José Faus: Cultural Meanders | The food table as melting pot

Super Tortas Pachuca, 1706 Central Ave.

I am an immigrant. I confess this as easily as I would admit to a stomachache, or a trying moment courtesy of the daily grind. I don’t mask what can be an uncomfortable truth. I come from somewhere else and participate vigorously in matters that pertain to citizenship, celebrating the varied chapters that are our immigrant story.

As a concerned citizen, I’ve heard the nation’s culinary patrimony is at risk of losing the traditional values manifest in the cuisine that has defined these United States of America. The fiber of meat and potatoes cooking is under assault. Just what is threatened?

Hamburgers and hot dogs, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and the gluttony of Thanksgiving? Or roasted ham with pineapple wedges, syrupy, marshmallow-drenched sweet potatoes and collard greens. Is it the classic ketchup on meatloaf, biscuits and gravy? Maybe crawfish boils, clam chowder and lobster rolls. Could it be Detroit, Chicago and New York-style pizza? Fried Spam and chipped beef with gravy, or Chef Boyardee and Rice-a-Roni. Some cry over three-bean salad and cornbread. Salmon patties and corn chowder? Corned beef and cabbage with parsley buttered potatoes?

I seriously doubt any of these dishes came from one place but are instead an amalgam of influences. Though I will always question the provenance of hot dogs, the melting pot is real at the food table. Who can claim potato salad with a serious face, yet there it is, top-shelf and constant at the picnic table. The states are a cornucopia of abundant sources.

This country set a rich table before me. I loved hamburgers from the get-go, and Chinese food always. A good hamburger, once a ritualistic walk in the neighborhood, now a mix of desire and nostalgia. I’m still captive to it but prefer to make my own when the craving overwhelms. Nowadays, I make pilgrimages for smoked meats and sides fueled by the first rack of ribs bought with my own money when I was 16 from a shrine that 52 years later still draws me back.

Early on in my culinary trips, The Chinese restaurant was king. Egg rolls, wontons and egg drop soup, pepper beef and broccoli, and the mysterious buffet where the nightmare of menu selection was exorcised, a discovery that still floors me to this day. The modern buffet, a democratic mix of costillas en salsa verde, beans, baked chicken, mashed potatoes and corn, egg rolls, sweet and sour pork. Chinese in time transitions to Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, and always spring rolls, curries and phos. Speaking of curries, I can’t forget the sublime embrace of Indian spices.

Working in the Westside, I consumed the recipes passed from generation to generation, to generation. Settled dishes and tastes, flavorful sauces, were a comfort that gave the lie to the commercial chains that always felt a cut below grade. In time, added flavors arrived, a banquet encompassing the iconic traditions of the 32 federal states of Mexico. Riding a wave of Central and South American migrants, the dinner table expanded, the offerings enticed, the taste buds fired up.

The influx fueled renovation and innovation. Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, which in my wayward teens was a swell of decaying houses, sagging porches hosting beat-up couches, near private clubs with dimly lit parking lots, transformed to reconfigured streets, restaurants, specialty shops, extending from 5th to 18th Street. That surge brought a cuisine surprising in its diversity and divine in its complexity. Man, I swear I eat like a god.

And the city grows. New arrivals settle, provide the labor to construct and renovate properties, defeat the surrender to neglect and expand the limits, creating communities in strip malls, or out of the way enclaves, all the while growing a tax base in need of expanding. The sights and sounds permeate across neighborhoods. A Day of the Dead procession invigorates a street, releases mischievous Catrinas to meander among the crowds eager to pose and celebrate the masquerade of parade, the pageantry of celebration that defines a vibrant metropolis.

The shelves of stores fill with increasing choices once so exotic and new, now commonplace, tried and true. The smells of tortillerias and panaderias wake the senses, fuel cravings for pan dulce. The turn in the weather brings the mobile food truck courts with picnic tables. Everywhere the holy garnish of cilantro, onion, thinly sliced radishes and lime wedges, and sauces, from smoky and mild, to religiously hot, downed with liquados, and paletas.

Cultural homogenization should never be the end goal of anything. Let flavors simmer and mix through trial and error, not edicts driven by fear and greed. A young man once asked me if I liked the food I was eating, a rich plate of Somali stews, rice, salad and a banana. I said, “Of course, you are so lucky to have this every day.” Through a grimace he tells me he is surprised I seek it out as he has become enamored with fast food, hamburgers and Chinese carryout.

I think this is blasphemy akin to self-loathing, but then I take a deep breath and recall how I was that same kid. With time I realized not everything is better because of its newness, but because it becomes part and parcel of my familiar. Let us keep sitting at tables rich in flavors, complex in textures, pungent in odors, but always enticing in possibilities.

Photos by Jim Barcus