Adrianna Tan
One time I talked to an acquaintance about why she hadn’t tried the best taco truck that I love that is literally next to her house. She was like ‘I’m from the Midwest, flavor is just not for me’ and I laughed so much and I appreciated her self-awareness.
I then interviewed her about her fear of flavor and grease in an ethnographic exercise. I told everyone back home about it, and it was like telling them about aliens.
Adrianna Tan
She then told me about how her favorite taco restaurant is this place I would totally never go to, and I finally understood why those places exist. Something for everyone I guess.
She said ‘the lack of flavor is just very comforting for me’ and I was so amazed to hear that, because everyone I’d met til then is a flavor maximalist
Adrianna Tan
@artcollisions my fave taco truck in SF is across the bridge in Oakland. Fruitvale is just the best we’ve got without going to LA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UVMJE6R2ueAhrUe46?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni)
@skinnylatte omg, please take me to your favorite taco truck when I make it SF. I don't like things super spicy/hot or eating like a ton of raw garlic, but I do like flavor!
Adrianna Tan
@drsbaitso it’s a completely different way of thinking for me. I’d never met anyone who thought this where I come from. So I am just fascinated. I guess I get it, but I won’t get it get it (coz I’ll never think that myself, not in a million years). If I have one poorly flavored meal, I get really mad
Cassander
@skinnylatte Nah, I get it. Sometimes you don't want to think about flavors and how they interact and what it'll do to the rest of your day. You want to just not be hungry or consume the sustenance your meat-prison requires.
Adrianna Tan
@geraineon I tell people I get annoyed if a *single meal* is not AMAZING and they get so confused. I think we have been spoilt by our homes
Neon (fandom)
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io this is my confusion when I had a chat with a colleague and she said she "just want to eat the same things and not have to think about food."
(I get bored after eating the same thing twice)
Adrianna Tan
@12thRITS just posted this
Lot⁴⁹
@skinnylatte Midwestern soul food. Take it from a boy who grew up in Chicago
Adrianna Tan
Sometimes my wife and I talk about how it must be weird that we sort of expect every single meal we eat (whether it’s food we cook or food we buy) to be incredible.
I know it sounds like an exhausting way to live, but where we are from (Singapore / Malaysia), eating poor quality food is seen as a waste of time, stomach space and soul
Adrianna Tan
I think in that part of the world you have to go out of your way to find food that hasn’t been prepared with great care and love, and that tastes ‘bad’
Even the stuff I turn my nose down on when I’m in Singapore / Malaysia / Thailand is like, better than most fancy places ahaha
Adrianna Tan
One of the things my elders were exceptionally proud of me for: she knows how to select good fish, dried mushrooms, and she has great taste in food
People who don’t care about food are treated with extreme suspicion in my culture, almost like.. they are aliens you can’t communicate with.
I was surprised to learn that in other cultures, people who care too much about food are perceived to be odd
baconandcoconut
@skinnylatte Uh oh. I'm odd. Er... again.
Cassander
@skinnylatte The flip side of that is "flavor maximalist" sounds kind of exhausting. Like only listening to music at max volume.
Sometimes you just want some background music.
Adrianna Tan
@drsbaitso haha, I’ve never had food with minimal flavor until I left Asia, and I never want food for fuel, only max flavors. I suspect I would have to go to a health food place in Asia to get anything with less flavor. But I also grew up with food and community at almost every meal, so eating alone as fuel is very new to me and I don’t like it
Mona⁷
@skinnylatte (As an Asian, to me) Living without enjoying flavors seems like one's life is about to end. But then there is comfort, so it allows some people to keep going, I guess.
Adrianna Tan
@pixiecata I don’t know if I told you but it’s pretty easy for me to get to a lot of Filipino food here (in Daly City). It makes me happy
Adrianna Tan
@rbmath great food 24/7. never have to repeat a food type or cuisine.
Randall
@skinnylatte sounds like I need to make a trip to Singapore and/or Malaysia
Adrianna Tan
@aehdeschaine @fifilamoura I once interviewed a Swedish chef and I was like what was your relationship with food at home and he said ‘I just wanted to make better food than what I grew up with’
But
A lot of Nordic food things (curing, preserving) are also super valid and I’ve learned some of them. I guess the Lutheran dislike of ‘hedonism’ is something I really struggle with
Anne Deschaine
@fifilamoura @skinnylatte I'm still not sure I can claim a long-standing family food culture (Midwestern Scandinavian-American comes closest, maybe, with adopted French from my husband), but I'm building one my son can claim. And he's willing to try all kinds of foods of other food cultures, and I can't complain about that
Anne Deschaine
@fifilamoura @skinnylatte The cool thing is, you can grow into one if you're willing and able! One of my closest early adulthood friends back home (Midwest) was Tai Dam and had a huge family. I got invited to a number of occasions, and I swore I would try ANYTHING at least once before asking what it was. That, plus how she was a big foodie, as well as cooking my own stuff and reading about food cultures, including my ancestral ones, meant that I slowly expanded my palate. It can happen!
