Staying True

I am Bengali but the dishes I cook best are from other parts of India. There are only a few Bengali dishes that I can reproduce per specification - most stray too far from standard to be considered authentic. But my sambar and curd rice will meet pretty exacting standards because I learned from the best. Reading this story about the national origin of chefs in Italian restaurants made me wonder if my South Indian dishes will fail the test because I am from a different part of India. I want to believe my effort to learn and execute well should matter more than where I am from. That should be standard any cook should be held to professional or not. Did they truly immerse themselves in the culture and learn how to get it right. Can they tell the difference between the prefect dish and one that is only trying to be. 

But there is a question whether those changes, so far subtle, are happening as a conscious effort to be creative, or simply foreign chefs reverting to the flavors they know from home.

Pierluigi Roscioli, a member of the family that runs the restaurant that won the best carbonara award, said there was a risk that tradition would slowly erode if Italian chefs did note oversee those foreign ones who had less training.

“Without supervision, they tend to drift toward what is in their DNA,” he said. “When it’s by choice, it’s great, but not when it happens because someone isn’t paying attention.”

Given the current pace of change, he and other experts estimate that cooks in low- to middle-level restaurants in Italy may be almost entirely non-Italian within a decade.

I am sure a bit of me seeps into my rendition of dishes that are not native to where I am from. That is not just about Bengali food but the sum total of my life experiences. But the same is true for anyone no matter how ingrained they are in the culture - if they have stepped out of it, been in the world outside they are no longer as uninfluenced.