Third Culture

grappling is the creation of a third culture. In today's episode, we hear from several voices connecting us to Diasporic Food Waves. At Third Culture Bait gree in Berkeley, California. The team shares with us how they're Mochi muffins connect their Indonesian in Taiwanese heritage. Katherine Bowen tells us the story of

honoring her roots through Paboosa's the iconic Salvadorian flatbread. The chef Ashley Shanti, who lives in the Appalachian South, tells her story and amplifies those of African Americans and her hybrid West African and Appalachian cuisine. We learned how to make another kind of flatbread, the Jamaican miannike case, a dish with Afro Caribbean origins popular on the Atlantic Coast,

and finally a rohein the Rain. Unpacks the colonial history of Japanese curry as a cultural and culinary artifact from the perspective of an Indian woman in Tokyo. On today's episode of Plant of Origin, we're exploring what the diaspora means and how it informs and enriches our food. I grew up in the Indonesia and also in New York City. That's Sam boots Are Boots Are. He's the co owner

in chef at Third Culture Bakery in Oakland, California. So we kind of identified as Third Culture kids, and it was kind of like more of a sociology term, and it was trying to describe kids who originally they grew up in a an immigrant family and they didn't particularly attach themselves to the culture where they grew up nor to the culture where they were born. My partner, I felt that we were too white to be Asian and too Asian to be white, ended up forming our own culture,

our third interpretation of it. We wanted to create a bakery basically that tells that story and all the flavors and all the pastries and drinks a third culture. They're epanomizing third culture by creating mochi muffins and mochi donuts, an Asian dessert molded into an American pastry. And I I also really missed all these flavors that I grew up eating, all these tropical fruits like passion food and glove and mango. Selfishly, I want to eat all these things.

I really wanted to create a bakery, and I actually partnered my partner Winter, he was born in Taiwan but also grew up in l A came and it was like, you know, I kind of want to create a bakery where it reflects our upbringing. When Sam and his co founder Winter launched their bakery, they lead with the intention of creating the pastries of their childhood. Yeah. The first adapt adaptation was actually just taking taking my mom's recipe and kind of putting it in a muffin tin um.

That's how it started. I still remember the first night I made it and is just shocked at how this contrast of texture that you get out of baking emoji, and you know, the outside gets kind of crispy and crunchy and the insights stay soft and gooey. Let's talk about one of the ingredients that makes these cultural ties, and that is the mochi itself. So could you explain to us what is mochi Mochi is. It's a type

of rice. It's basically glutinous rice. It's a variety of rice that is cultivated to have more a specific starch, kurd amulose. So when it's cooked, it kind of connects together. It forms this kind of sticky network, sticky chewy network. The word mochi itself is actually Japanese, but the crop itself um is from China. You know, the species of rice comes from and it ever since it's spread to Japan, it's spread to the Southeast Asian, and it's spread to Thailand.

So it's very interesting in that Japanese UM, Japanese, Southeast Asian and Chinese they all now have their own varieties of mochi rice. They have different qualities. The Japanese is more supple, more soft um. The Southeast Asian is more firm. In China and Japan, the mochi tends to be pounded into this kind of soft, sticky thing and Um, usually

it's stuffed um, I believe in China. UM. In Indonesia, though, UM it tends to be more like the steam cake that I told you, where it's layered and it's cut UM. I think because of the fact that Indonesian they just love to eat snats on the go. You mentioned that when you were a child, you grew up eating these pastries called kol at bees. They're a Southeast Asian steamed cake. Can you tell us more about the pastry and your childhood memories of having this dish? Yeah, super special dish.

My my mom usually she makes it during the big holiday Christmas and New Year's UM. And it's a super traditional cake that you make kind of a batter, kind

of a thin batter with rice flour, coconut milk. And traditionally in Southeast Asian pastries they use this herb called pandan and if you ever if you ever google it, it looks like this long kind of grassy leaf and um, so at these Asian people, they Indonesian and Malaysian and type UM cooking uses this leaf as a flavoring and it smells a lot like vanilla, like a very grassy sweet, and so she would kind of blend out all together and um, have a giant steamer going on, and would

pour this batter close the lid and and and then the batter would kind of like thicken into this kind of um trewy layer, and then she would keep adding layer, and she would pour another second layer, close the lid, and so um it would have this like, you know, ten or fifteen layers. And usually she makes it kind of little fun and it's different colors. There's like green and red, um, depending on what kind of flavorings or

what kind of color she uses. And then when it's all done, she would let it cool, take it out of the steamer, let it cool, and then unmolded and when you cut it, you see these beautiful lines. And as a kid, I just remember loving and I don't know if this is like a childhood thing, but I think kids love chewy things, you know, So it has chewy, sticky kind of sticks in your teeth kind of consistency. Um kind of this netty coconutty flavor, but very subtle um.

