Gentrified Cuisine
- Jun 3, 2016
- 2 min read
Photograph: By Wesley Beeks & Text: By Kiran Rajagopalan - On the left is the coffee served by Chaiwali as "South Indian Filter Coffee" & on the right is the authentic "South Indian Filter Coffee"
At what point does food become a cultural experience and when does it degrade into gentrified cuisine? Gentrification by definition is to renovate and improve so that it conforms to middle class tastes and to make more refined or dignified. On a recent jaunt to try the culinary delights in Harlem I decided to enjoy the delights of traditional Indian cuisine. My dining partners were one Indian and the other Indo-Caribbean. The restaurant itself was a visual masterpiece with ornate and comfortable seating against well-decorated and thoughtfully designed interior. It was also Intriguing to have a diverse staff serve a cuisine foreign to them, but they were still knowledgeable and eager to please.
A melee began on the issue of coffee as the restaurant advertised South Indian Filter Coffee, which is a specific means that it is served with a foam on top.
Two men from India went into a heated discourse on coffee at first and then a dissection of the integrity of advertisement and traditional cuisine. Food is a personal and liberating experience and it is vital part of culture. From my perspective, I found the cuisine at this establishment to have been watered down and filtered to appeal to the small but devouring hordes of tourists and curiosity/bourgeoisie seekers in Harlem. My dining partners and I laughed when I called it gentrified cuisine, a diplomatic expression of corporate raiding, entitled, trend-seeking, & vacuous reality show creatures whose awareness of authenticity and appropriation is superficial at best. More importantly, gentrifiers seem to be under the illusion that they can somehow authenticate to a culture that predates gentrification through their myopic views and limited experience. Keeping in accordance with our selfie and posting-obsessed society, it was decided to post the event on Instagram to field it to those of South Indian descent. Needless to say the expression gentrified cuisine is now a label for this and many other experiences just like it.
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