe that the found served to them in the restaurant is the same stuff that Chinese Americans eat at home everyday. This only reiterates the stereotypes of Asians as all the same and of opium dens and the like.
I don’t necessarily think that we should necessarily accuse Asian American business owners of selling out when they create dishes with the American palate in mind. However, I feel that if one is only making these dishes only to earn a living that is wrong. Food plays a huge role in cultural identity and if chefs are deliberately distorting these dishes then they run the risk of distorting the cultural identity they put out as well as their own identity.