And yeah, that was my memory of it. And my mom would always because It's such a long process to make, and she would make the batter from from whole rice, like whole grain rice, so she would have to soak it overnight and then blended in the morning. So it was it was a very special dessert, time consuming, and you would only do it for your family or a loved one. So Um, I think a lot of Indonesian kids have a very special memory of that, you know, um telling the story of why the pastry meant so

much for me and what I wanted to do. But Um, I think I think that the pastry itself and the storytelling together kind of just made a life of its own. And I'm just still amazed to this day that so many people eat our pastries because of that. Sam and I start to talk about fusion cuisine. Is there a conflict between preserving and honoring tradition. How do foods and recipes modernize and how do they modernized based on location

and adaptation. I fee like Asian cuisine as like more of a trophy, and I feel a lot of places do that. They just they disfuse cuisine for the sake of using cuisine, and I feel a lot of time they don't understand the heart of like, you know, the heart of Japanese cooking, like what is it, or the heart of Vietnamese cooking. And I feel that a lot of times it's it goes a right just because they don't really understand the history and the flavor, and and for me, at the end of the day, it's just

it has to taste good. You know. There is a lot of resistance from people who are kind of purist and being like, oh, that's not you know, that's not Indonesian food, or that's not Vietnamese food. And I think for us, we are not trying to make Indonesian pastry.

And I think if you acknowledge the fact that you're not trying to make Vietnamese cuisine modern quote unpute modern or Vietnamese cuisine better um, and you're trying to like lift it up from the you know, the Dark Ages or whatever and the savior kind of mentality, I think that that's when it gets troubling. And for us, it's like, you know, weird, Well, I'm just trying to make stuff that that I grew up with and I'm trying to make it to my interpretation in and I'm not calling

it necessarily American food. I'm not necessarily Asian Indonesian. It's kind of like a thing of its own, and it's it's a very thin line. I think any exposure of um other culture that I'm there underrepresentative, I think is a good thing. But I think that the intention has to be there, a good intention, and not just for the sake of doing it. Yeah, so you bring up

many good points here. I agree with you fundamentally that Asian cuisine as a moniker is absurdly broad, and it's also usually the first cuisine that comes to mind when we think of fusion and we think of all the parts of fusion that have gone awry. Uh. It's like if you just slap Asian or Pan Asian alongside any other global cuisine, we just call it fusion. Um. So that is understandably maddening. Um. I'm really interested in what you said around the fear of bringing this savior complex

into into your cooking. Um. I haven't exactly thought of it in those terms. I mean, of course we we know about the savior complex outside of food as a concept, but as a third culture, kid, it seems that you're saving the cuisine by not being a purist or I think that's really too much to ask if anyone cooking the food of their childhood or the food of their memory. I think a lot of those in the naming because the naming kind of um presents the viewpoint, you know, um.

And I think I think for me, the most compelling, the most compelling cuisine, I think I always say it has a sense of time and space. Um. And I always tell my my partner Winter, you know, I was like, you know, when we go to a restaurant, I just love places that just feels that it belongs to a time and space. And not necessarily that has to be authentic or it has to be like true to whatever tastes it comes from that country. But I think it's just like it speaks very um honestly about like where

they interpret the cuisine. So why is it perceived as acceptable to take French or Italian dishes and adapt them. Sam has a perfect explanation and it's not one lacking nuance. You know, we we find it acceptable, and myself included if if someone makes an Italian or French and you know, even if they're not French or they're taking into another direction.

Society accepts it and cognizant of what I find to be true is that I think a lot of Asian cuisine have had so much history of just colonization and history of change. And that's part of the reason why Asian chefs and you know, third culture kids who who want to make these food are more aware of it.

