“Global food” has a bad ring to it. We inevitably think of industrialized, delocalized products without roots in any specific culinary tradition. It is the convenient, accessible, and affordable stuff we may find in any supermarket or corner store around the world: the inoffensive bread, the bland but versatile cheese, the sweet and fat and calorically rich snacks we mindlessly much on while watching a movie on our couch.
At a time when growing segments of consumers (especially affluent ones) are keen on finding authenticity in cultural identity, eager to have access to food with clear origins, made by actual people with stories and skills honed over years –if not generations, fusion food is not as appealing as it used to be either. These days, fusion often carries connotations of gimmickry and artificiality: the invention by chefs or food company that want to differentiate themselves from competitors and try to push the envelope of what’s acceptable to gain a following. Compounded with the social media effect, in which it is increasingly difficult to acquire visibility, fusion can at times turn into random experimentation based on throwing stuff together and seeing what sticks, especially if it is visually appealing. From that point of view, outrageousness is not necessarily a bad thing…
Against this background, chef Christiaan Stoop at the three-Michelin start restaurant Taian Table in Shanghai has taken a different route. What if food were truly borderless? What if we had the opportunity to create our own dishes based on curiosity and the exploration of ingredients and techniques, regardless of their provenance? What if flavors, textures, and smells were our only guides in innovating our culinary habits? While many of us may already –and modestly—do that in our own home kitchens, chef Stoops takes the game to a completely different level. I had the opportunity to meet him at NYU Shanghai for a conversation during the non-credit course “Understanding our World through Food.”
Like other fine dining chefs, he is incessantly visiting new places and gaining exposure to a variety of culinary cultures and networking with professional and producers who introduce him to unfamiliar practices. And then he starts experimenting with his team. When I visited him, Taian Table was proposing its fifty-fourth menu. Each one is the result of a trial-and-error process that takes place in a separate kitchen. Ideas may emerge from all kinds of sources, including the other team members. The skeleton of the menu sequence is posted on a white board, together with snapshots of attempts, observations, and notes for the next try. The work-in-progress is then shared with diners to gauge their reactions, and the feedback is incorporated in the development of the dish. Chef Stoop may not use this expression, but this method reflects many elements that in other contexts could fall under the umbrella of design thinking. Everything is documented, both textually and visually, creating a repository to recipes that traces the growth and transformation of the restaurant.
The menu is tested not only for flavor and coherence, but also in feasibility, consistency, and reproducibility. In fact, once launched, the menu is then introduced to the other Taian Table in Guangzhou, implemented by a separate team which is expected to deliver at the same level. The fine dining environment makes clients more open to enjoy experimentation –and many eagerly wait for each new menu, while the experimentation itself, together with immaculate service and great design, contributes to maintaining the restaurant at the highest level (I oohed and ahhd at the beauty and the tactile richness of the tableware several times).
What has all this to do with borderless cuisine? That is the description that Chef Stoop prefers when discussing his work. He is adamant in refusing the label of fusion as limiting and misleading. A single dish at Taian Table may include, say, Korean flavors, Chinese techniques, and Western ingredients that are fused together not for the surprise’s sake or to shock guests, but to deliver the best culinary experience possible. Shanghai is the perfect place for this sort of culinary exploration. Its food scene is in constant evolution, with establishments opening and closing at neck breaking pace and trends quickly appearing and disappearing in the relentlessly shifting digital foodscape of local social media. At a time when Chinese diners are turning their attention from international fare to recognizable local and regional cuisines, artisanal ingredients, and traditional techniques, chef Stoop offers something well beyond the current guo chao (national wave, 国潮) that often turns intangible heritage (非遗) into a commercial branding strategy to make foods more credible and appealing.
His culinary approach reminds us that food has never cared much for frontiers. After all, in antiquity wheat from the Middle East made its way all the way to China, while Chinese tea took the West and the Americas by storm in more recent times. Sometimes new crops were introduced by conquerors and empires as a tool to establish their political power; other times entrepreneurial merchants in search of uncharted markets, audacious farmers willing to expand their cultivations, or just hungry citizens looking for a way to survive contributed to the global diffusion of unfamiliar products and the methods behind them. In recent years, social media has supported the global circulation of preferences, quality standards, and taste categories that, while allowing consumers to broaden their horizons, also brings a certain level of erasure of local specificities.
Taian Table has embraced an attitude toward these dynamics that is both playful and dead serious. As a foreigner of German and Dutch background, chef Stoop could easily be accused of cultural appropriation, especially in a city like Shanghai whose history is marked by colonialism. However, many local traditions emerged from the encounter –granted, frequently not peacefully—between foreigners and Chinese migrants from all corners of the country. Contemporary Shanghai is the result of this ongoing hybridization that has made it a true melting pot. At Taian Table, Western culinary skills and products undergo the same treatment as Asian ones; none are favored above others or considered intrinsically superior or more advanced. None of the techniques and the ingredients are disrespected or exploited in its perceived exoticism to feed some misled sense of adventurousness in customers –both Asian and Western. The Asian members of team organically contribute ideas, knowhow, and sensibility to the development of menus and individual dishes, so that they reflect not only seasonality and quality but also cultural appropriateness.
This kind of cuisine is not rare in fine dining, a cultural and business environment that favors daring choices and innovative approaches. At times the weight of local traditions and established culinary methods may not allow for the kind of subdued but considerable boldness that chef Stoop can display in a place like Shanghai. However, few chefs intentionally and explicitly embrace the challenge of elaborating a truly borderless cuisine.