Experts’ Forum (1/4)

As the “inter-fusion Asian cuisine” slips to a mainstream in America, chefs and experts hold various opinions about it and give rise to a hot discussion. What attracts Americans greatly in Asian fusion cuisine? Are traditional foods going to lose their places? And what is the most important thing to make an Asian fusion food? With regard to these questions, some famous experts and chefs present their own views. Fusion is reinterpreting or creating? Why? Wendy Chan: Fusion is creating, often giving tired “same old” traditional dishes a fresh interpretation, perhaps simply by adding the right touches. One interesting insight is that masterchefs all prefer to create their own distinct style and not labeled as one country’s cuisine. When compiling our book, new Asian cuisine, we learned that we have to drop the original idea of grouping our recipes by “country”, as we have chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa describing his cuisine as “Nonbu Cuisine”, although his roots are from Japan and Peru. Therefore, we ended up grouping as starters, soups, rice and noodles, meat & poultry, seafood, vegetables and desserts. Jake Klein: Fusion is both reinventing, and creative at the same time. I find that often the fusion elements in my food are my interpretations of dishes that I've tasted in my travels throughout Asia. For example, I have on my menu now a dish called Shek-O stir fry. The inspiration came from a dish that I had in a sleepy little beach community called Big Wave Bay. It's a village I found that is about a thirty minute walk from Shek O on the South side of Hong Kong island. While it's not an exact copy, it's the same dish through my eyes. Ms. Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall: Neither. Each culture should maintain its culinary identity. When ingredients and sauces are used from other cultures, as a courtesy, proper credit should be given, naturally. Mr Michael Pardus: It is looking at a set of ingredients through a new lens. When surrounded by the traditional, most people will continue in that tradition because they know nothing else and it is "normal" and "comfortable" to have consistency. It is very difficult to break out of traditional cooking styles if you have no model other than your tradition. When an outsider looks at the same set of ingredients they bring with them a fresh set of rules. As long as there is understanding and respect for the tradition the new rules can be applied to use the traditional ingredients in new and innovative ways. Do you think fusion is at the cost of authentic? Jackie Newman: Yes. Somewhat at the moment; but in the end it will not be because both will be well-known, both are desirable and needed, both are what people are actually eating, and both represent the movement of peoples along with their cuisines. For example, Americans who do not travel to Asia did not know of Chinese-Indian, surely true of those who had not been to India. But those who did (and many wrote about it) know it has been there for more than a hundred years, since the first Chinese came/moved to India. Wendy Chan: NO. I think if executed right, it of ten frames the traditional cuisine wonderfully, simply updating it, like a makeover. The operative words here are “executed right”. It may take some trials-and-errors experimenting perhaps.