Comments on: How to Create a Regional Cuisine: The Luau and French Regional Cuisine

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:05:32 +0000

A really important point.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:02:07 +0000

A restaurant culture is a very funny thing, very rare in human history. You don’t, in general, want to eat food in a kitchen you can’t see in the company of people you can’t choose. Hence it’s link to tourism. Well there’s a longer story.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:00:51 +0000

Certainly us-them. The kind of luau Obama or his head of protocol put on at the White House is anathema to anyone living in Hawaii, especially native Hawaiians.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:59:46 +0000

It’s complicated isn’t it? I think of what people like Sid Mintz (or come to that Elizabeth David) said about English Cuisine.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:57:44 +0000

I agree, it’s interesting. I’d put this in a slightly different category because I think the mechanisms for creating regional cuisines within a nation and creating national cuisines are a tad different.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:56:42 +0000

You know my answer. The priest, the doctor, the man who’d made money in the city and bought country property.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:55:55 +0000

I have to write a long reply about the regional cuisine of Guanajuato.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:55:13 +0000

This is not just to shock, Michael, though it is true that I wanted students in Hawaii to realize that they were not entirely out of the culinary mainstream.

But the forces creating the luau and French provincial cuisine were the same–steamships in the first case, automobiles in the second, aided by nationalism etc. Sure the foods were different but the root causes were the same.

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:52:40 +0000

Hope the move is going well. There used to be one good restaurant in town when we were there, the Hunan in the little (now old, then new) shopping mall. Hunan-Appalachian?

By: Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:51:23 +0000

Well, Karen, you have my handy dandy 8 point guide. A few more log cabin lodges like those in Shenadoah, country ham and ramps with local artisanal bread of ancient vintage, organic moonshine cured with local fruits, hand thrown pottery from (say) Berea or a few students in the art dept at Virginia Tech, a bribe to the food critics of national newspapers, oh, and some costumes.