And I think the same can't be necessarily said about French or Italian just because it's so ingrained and so part of the American culture already, and so there's you know, there's there's a lot of history there, and and I feel that a lot of food that we make are also reflective of these occupation times. I wish I could tell you I came from a family that cooked together from an early age. I helped my mother recreated a

beloved dishes from her birthplace, outs off the door. I wish I could say I looked like her, because she has always been consummate beauty. I wish I could claim that I spoke fast, seamless Spanish with her. That's Katherine Bowen. Katherine is an Oakland based writer with a background in law and food policy, and is a first generation Salvadorian.

The truth is that I'm often ashamed of my Spanish, which is choppy and littered with English words, in part because my father insisted that growing up we speak a language he understood. The reality is that I received his skin and European last name, and though there is undoubtedly privilege that attends to those attributes, they made me feel

less able to claim my Salvadoran ancestry. My cultural, linguistic, and physical and securities were in some ways exacerbated in my birthplace, Miami, Florida, where the population is predominantly Hispanic, but I never felt Latina enough. Looking back now, I

partly attribute my early cultural dissonance to narrative. As a child, I heard only conflict written story of Salvador, a place that my mother says she escaped, where I learned she ran from police after peaceful protests, had friends shot at, acquaintances kidnapped, among so many other casualties of the country's twenty years civil war. We didn't discuss home cooked salvador

And specialties or treasured family recipes. Are dishes, tomatas and papusas and yuca were store bought near holidays like Thanksgiving our Christmas. Still, it was a one time, I felt that as a family, we were Salvadoran together. I saw my mother, her brothers, and my grandmother celebrating this food, and with this food, I recalled Papusa's hermetically expertly fashioned sheathed in a light caramel masada, their cores molten, brimming

with rich, smoky cheese. The papusas with loco, a zippy green vegetable, where my grandmother's favorites, so they were mine too. I recall fat logs of fried yucca, their interiors tender beneath Cragley Crispin ears. As a writer, I knew that I wanted to explore my relationship to Salvador and that part of my identity. So towards that end I sought out two chefs in particular, Anthony Sataghetto and Rosa Gonzalez. First,

I meant Anthony Sagaeto. He is the chef and owner of Popoca, a salvador and inspired pop up in downtown Oakland. I think it was pride, or perhaps admiration that I felt swelling in my chest when I first heard what Anthony was doing, in short, applying his experience in fine dining to create what he calls progressive salvador and cuisine, while still using traditional techniques, including cooking with a comal

over an open plain. At Popoca, I tasted for the first time traditional dishes like guyo and chica, which Anthony prepares with chicken stewed in a fermented pineapple juice with turnips and prunes. For me, it was a revelation. I had never tasted dishes that were classic and foundation but prepared in a seasonal, ingredient driven style that I'd seen a myriad times. The chickin was so tender it practically cascaded from the bone. It's sonic broth was thick and

pleasantly sweet. The prunes bobbed in the liquid like small candied islands. There were, of course papoosa's too, made with a rich, self known massa. Some were stuffed with silks and garlic confused geso. Others delighted in Japanese brace pork shoulder like glimmering orbs, they reflected light from the fire, and when cracked, they emitted steam like an exhortation to consume. After talking with Anthony, I learned that his father, like my mother, left El Salvador thirty plus years ago because

of the country civil war. But by contrast, Anthony's dad was extremely passionate about Salvador and food, and he passed that admiration onto Anthony. Anthony realized something he needed to prepare and share the food he felt connected to, the food that he says was in his blood, his roots. After talking with Anthony, I spoke with Rossa Gonzalez, who was the co owner and chef at Los Cocos, a restaurant in Oakland's Fruit Bale neighborhood. Los Cocos opened its

doors thirty seven years ago, before I was born. Its walls are the shade of marmalade, and a bluebird awning overlooks the restaurant's facade. I spoke with Rosa to the repeated the wap of a tortilla the sound of a meal's coronation at Los Corcos. Rosa told me that she grew up in Al Salvador, where she began cooking at age nine. She lived there until the late nineteen seventies, when she was forced to leave. She told me after being labeled subversive for speaking at work about a mass

killing in a nearby park. After moving to the United States, Rosa settled in Oakland and helped her brother to open Los Cocos because she loved to cook. To this day, her longstanding recipes are a source of pride, and despite feeling compelled to leave, Rosa still has so much affection for Salvador she goes back at least once each year to purchase spices and see which she uses to make a chatta. The week after I meet Rossa, my mother visits me from Miami. I bring her to Rosa's restaurant,

where we order prolifically. I asked for the God, and what I received is a brothy missive to home. The soup is warm and honest and invigorating. The chata is a tap dance of spice and cream. I watched my mother clutch a papoosa and folded in half to create a crescent moon. She stuffs her creation with ptito, a spicy cabbage slaw. I laugh and ask if I can have a bite. As always, she gives me what she has.