Fifi Lamoura
@skinnylatte The world is delicious and I have an appetite for its beauty. It's alien to me but I do understand some people just aren't as sensual or as transported by sensation as I am. Though I do always feel a bit sorry for people who just grew up without food culture.
Adrianna Tan
@ddr yes! So I grew up with food in Indonesia / Malaysia / just like that and you can see how it’s a big cultural shift
DDR
@skinnylatte I love this! I think, even if I can't live it, it's what I want out of life.
Living in my corner of North America this means I need to go broke or cook my own food. I'm currently doing more of the latter, but oh my the time investment... Coming back from a recent trip to Indonesia, the food is plentiful, good, and cheap there.
Adrianna Tan
@epicdemiologist @gannet the Jains and religious Japanese / Koreans make delicious food without alliums!
epicdemiologist
@gannet @skinnylatte We don't use alliums in my house either, but in our case it has to do with IBS.
Naomi P
@skinnylatte we had a family friend in the Midwest in the 80s who had grown up in a household that didn’t even use alliums, so coming over to our place for dinner was a flavor adventure!
Adrianna Tan
@aehdeschaine @fifilamoura there’s a whole genre of food that is ‘Asians hired by colonial Europeans to make food for them, ended up jazzing up their food’
I love Hainanese ‘British’ food, it’s so fun. It’s like curry chicken pot pies and black pepper steaks and really old school food from the early 1900s with more pepper and curry and soy sauce
Anne Deschaine
@fifilamoura @skinnylatte It is interesting that, the more I explore, say Chinese or Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food, the less I crave the few "traditional" foods from childhood. I always want to find a jazzier version, and the craving becomes nostalgia but not culinary appreciation...
Anne Deschaine
@fifilamoura @skinnylatte I'd agree. And I've actually really enjoyed learning about traditional Nordic cuisine! Not a fan of the fermented fish, but the broader preservation practices are fascinating, and the "Nordic diet" counterpart of Mediterranean is really interesting, too. And spice DOES have a long history in the cuisine, but in specific places.
I admit the most flavorful explorations I've done have been in mostly-warmer cuisines. But living in the PNW's growing season really helps!
Fifi Lamoura
@skinnylatte I think cold climate relationships to food (and obviously available foods) are very different than tropical ones. Very different flavor personalities but deliciousness usually comes down to the quality of ingredients and someone being a good cook because they care about the food they're cooking. @aehdeschaine
Adrianna Tan
@kimlockhartga @sashin oh you were there for peak flavor fear too. Also when they were afraid of fat I think
Kim Possible
@sashin @skinnylatte having spent a few years in the Midwest in the 70s, I can concur that the (mostly) Norwegian-Americans I knew did not like seasoning. It was really odd.
Sashin
@skinnylatte This sounds extreme for me! I understand spice, or a *specific* flavour, but I have never heard of someone not liking flavour full stop!
Adrianna Tan
One time I saw an internet discussion about ‘what are some things that cause your society to ostracize you?’
The Americans said ‘not liking dogs’
The Singaporeans said ‘not liking food’
Adrianna Tan
@aulia these people tend to be Nordic descended tho. I don’t usually associate the Nordics with worse food than the UK, but there is something about suffering and food and not allowing yourself to enjoy anything that is very interesting. (I blame Lutheranism. Some Dutch and Germans are like this too)
Aulia Masna
@skinnylatte the. lack. of. flavor. comforting … I’m… I’m speechless.
That might explain British food.
Adrianna Tan
@aulia this helped
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFoodHistorians/comments/efnqs5/why_is_midwestern_food_so_bland/
Aulia Masna
@skinnylatte I’m still dumbfounded
Adrianna Tan
@aulia honestly just fascinated. I want to go and eat all these things in fascination
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jesseszewczyk/strange-and-confusing-midwest-foods
Adrianna Tan
@aulia I don’t get it. You couldn’t get me to convert to a cult or religion if great and amazing food wasn’t part of the deal
Aulia Masna
@skinnylatte religions can really ruin people
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