The debates about race and racism that have shaken the US may have started influencing food TV and the representations of world cuisines.
Food TV won’t be able to keep itself much longer out of the debate about race and racism in America. A sign of what may be coming is how the Bravo reality competition Top Chef dealt with the issue in episode three of the current season, titled “Pan-African Portland.” Shot in Portland, OR, during the pandemic, this is the show’s most racially diverse season to date: only four of its fifteen contestants are white. At least in terms of representation, the producers have definitely made an effort to cast chefs from different backgrounds.
In the episode, the contestants were asked to cook dishes inspired by the African diaspora. To top it off, alumni Kwame Onwuachi, who explains his background is Jamaican, Nigerian, Trinidadian, and Creole from Louisiana, and Gregory Gourdet, of Haitian descent, were tasked to guide the chefs in the discovery of unfamiliar flavors, ingredients, and culinary traditions connected with Africa. In other words, they played the role of informants and educators that African Americans are often supposed to take on to explain their culture and their plights to the rest of the nation, regardless of whether they want to do it or not. Also importantly, Onwuachi and Gourdet sat at the judges’ table with long-standing host Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and Gail Simmons, who very sensibly all limited their observations to matter-of-fact issues of execution without venturing too much into fraught cultural issues.
Most of the contestants were clearly not very familiar with the task at hand although, as chef Onwuachi pointed out, “You can’ talk about American food without talking about West African food.” Also accurately, he observed that the chefs “had been exposed to African cuisines even if they did not know it,” as those culinary traditions are historical quite central to the development of food culture in the United States. Later on in the episode, Onwuachi stated: “This inspired the world, and it needs to be respected.” Gourdet is less vocal and politically direct, but nevertheless strives to help the chefs to understand the relevance of the cuisines they are “discovering.” In fact, the producers are well aware that the culinary traditions of the African diaspora may be quite obscure to most of the show’s viewers. Despite the growing numbers of restaurants that feature cuisines from different parts of Africa, their visibility and success is still quite limited, as any passing conversation with any African chef would immediately make clear. Also, it is quite difficult for restaurateurs to stick to specific regional or national cuisines, as many patrons tend to perceive Africa a single cultural unit. Such tendency is perfectly reflected in the Pan-African reference in the title of the episode.
For the three African-Americans contestants left in the competition, this was an emotional challenge, as they were not only engaging with food from other countries, but they were asked to engage with their own ancestry, negotiating their emotional attachment to the food of their own communities and families with its historical and geographical origins. Their positions were quite different, pointing to the intricacies and the ambivalences of the African diaspora heritage.
Kiki Louya, named in 2019 by the New York Times one of the chefs changing food in America, lucidly lamented how “impactful historically this food is but how unrecognized it is,” later adding: “I have spent years cooking other people’s food and feeling mine is not important.” Furthermore, she denounced how she had not been able to have her voice heard in the business she had started, declaring that she still wants to focus on West Central African cuisine and to draw attention to what it means to be an African American female chef. Her father, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was the one cooking in her family, and she decided to honor him with saka saka, a dish he frequently made. Louya’s reactions exemplify the complexity of finding one’s place in American culture both as somebody who is still very close to the migrant background of their family, while struggling at the same time with issues of race and gender in their family’s new home country.
African-American Dawn Burrell expressed instead her pride in the cuisines of the women in her family. She may not be herself conversant with the food of her ancestors, but she observed how fellow contestants were “enlightened” by the experience. Chris Viaud, of Haitian descent, grew up eating Haitian food but was trained in the French culinary style, so he had to figure out how to integrate the flavors of his memory, which he is not used to cook with, with the techniques he has been taught to apply. Both Louya, who stumbled on the preparation of fufu, and Viaud, who could not channel the techniques of Haitian cuisine, ended up among the bottom three.
In their explorations, the contestants visited West African, Guyanese, Jamaican, and Haitian restaurants, where they were also introduced to the influences, contaminations, and hybridizations that emerged over time from the interactions between natives of the American continent, white settlers, African enslaved people, as well as migrants from China and India, which often arrived in the New World as indentured servants or menial laborers. Maria Mazon, a contestant of Mexican descent, was surprised by how much a Jamaican stew remind her of moles. Inevitably, the history of colonialism and slavery popped up in the episode, even if only tangentially. However, the emphasis gingerly remained on the richness of the results rather than on the painful process that lead to the development of such varied cuisines in the Americas.
During the challenge, Shota Nakajima, of Japanese descent, struggled with spices that are not a central element in the cuisine he grew up with. Focusing on pickles and the use of fish in Haitian cuisine he presented a successful dish with a very Japanese presentation, which placed him among the top three. Also a top three in the episode, Jamie Tran, of Vietnamese descent, highlighted fried fish, which reminded her of her mother’s cooking, but added couscous with African accents. The two chefs of Asian descent were successful by staying true to their own identity. That source of certainty is not available to all participants. Brittany Anderson, who was eliminated, admitted she did not know who she was, struggling to connect with her own mixed European heritage and pointing to the “blandness” of whiteness that African-American feminist bell hooks famously explored in her essay “Eating the Other.” Brittany’s food needed “life,” according to judge Simmons. “I cook a lot from my head, not from my heart,” mused Anderson. Her reflection indirectly pointed to the sort of innate instinct that is at times attributed to “ethnic” chefs, who are supposedly able to intuitively dive into the well of their own backgrounds and their physical memories. While in this episode such capacity is valued positively, it nevertheless ends up marking the non-white participants as different.
Top Chef is evidently trying to come to terms with the lack of diversity of cuisines in fine dining which, as Colicchio observed, tends to be French, Italian, and “possibly Japanese.” However, the judge observes, interest is growing for other culinary traditions. The owners of the restaurants visited by the contestants were invited to taste the dishes cooked during the challenges, and producers repeatedly inserted their comments as sources of both expertise and authenticity. Some uncomfortable moments were inevitable. During the final dinner, Richard Blais, an alumni of the competition and now among the rotating judges, declared: “I will say what everybody is thinking: this food is too white,” a jarring, although well intentioned, performance of wokeness.
Burrell, the winner, cooked a Guyanese inspired goat curry with roti that, according to Onwuachi, would make her ancestors proud. During the critique, Burrell quipped: “I forgot to tell you to eat the dish with your hands.” Onwuachi and Lakshmi assured that they actually did, implying that to them (one of West African, the other of Indian descent), the choice seemed evident. The exchange implicitly revealed the limits the obligatory use of silverware in fine dining, which pushes aside dishes that should be eaten with your fingers. However, in the most renowned fine dining restaurants, creative chefs are allowed to dare their patrons to eat in different and challenging ways. When the challenge comes from established (mostly white) figures, it is fun and stimulating, but it is frowned upon when it arises from traditions that do not have the right pedigree.
During the final critique, Colicchio noted: “Trying to understand, translating centuries of cooking by only experiencing it through a few meals, is hard to do; this is why it’s a challenge.” We’ll see whether food TV will actually take it on or it will limit itself to superficial beautification. At any rate, as Lakshmi suggested, a different approach to diversity “is a long time coming.”