I copy her technique, exulting in memory for Catherine, connecting to the Salvadorian diaspora and dishes like her grandmother's papoosa coincided with her own pursuits to seek and find Salvadorian chefs and cooks within her own community. It's within those kitchens and on those plates that Catherine tasted and found

the identity of her Hispanic heritage. M Hm, Chef Ashley Shanty, you're the chef de cuisine at Benny on Eagle, which is a historically African American neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina. Can you tell us about the restaurant at the Foundry Hotel and the neighborhood and the nature of your work there. Our restaurant is nestled in a neighborhood that was historically referred to as the Blocks, and some older folks in

the community still referred to it as that. So this neighborhood, past um crow Era was just a thriving African American business district and it was full of black owned barbershops

and hair salons, bakeries, restaurants, all of those things. And I mean, I even can remember myself just kind of coming through the Green Book and landing on North Carolina and wondering what Asheville, North Carolina would have looked like at that time, and seeing all of these businesses in the green books that were on Eagle Street right where we are right now, which is really amazing. And you know, we pay homage to a lot of what the block used to be. Because of urban renewal, things look a

lot different. There are still some of those historic businesses still standing. Actually one of barbershops which is still owned by the same family. We pay homage to a lot of the women that owned businesses. And we're chefs in Baker's that ran kind of the block in the community and said all of the children people in need in the block. And we have actually four portraits of these amazing women that we're part of the community, kind of

beacons of light, and still are. Two of the four women in the portraits are still living, and that is Miss Mary Joe Johnson and Miss hann Shabaz, who actually is very much so a part of um this project and involved in what we do. We kind of call her our culinary advisor. She makes our corn bread and fish cakes and those are some of the things that people have known her for for still long in the community.

And I mean they come into our restaurant knowing that they're going to get the same fish cake today that Hannan made, you know, the same way thirty years ago, so it was really cool. And we try to do our best serve the some of the marginal lives of the community, underserved and underemployed, and yeah, we we just try and make good food and not take ourselves too seriously, but also make sure that we're doing our parts by

by uplifting the community that we're in. The food has been described as Appalachian cuisine, which presumably blends all kinds of influences Black folks, colonial influences, Native people. I want to make sure that I'm not putting you in a box by calling your food that. But within that historical and regional context, can you explain to us what Appalachian cuisine is Appalachia where we are specifically in western North Carolina,

there's what people call mountains and culture. Um, you know, there's just a different way of preserving a lot of legos being what people would consider peasant food. There's a lot of game meats, so I mean regionally, food is very familiar to me. My maternal great grandmother, she was from Dan River, Virginia, so that is the western part of Virginia. I mean she was Appalachian through and through

just you know who she was as a woman. But I don't think that as a black woman, she considered herself to be an Appalachian person, but she did consider herself to be Southern, and so I think the food that my mother cooked is reminiscent of that. And I don't know that I consider what it was untill this project and I started to explore my own identity through

what I'm doing. It is difficult for me to describe my food outside of just calling it what it is regionally and just saying that it does just kind of describe who I am. I mean, it has nuances of Um and Guici cuisine that that is part of the paternal side of my family. My paternal great great grand parents are from Ghana, so I mean there's some West African influences there as well. I love Um Japanese culture,

so I mean, I'm really inspired by that cuisine. So they're kind of nuances of a lot of different places regionally, and I think that that might be unexpected for some people, which I don't know that. I think that's kind of cool. Definitely, I love that too, and especially as an African American woman who was in the kitchen. I'm seeing you get to experience the full breadth of the things that inspire

you without limitation. And I'm sure that it's something that you're pushing against every day, but the fact that you're in a position to push at all brings me great joy. Can you tell me about the point in which you started to more clearly see and define yourself in your own food? What is it that you begin to see? For so long, I've worked in establishments that have been amazing and I've learned so much from but that I've

