What is authentic?
Yesterday's debacle could have been avoided, in fact it SHOULD have been avoided. I should know better. When Sushi Dragon opened a month ago, the staff went around to businesses in the area and handed out copies of their take out menu. The young ladies that dropped off the menus were Chinese, not Japanese. There are huge exceptions which I will discuss later, but deep down, I am suspicious of restaurants owned and operated by individuals of one country trying to re-create food from a country other than theirs. For some reason, the whole world thinks that all you need to open a sushi restaurant is a supplier of fish and some rice. This is preposterous, and in some cases, insulting.
I have been to sushi restaurants operated by Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, and likely many other ethnicities. Yet, the only dim sum restaurants I have been to seem entirely operated by Hong Kong Chinese. The pho places are all run by Vietnamese. Korean BBQ? Strangely, never seems to be run by Japanese staff, and Taiwanese beef noodle soup? Again, oddly, never run by Mexican chefs or the French. Always folks from Taiwan.
What is it about sushi that makes it fair game for everyone?
Korean operators actually makes a lot of sense. There are almost a million ethnic Koreans in Japan, with about half of them being non-Japanese citizens. We have family friends who are born in Japan to Korean parents, but who never were able to obtain citizenship. The Koreans in Japan have historically been considered lower class, and to survive many of them would have operated restaurants, pachinko parlours, brothels and other "lower" forms of employment. It is certainly possible that some skilled Korean-Japanese sushi chefs have emigrated to Canada and have set up successful sushi restaurants. In fact right next to Sushi Dragon in Port Coquitlam there is a decent ramen shop called Takano. It is my understanding that the owner operators are Japanese Canadians of Korean ancestry, and while there is better ramen available in the Vancouver area, their ramen is pretty good, certainly the best in the Tri-Cities.
Any discussion about authenticity and food, where ramen is brought up, has to mention David Chang and Ivan Orkin. Chang is famous for his Momofuku empire, which has something like 12 restaurants in New York, Toronto and Sydney Australia. Born and raised in Virginia if I recall, he has a strong culinary education, worked in New York for some excellent chefs at very well know restaurants and then rounded off his education by going back to Japan (he was first there to teach English) and working in ramen and soba shops. Orkin also went to Japan to teach English, but he got married and stayed there, and in time opened a ramen shop. He had a built in marketing campaign, as I am sure many of his first customers were curious to see how bad (or good) the ramen made by an American was. He did so well that he now has two shops in Tokyo, and you can buy his premade ramen in supermarkets in Japan. He recently opened two ramen restaurants in New York, and the reviews have been very good, in fact he was recently on CBS Morning News who ran a segment about him and Chang.
Both Chang and Orkin have had people question their authenticity. With Chang, while I have not eaten there, the overriding theme is "it has to be delicious". I own his cookbook, and it very much seems that he takes authentic, historic recipes and adds twists learned through his experience at cooking school as well as from his working in fine dining restaurants in New York. And example is his "Bo Saam", which is basically a Korean lettuce wrap. He makes a vinaigrette with sherry vinegar, saamjang and gochujang. It is delicious, but the sherry vinegar clearly is not part of any historic recipe for the dish.
Orkin on the other hand, from what I know, ran a pretty authentic shop in Tokyo. He made his broth with chicken and pork bones, just like everyone else. He was the 'inauthentic' part of the equation, and while at first the curiosity effect must have helped get his customers in the door, the ramen must have been good enough to get them to come back. His places in New York deviate quite a bit from the authentic however, with menu items such as smoked whitefish donburi (which is apparently excellent).
I suppose in the end, the intention of the owners and chefs is what really what matters, and whether a restaurant holds itself out to be authentic or not. Chang and Orkin hold themselves out to be providers of delicious food; Chang's menus are clearly a form of Asian inspired "world food", while Orkin's hold more true to his inspirations. But you know what you are getting - if the place is called Ivan Ramen, you can logically infer that you are getting Ivan's take on ramen. Unlike Sushi Dragon, who holds themselves out as an authentic Japanese sushi restaurant. For someone walking off the street, there is no way that they can prepare themselves for the debacle to come - the place looks like a Japanese sushi shop, the menu includes everything you would normally expect to see; the disguise is set, you are not going to find that you chose a bad spot for your lunch until the food starts to come, and at that point it is too late.
Both Chang and Orkin have had people question their authenticity. With Chang, while I have not eaten there, the overriding theme is "it has to be delicious". I own his cookbook, and it very much seems that he takes authentic, historic recipes and adds twists learned through his experience at cooking school as well as from his working in fine dining restaurants in New York. And example is his "Bo Saam", which is basically a Korean lettuce wrap. He makes a vinaigrette with sherry vinegar, saamjang and gochujang. It is delicious, but the sherry vinegar clearly is not part of any historic recipe for the dish.
Orkin on the other hand, from what I know, ran a pretty authentic shop in Tokyo. He made his broth with chicken and pork bones, just like everyone else. He was the 'inauthentic' part of the equation, and while at first the curiosity effect must have helped get his customers in the door, the ramen must have been good enough to get them to come back. His places in New York deviate quite a bit from the authentic however, with menu items such as smoked whitefish donburi (which is apparently excellent).
I suppose in the end, the intention of the owners and chefs is what really what matters, and whether a restaurant holds itself out to be authentic or not. Chang and Orkin hold themselves out to be providers of delicious food; Chang's menus are clearly a form of Asian inspired "world food", while Orkin's hold more true to his inspirations. But you know what you are getting - if the place is called Ivan Ramen, you can logically infer that you are getting Ivan's take on ramen. Unlike Sushi Dragon, who holds themselves out as an authentic Japanese sushi restaurant. For someone walking off the street, there is no way that they can prepare themselves for the debacle to come - the place looks like a Japanese sushi shop, the menu includes everything you would normally expect to see; the disguise is set, you are not going to find that you chose a bad spot for your lunch until the food starts to come, and at that point it is too late.
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