We Eat
Same Same but Different
On Jan 28, during a rather slow Sunday evening we spoke about the contents of the book You and I Eat the Same: On the Countless Ways Food and Cooking Connects Us to One Another. This anthology of essays by some well-known names in the food industry was a part of dhoop’s book club. As the title suggests, the book is meant to elaborate on the sameness in our varied foods/food cultures— with an underlying aim of telling the reader that if you and I eat the same, then we are the same.
Food cannot cure all the world’s ails, but it’s a start. If we can share a meal, maybe we can share a conversation too
—René Redzepi
The overarching theme of sameness not only looks at commonality in all of our cuisines, but it also attempts to unpack similarity within differences. The conversation extends beyond consuming the same piece of fruit worldwide; it's finding a sense of commonality even in the difference. For context, Tienlon Ho in the chapter One Seed Rules Them All, talks about sesame seeds,“In Sudan, red seeds are thought to be richest, and in Japan, black are preferred for their deep flavor…like people, sesame will adapt wherever it takes root. It will grow and change until it becomes a part of its new home. They may look different, but when you peel the skin away, underneath, they are all the same seed,” is rather poetic. Whether its atop a burger bun or as tahini, or maybe as til ki chikki - we are all eating the same seed…
The contents of the book are so optimistic that they almost feel unreal— Fried Chicken is a Common Ground, Leaves Make Things Steamy, Coffee Saves Lives and Cilantro is Everywhere makes the reader want to believe in the mission of sameness. Learning that black women were the first to cook and sell fried chicken in America, which only became popular by white members of a high society who wrote cookbooks that commandeered those recipes. These recipes, now widely embraced, invite reflection. Concluding the chapter with “sharing the weight of its complex legacy,” didn't make sense to me because it raises questions of ownership and accountability.
Another essay on cilantro seemed like a lazy addition, telling readers how we all love it, while others find it “soapy”. A much detailed version of how cilantro reached the United States was documented by Laresh Jayashankar in Sameness in Diversity. Typically referred to as Chinese parsley or fresh coriander earlier,, cilantro shows immigration’s impact on the fruit and vegetable trade after the 1960s. And in South Asian cuisines it’s extensively used.
But to say we all eat the same seems to me to be flip, and on a very basic level, untrue. We all eat differently. We all eat differently based along multiple axes of difference: race, religion, gender, nationality, class, land ownership, disability. We all eat differently based on the individual circumstances of our privileges and non-privileges, based on our personal and cultural histories and our aspirations. To say we can be reconciled because we all wrap meat in bread is a comforting lie, but the converse, that our differences mean we cannot be reconciled and come to a mutual understanding, is also untrue.
— Jonathan Nunn, Vittles
We all eat differently. If we are all wrapping flatbreads around meat, then what meat are we referring to? The growing culture of food of the Global South in other countries cannot be talked about without addressing the “Don’t Yuck my Yum” instances and capitalising on cuisines that are away from the mainstream gaze without understanding the intricacies of it is a form of exploitation. To talk about how you and I eat the same entails having uncomfortable conversations. By putting food under this umbrella of sameness, we risk sidestepping years of discourse around the differences in food. As Julie Lesnik puts it, “How we talk about food matters.”
René Redzepi in the chapter titled If It Does Well Here, It Belongs Here gives some context to the difference and attempts to responsibly address it.
When you enter someone’s country or home, it’s not entirely up to them to help you understand everything. You have to make an effort to understand the culture, including the ways people eat. Read books and papers. Speak to people. Our most recent pop-up was in Tulum, Mexico. We’ve a lot of friends in Mexico, and we’ve spent a lot of time there, but we still did lots of reading about Mexican history and cuisine before we arrived. You have to approach things you don’t know with respect and openness. We don’t go to places to take their ideas—we’re there for a fleeting moment to expose ourselves to other ways of life and to change our own mind-sets.
— René Redzepi
The book however is a starting point to questions like, Why is sameness virtuous? To whom are we attributing the sameness? What is the benchmark? By deliberately emphasising sameness, we must also acknowledge its antithesis.
It feels good to belong to a larger group, where we can shun our differences and wallow in this shared humanity. But, to think of food as a connector is not completely untrue, but relying on it to be one is only convenient for some. Because how we talk about food matters, the act of translating it for a certain audience does get rid of its nuance. Knowing that food does not exist in a vacuum– it becomes alive through geography, race, climate, land, heritage, history and well, taste buds is imperative if we are making it a focal point of reconciliation. And even though these characteristics can be common, they are mostly never the same.
There is no guarantee that eating another’s food makes us more tolerant towards him.
—Krishnendu Ray, Culinary Difference Makes a Difference
In You and I Eat Differently, Vittles’ Season 3, Kevin Vaughn talks about the phenomena of pizza in Buenos Aires
“No one orders this stuff anymore,” the waiter at Güerrin, a 90 year old pizza institute, responded when I asked for the pizza with ham and banana listed on the menu. The kitchen didn’t even have bananas, he told me, and he didn’t want to look for some from the vegetable stand around the block. These fossils of flamboyant flavour combos, buried in otherwise fathomable menus, endlessly intrigue me. I can understand why people don’t want to eat bananas and ham with a pound of molten mozzarella, but I always wondered where that sense of imagination disappeared to. When did pizza stop being so personal and why did popular food culture become untouchable? When did survival become conformity?
— Kevin Vaughn
The fact that similarity in food will act as a drawbridge is too simplistic and boring. Where is the imagination?
And that’s everything for this week. Let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you!
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