cooked food that never felt like my own. That is why I feel like what I'm doing right now is so meaningful and it's so important to me. It's because I do finally feel like I'm finding that identity through what I'm cooking, and it's something that I'm constantly acting myself. How does this relate to who I am? So that's that is a daily journey. And of course now we're talking about identity and the civic initiatives that you've always been really focused on in your work. Do you have

a vision for how this all comes together? Or is it that your personality just demands that you sample a bit from all parts of life. Uh well, I think a very large part of that sampling was that quest for my identity in the culinary world, especially as a black queer woman. Um in the kitchen, it is not uncommon to feel like you don't have a place and

to feel like that's the world that you don't belong in. However, feeling like there's there's not much else you want to do, or not not many other fields that you belong in. So it was a very large part of that was wanting to find some sense of belonging at times where I just didn't feel like I belong at all. Yeah, I have dabbled quite a bit in order to get to where I am now. And do you feel like you belong now? I do, Yes, I do finally feel

like I have found that place. And I mean there are instances that happen on a daily basis that remind me that there is still a lot of work to

be done. You know, there are still people that walked right past me and asked one of my cooks to sign the invoice because they can't imagine that I'm the chef, or you know, guests watching me direct the kitchen all night and still asking me if they can talk to the chef, and you know, there there are a lot of there's are so many instances that occur like that, I still feel very empowered to be in the position

that I'm in there. Mm hmm. Yanni cake is is a local adaptation of Jamaican Johnny cakes, also known as journey cakes for the bread's ability to travel over long distances. So we now take you to Jamaica where wet Stone magazine contributor in A. Haynes is interviewing chef Maurice Henry, who is making Yanni kick is. Yeah, um, alright, So, like I said, they are various. They're like different species of the flower. Different types of the flower though that

we consume here in Jamaica. One most popular one is dumpling, which is basically just flower, bacon, powder water, all right, So people make that and just fry and have it just laid up. Then then then we move over to another one that we call festival. It's the same flower door again, and they add a corn meal to the

flower dough. So corn corn meal is added to that same flower dough and a little bit of sugar, and that one is it's called festival typically round, but people make them elongated or just flat, so you'll find it like that. And then there's one. The Johnny cake is basically the same floor though we just sugar in it and a little bit of butter and um. And that's what we call Johnny cake. So it's flower water, butter, sugar,

and they fried. They're all fried. And these are used mainly for as a starch, and it goes particularly typically all day. People will have them for breakfast, they'll have it for lunch, I'll have it for dinner, even late night. Snap because you stop at most of these little cook shops, they'll have fried chicken, your chicken with festival or with the with the Johnny cakes or with with with fried dumplanes and um. It's part of what we do. It's part of our culture as part of part of us

so we grew up on it. Coming from the club two o'clock in the morning, you'll find a Snap shop that's open them that's what they would have. They'll have fried Dumblin's festival. You can find iterations of Johnny cakes all along the Eastern coast from Newfoundland to Jamaica, sometimes called Johnny cakes, Shawny cakes, home cakes, journey cakes, or

Johnny bread. The origins are a bit of a mystery, but as Chef explains, johnny cakes are an essential part of the Jamaican culinary identity and the epitome of Caribbean street and beech food. Quoting from Anna, her investigation into the bread's modeled history would find that the first record of Johnny cakes dates back to the sixteen hundreds, when European settlers to Rhode Island supposedly learned how to make the bread from the native Algonquian tribes, for whom maze

was a staple ingredient in their diet. The humble bread made its way south along the Atlantic coast, and today various preparations can be found as far as Newfoundland and as far south as Colombia. But still there remains no consensus on when johnny cakes were first created and by whom, nor is there any clear evidence on how they made their way to the La Popa. But why do we need to know where our food traditions come from and why do they need to be owned by one culture?

