I’ve been seeing inspiration for lots of stuff today, including a manuscript that I’d been trying to wrap up this week (sounding like a proverbial broken record here, I know, forgive me, future self), and it occurred to me that a blog post might clear the ol’ writer’s block. And then I had a BLOGGING writer’s block, which is like, I don’t know, getting an injury while stretching for a workout. No, that makes no sense. I mean that blogging is supposed to impel my creativity and to be my “fun” writing outlet, one not encumbered by having to do real research or literature reviews, but sometimes it feels every bit as burdensome as “work.” Having to be creative in public is daunting, even if only 47 people (self not included) actually ever read this.
But anyway, I fell on a topic over lunch, and of course decided to make lunch my topic and build on that. See, I had a spectacular and obscenely huge donair from Sammy’s, which is a couple of blocks east of my house at 1235 17th Avenue in the retail level of an apartment building. Sammy and his wife are from Egypt but the food they serve isn’t really Egyptian but is what Canadian consumers in these parts have come to expect from “shawarme” (that’s how they spell it; shawarma is from the Arabic شاورما and can be transliterated into many spellings) places; in Sammy’s case, that means chicken, beef and lamb shawarma and beef donair. Now, any meat-on-a-spit sandwich can be called a “donair,” but in Canada, whole, un-ground meat is used for “shawarma” and “donair” refers only to those sandwiches containing a mixture of finely ground meat, bread crumbs and seasoning that is very much like the meat used in American “gyros.” Toppings here are normally lettuce (which I hate), tomatoes, pickled cabbage, pickled hot peppers, picked cukes, sometimes pickled turnips, and parsley, and then the sauces. Sammy’s offers garlic, sweet (“sweet sauce” is a uniquely Canadian ingredient in the donair world; it’s made from condensed milk, sugar and vinegar and is a lot better than it sounds), hot, a sort of thin tzatziki, and tahini. I get sweet, garlic, tzatziki and hot and it is a huge pile of mess to eat. It is served on Lebanese style pita (not Greek style) and is crisped up after construction in a panini press; unlike gyros, the bread is not grilled on a burger grill before assembling.
Donair is not done this way in other parts of the world and thanks to Rick Steve’s Greece travelogue I caught a few weeks ago I also know that the US style of gyro isn’t traditional Greek either, because what he purchased was made with spit-roasted pork, not beef or lamb and looked killer good. Now, in Germany I practically overdosed on the amazing version of “Döner Kebap” served by swarthy Turkish gents there and it’s in some ways drastically different from that served here. Most different, I’d say, is the bread. Instead of pita, a German-Turkish style Döner is served on bread that I’d describe as Armenian bread, the kind you see in huge sheets at Persian markets, and it’s fluffy compared to pita and it gets crispy and mmmmm so good in a sandwich press. The meat LOOKS sort of like our donair meat but it’s always (in my experience) either chicken or veal and not always or often ground. Toppings are yogurt, herb and hot sauces (hot I do not like, it’s very floral tasting and to my taste it’s distracting) and veg toppings include fresh, not pickled, cabbage. The whole affair is more than delicious and I’d love to have the style here, though I do love our Alberta version too. Now this is the thing: The Döner they serve in, say, Berlin is nothing (so I’ve heard) like what one would find in Turkey proper; the German version is a vernacular transformation, an evolution, of the food. So is what we consume in Canada. So is the American spin on gyros. And I am here to declare that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Part of what is fascinating about travel is not only to taste local dishes but also to see how “local” has transformed imports from other parts of the world. So when I travel I love to taste how locals interpret and modify “Chinese,” for example. And I am always fascinated by how well (or poorly) they might manage “authentic” foods despite not having the proper ethnic credentials, as when I have a really good Thai curry or a really good butter chicken (and I know, butter chicken is probably inauthentic too) at, say, a non-Thai or non-Indian pub. It’s neat and is part of what makes life so damn enjoyable.
So there are different, radically different, spins on many examples of ethnic foods co-opted and altered and made local, around the world, but some examples stand out as massive shape-shifters. Most obvious among these are the huge array of versions of “Chinese” food, but there are others: Donair has been discussed, as has Indian; other examples are the many versions of “pizza” as well as regional spins on what do put on and do with pasta around the world; another would be the more recent and bewildering- I would say “mesmerizing”- growth in rococo sushi, with sushi bars serving creations that would never be seen in Japan and that purists decry for inauthenticity.
I have a huge problem with the matter of Japan here. I know that it’s not the only culture that would complain about its being watered down or altered outside its borders (well, with respect to sushi and to a much lesser extent other of its cuisines). One hears all the time from Chinese and non-Chinese about how such-and-such a dish isn’t “really Chinese,” for example, and how “Indian” food in the UK is almost always prepared by Bangladeshis, but the most screeching heights of this sort of xenophobia (yes, XENOPHOBIA) that I’ve seen is around sushi, and the xenophobes are almost never actual Japanese people. They are rather Japanophiles, almost always American or Canadian men with an obvious fetish for Japanese women, they spend time travelling or teaching English in Japan and return with the most enraging and haughty, disproportionate obsession with all things Japanese and they decry any sushiya that isn’t Japanese-run, and they snicker at what hoi polloi are eating, reminding the lowly non-Japan-visiting, non-Japanese-girlfriend-having locals that “it’s so much better in Japan,” “this i the sort of thing they serve in Japan,” or my pet peeve, “they don’t eat maki like those in Japan.” Okay, I have no problem with pursuing authenticity if it somehow enhances one’s dining experience, and this is (for me) key around issues of table comportment and etiquette. I am really obnoxious about getting people to eat Thai and Vietnamese curries with SPOONS not only because that’s how Thai people eat curries but because in eating curry the right way you actually get to EAT it. Thais don’t use chopsticks for curry because it’s impossible to eat a wet curry with chopsticks. Same thing with eating sushi with one’s fingers: It’s not only perfectly proper; it’s also a superb way to EAT and enjoy the food. So I am not a non-stickler. The problem with the Japan worshipers is that their take on Japan is usually nothing but abeyance to and wholesale acceptance of Japan’s cultural myths of superiority- the same set of myths that made it acceptable for Japan to slaughter millions of Chinese civilians during WWII. I love lots of things Japanese but will not honour creepy, outdated and dangerous notions of cultural superiority and will (for example) eschew vernacular spins on sushi, like huge maki, SOLELY because they don’t abide by Japanese tradition.
Fuck Japanese tradition. My concern is that my food taste good. I’m not going to turn down a donair because they’re not served this way in Egypt. I didn’t refuse to let Brian take me to a Chinese resto in Tobago because the food was modified drastically to suit the tastes of Tobagonians. I am not going to go to fucking JAPAN and not eat pizza with whole garlic cloves or squid on it because that’s not how pizza is done in Italy! And I am sure as hell not going to refuse the out-of-this-world good “w-crunch spicy roll”at El’s Japanese Fusion (my fave sushiya in Calgary) because chef Mike is Korean or because, for Christ’s sake, “they don’t serve rolls like that in Japan.” Arguments like those are the racist remnants of a society that, for all its delights, is xenophobic as part of its essence. I won’t be moved by those arguments and neither should you.
