According to , ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University is America's second-most diverse college campus. This rich diversity is reflected on campus through culture, music and food. Over the years, Bon Appetit has tried to represent the university’s diverse student body by hosting special events to showcase various cuisines. While these initiatives are appreciated, the results and discourse among students display a “hit or miss”: Some think it’s nice that the cafeteria is trying to be inclusive, while others feel as if the cafeteria’s cultural offerings are lacking.
Creating authentic dishes for such a diverse population is understandably challenging. It would be hard to follow an authentic recipe with the authentic style of each culture because of a few issues.
If you're cooking a dish from a culture that is not your own, it is going to take time and effort to master it. It’s also not just about following a recipe. You have to understand the dish's flavors, techniques and traditions. For example, if you’ve never made pancit (a traditional Filipino stir-fry dish) before, you might struggle with getting the right type of noodle, balancing the soy sauce and citrus flavors, or even knowing which type of pancit to make. Someone who grew up eating and making it would have an instinct for these things, while you’d have to experiment, make mistakes and adjust before you can perfect it.
When talking about cuisine covering a large region, you will often discover that culinary traditions overlap with neighboring ones. This will showcase a variation in the “same” dish. This dish can differ in ingredients or even just their names! For example, empanadas in one country might be made with corn flour and beef, while another uses wheat flour and chicken. Even within the U.S., there are regional variations in foods such as pizza. A slice in New York is thin, foldable and crispy, while Chicago’s deep-dish pizza is thick, layered with cheese and more like a pie. These differences come from history, local ingredients and the way food evolves in different places, making it hard to define just one “authentic” version.
As a result, it might no longer feel authentic because only the “majority-minority group” will be represented, leaving some cultural groups on campus feeling overlooked. Some might view a dish as unrepresented or made “incorrectly” because their culinary tradition dictates otherwise.
Another challenge is ingredient inaccessibility. Due to our location in the Midwest, authentic ingredients might be harder to buy fresh or in bulk. Importing them from overseas is also usually expensive. In addition, the dietary restrictions ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University imposes to maintain vegetarian cuisine make various dishes harder to adapt.
Overall, I’m very glad that the ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University Dining Services are open to collaboration with cultural clubs—for instance, AULA, AFIA, Makarios and the Chinese Club. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. Maybe they could try to source more accurate ingredients and involve people from their respective cultures in the cooking process to enhance authenticity. A good example of this occurred last semester during Filipino Heritage Month. The AFIA cabinet and their sponsor were able to collaborate with the dining hall to make a very traditional dinner menu consisting of vegetarian adobo chicken and sour sinigang. I really enjoyed the dishes they made and as a Filipino myself I was happy to feel represented by Bon Appetit. Some of my peers did feel like the sinigang (a tamarind-soured stew with leafy greens and protein) wasn’t sour enough, but again it is already hard and commendable to recreate another culture’s dish and also make it palatable for the general public. I believe it would be great if the cafeteria continued collaborating with cultural clubs and other ethnic groups on campus to make palatable, authentic and healthy versions of their favorite dishes.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.