I think the question of what is curry is one that you know Indians in the so called Motherlands right like in the Indian subcontinent and then also in the dast But I have been wrestling with for centuries. Now that's a rowhean arranged a row. He tells us about her experience eating Indian curry in Japanese curry as an Indian woman in Tokyo Arohe unpacks the colonial history of Japanese curry as a cultural and culinary artifact brought to

Japan by the British imperial officers from India. She links the historical trajectory of curry to the experience of being around and consuming curry as an Indian woman from New Delhi who's in Japan, and doing so, she examines many of its cultural implications and her own experience as an Indian woman feeling both alienated and produced to a singular dish, in this case, curry, while at the same time finding that curry houses were the places that provided her the

most to comfort and acceptance and what she describes as an otherwise very lonely city. It's so vague as to be meaningless. Um it doesn't for a particular style or or technique, but really it's often used to flatten the diversity of you know, foods in an entire subcontinent. Um. Yeah, so that's my kind of roundabout way to answer what is curry? It doesn't really exist. And for something that doesn't really exist, there are you know, infinite variations and

interpretations of what it could be. Perfect answer. During a semester abroad in two thousand seventeen at the Lasa University in Tokyo, she explains her specific experience eating Japanese curry versus Indian curry in terms of some specificity, what is what is Japanese curry? Japanese guy? You know, it's really its own thing, um, And what interests me about Japanese guy? Of course it's a part of like the edible history of Japan. It's been called but has roots in the

Indian subcontinent. And then secondly, it's sort of the anti thesis of what I think in the West are even globally is most revered about Japanese cuisine. You know, when you think of Japanese food, it's all about like the professionals or the minimalism in terms of both like farm and content. To still see a Japanese guy right, like the thickened ru um gloopy you don't need it with chopsticks. Right. It's quite the opposite of um, guy is a very

maximalist kind of exercise. It it's almost vulgar. I want to say, what was your experience like as an Indian woman, because we're talking about the details of the dish, but for you dining out was your was how you experience

the culture mediated by curry in particular? Right, culturally or on an individual level, there will be times when you know, instead of being greeted by my peers like hello or good morning, they would sort of see my face and say, oh, I ate curry for lunch today, right, So sort of on an individual level, that became this distilled entity that represented you know, their experiences with curry generally. Um. Often people would ask me, you know, like which cry do

you prefer? Like if there's a Japanese one, you know, which is sweet and mild or is it the Indian kind which is spicy and and unpalatable for a lot of people? Um? You know, I was even asked like I've heard that cats in India eat guy. Can you

can you conform or deny this? Um? Yeah? So on a on a culture an individual level, you know, I often felt like these questions that I was asked, I did not leave a lot of room for nuance, um, either in terms of kind of talking about the cuisine um of my country origin, or or even about my identity. A Roe's experienced eating curry in Japan became a broader questioning of her identity abroad for me. I mean, I didn't go to Japan to look for you know, authentic

Indian food, right, That's not what I was there. But in these attempts that sort of spears people around me were making to engage with me or or make me feel at home or welcome, I was really kind of coming away from the interaction feeling doubly alienated, right. Um Like, on a personal level, I was sort of curious and eager to learn more. Um. I think on on my part trying to do my best to start to do the work and not come to the table with my

own misconceptions of stereotypes. Um. But often I felt like maybe I would not be met halfway. And of course, I mean, I'm always learning, and I wasn't. No, I'm not an expert, But I felt like oftentimes there was not kind of the curiosity along with empathy that I was hoping for. What about when you were actually dining out in restaurants? What were your feelings as a solo diner in Tokyo. Yeah, I mean there's a kind of

well documented culture of solo dining right in in Tokyo. Um, But a lot of that is kind of reserved for, you know, the kind of white collar workers. So the salary man, right, that's usually the archetypal solo diana at like a round and shop, you know, at an unearthly hour. Um, So flopping on his on his noddles by himself, right, That's an image that we've i think seen many times over. But on the other hand, you know, now you kind of swapped this salary man for an Indian woman youngish um,

and it becomes quite a different equation, right. Um. There were many times when people next to me would try to engage me in in conversation or clearly wanted to, but maybe we're afraid that I wouldn't you know, be

able to speak Japanese. Um. And I had a lot of great conversations with people who you know, owned and and and these restaurants or were cooking um, which is kind of kind of this conflict that I have right where on the one hand, I felt like I was being pushed towards curry, particularly in the South Asian kind

of restaurant context, Right, I was pushed towards that. Um. And for these people who are pushing me, it was their way of being hospitable or um, trying to make me feel like I was being taken care of, right,

