Food Without Borders
Morgan Tan


    “Amen.” My family raises their bowed heads from saying grace and looks up to see a woman with a steamer-laden stainless steel cart promising fluffy char siu bao and sticky har gow looking on. My mother immediately straightens and starts speaking in rapid Cantonese, stopping quickly to ask the eleven uncomprehending pairs of eyes how many plates of sticky rice they will eat. Words are tossed like candy between my mother and the server, tempting to understand and yet so far away. The sounds are foreign to my ears, but the steamer baskets packed with bite-sized foods are familiar, so I don’t mind the incomprehension I feel. There’s just something about being around this table that brings our family together. My sister and I forget, momentarily, what we were fighting about in the car, and sit side by side stuffing our faces. For a whole twenty minutes, peace.
    Everything about that restaurant is familiar to me even now. The fish tank with neon coral, the lobsters stuffed into a tank, and the supersized lazy susan are all nostalgic reminders of my childhood. As a small child, I didn’t have a problem with my language disconnect; pointing, basic vocabulary, and just silently swiping a dumpling with my chopsticks sufficed. However, as I grew older, the sensation of separation increased, quite literally in my language barrier. My friends would talk about all of the Korean food that they had eaten with words that flowed easily off the tongue. I was an outsider, like a kindergartener who struggled to read the words that their teacher took a cursory glance at and understood. I was uncomfortable, but what of it? I could take solace in the topics that we could connect on. Besides, not many of my friends were Chinese, or ate dim sum. Still, the expansion of my bubble poked holes in my mostly contented state.
    My grandfather lived in Penang, Malaysia, before he moved to the US. When he spoke, he often reminisced about his childhood, and inevitably, food was a large part of it. Thus, it was our mission to find authentic Malaysian takeout for his birthday, each year bringing a trip to a different restaurant.
    “But Momma,” I asked on one trip, “isn’t Grandpa’s favorite food dim sum from the restaurant Schezwan?”
    She laughed, confusing me. “Schezwan isn’t very authentic. In fact, it’s very Americanized.”
    Never before had I considered that what I was eating wasn’t really Chinese. I felt cheated of my culture. How was I to know what was authentic? Americanized food brought images of watery broccoli, or grainy rice and a couple scallions, labeled “fried rice”. It was natural then, that I would only find authentic Chinese food delicious, anything else wouldn’t taste nearly as good. I began a quest for authenticity in food, and in hindsight, myself, to “prove” my Chinese identity. 
    As time passed, I felt myself being consumed by drawing lines between the foods that I ate. Was it Thai or Vietnamese? Was this Mediterranean food really Mediterranean, or a watered down version of what I would find in its country of origin? Was the chicken tikka masala I made ignorant if it wasn’t authentic, would it draw the scoffs of my Indian friends? I looked disdainfully at anything labeled “Asian-inspired”, knowing that it was probably American with a splash of soy sauce and a dash of ginger. Food wasn’t something to find joy in and bond over, it was an exclusive club that was only available to those who had “earned it”. I started to realize that this lens was clouding my love for- quite simply- good food. Food without borders, without one single origin. Food that was made by those who didn’t know everything about every culture but could still cook something delicious, drawing inspiration from all over the globe. Even if I couldn’t put a name to a dish I’d eaten all my life, I could still relish its taste. 
    Food is a largely wordless language. A meal can be enjoyed in a room packed full of people, and just the same in the solitude of a silent backyard. My food may be a conglomerate of many different cuisines, but it has the ability to sustain people from all corners of the earth, regardless of ethnicity or cultural background. There is much importance in making authentic recipes to give people an untainted window into the beauty of a culture, but there’s also something to be said about dishes that know no borders or limits. Food is an incredibly powerful thing: it can bring us together, overcome language barriers, fuse cultures and rise above bitterness or hate. In this, it finds its true purpose.