which it was a strange and isolating experience. But then at the same time, when I didn't counter South Asians who were running these kind of noun and curry restaurants, Um, those were moments of unprecedented tenderness for me, right and what is otherwise I think a very lonely free you know, so these small kind of family run restaurants that Hollywood playing on the TV screens, um, you usually there the restaurantally named something like Billy or Ausality or Mango or

something like that. Those moments, as much as I wanted to kind of resist this totalizing sweet puff um, even like Arry, I would say that those are still the times that I've felt most welcome and taken care of in Tokyo, right, usually at the doorway of a curry house mediated by some kind of imagined our actual shed history and food culture and identity. That is so true and so powerful as well. Um So when you say

that you were pushed towards Curry, yeah, absolutely. Um. And you know there's not a lot of there's not a lot of stut Asians living in Japan, um, something like pty thousand Indians and then um, you know another other numbers for like Pakistani's and and Pasadas and Nippali and documentation is not very um pristine. Um So the site

of you know, another brown face. As much as I didn't want to be stereotyped or I didn't want people to think that two round people were probably related or you know something like that, as much as that was the case on an intellectual level, it couldn't deny that on a kind of emotional personal level, I stills did feel like, you know, we were connected in somewhere. And it also sort of these experiences made me realized that you know, we're still really immersed in a in a

landscape of like white food stories or white stories. Um. You know, when you look at sort of travelers for Japan, you will still come up with hundreds of results of you know, white men usually who went to Japan and discover Japanese, who would discover Japanese culture. Um. But I when I was preparing to go to Japan, I almost when there without any points of reference right to understand, so the possible parameters of the experience that I was

embarking upon. Um. So everything was coming to me as something of the surprise, and I was sort of figuring things out by myself. You know. Often if I like I was the first ever Indian person to go to Japan, which obviously is not the truth, but just that some of those stories are not getting out or we haven't always done the work that we needed to be able

to listen for those kinds of stories. Yes, definitely, And this is something that I think about, not just in the context of food either, but even the fact that I'm having this conversation with you right now in English, which is not for you know, the colonial history. I don't know that I'll be able to do that. Um. Yeah. And then I think with something like food where perhaps it's harder to trace the origin or um sort of claim like a perfect unmediated history, where that becomes even

more complicated. Um. It's definitely a source of kind of emotional conflict for me, UM, And it's really something that I wouldn't say I have answers to her that I feel completely at ease about. It's something that I'm constantly learning about UM. And I would also say that besides kind of colonialism, there's also other factors mediating the kind of food that I have had access to both India

and elsewhere. Right there's um cost for instance, which I think even now is um someone neglected in a lot of contemporary analyzes of food. You know, more recently there's been more writing about it UM. But that's something that I haven't completely interrogated for myself. A rohe story points to an important lesson about the diaspora that as much as food is a marker of identity and expression of

our culture, it is not the sole defining factor. That at our base, we are all humans experiencing and learning about each other through a variety of cultural exchanges. A row He at times felt reduced to curry. It became a stereotype that isolated her and one that she could

not escape. So what is the diaspora. The diaspora is many things, cultural and ideological strains from the homeland sensory vocations, a conversation with sentence after sentence that begins with I remember it is an aftertaste, a source of pride, nostalgia, and reimagination. To be part of the diaspora is to have endured, and though the creation of a new home

becomes a worthy possibility, belonging is not promised. M Thank you to our guest today, Sam Boots Are Boots are in co owner Winter Shy, you of Third Culture Bakery in Berkeley, California, Chef Ashley Shanty from Benny on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina, wet Stone contributor Anna Haynes and chef Maurice Henry. And to journalist Katherine Bowen in a Roheana Rain, whose full pieces you can read in forthcoming

volume six of wet Stone Magazine. Special Thanks to my business partner who makes all things possible at Whetstone are co founder Melissa she Thanks mel. Thank you to Selene Glazier, who is our lead producer. To Cat Hong, our editor, to Havin Obasa Lassa and Quentin lebou, our production interns. To our friends at iHeart Radio for helping us bring you this podcast. To Gabrielle Collins, are supervising producer, engineer J. J.

Paul his Way and executive producer Christopher Hasiotis. I'm your host, the Origin Forager Steven Saderfield, and we will be back here next week with more from Whetstone Magazine's Point of Origin podcast h