Negotiating the contours of Asian American food

Blog post by Stephen Cho Suh, San Diego State University, USA
 
In April 2024, David Chang, head of the Momofuku food empire, came under fire when lawyers for his brand sent cease-and-desist letters to dozens of companies across the US. At issue was the apparent unauthorized use of ‘chili crunch’, a name that Momofuku was in the process of trademarking for one of its own chili oil products. Though Momofuku eventually pulled these requests, with Chang himself issuing a public apology, it was clear that a metaphorical line had been crossed. Chang, a long-time advocate if not key representative of the Asian American food scene, was roundly criticized by Asian American foodies and food entrepreneurs for doing the very things he frequently railed against – seemingly creating artificial barriers to entry for fledgling entrepreneurs while also policing the culinary boundaries of a dish or cuisine. To many, Chang had become the culinary bully that he had built his career claiming to despise.

It is easy to dismiss this short-lived Asian American food drama as a business decision gone temporarily awry or as the grumblings of a small but loud minority. But doing so would miss the broader cultural significance of this micro-event. We contend that what was at conflict here was not simply the overly complicated nature of trademark law, nor was it just about who gets to claim ownership of an ingredient or dish. No, the predicament here had to do with something that was far more fundamental – the questions of ‘What is Asian American food?’ and ‘Who does Asian American food belong to?’.

Everyone has heard of Asian food and its many geographically specific variants. But what about Asian American food? Asian Americans are a federally recognized group in the US, meaning that they are understood as a population distinct from simply Asians and/or Americans even as they may possess markers and experiences that connect them to both. If we can conceive of a distinct Asian American population, we can surely imagine aspects of Asian American cultural production that are simultaneously informed by the group’s connections to Asia and America while still being unique unto itself.

One of these forms of cultural production, we argue, should be seen as Asian American food. We call it Asian American food not only because it is typically born from Asian American hands and consumed by Asian American mouths but because its production and consumption is uniquely tied to larger Asian American experiences. Dishes like L.A. galbi, Spam musubi, or General Tso’s chicken, in addition to serving as comfort food for millions of diasporic Asians across the world, are themselves a bite of Asian American history; a testament to the way that food travels and transforms much like people do, and that they aren’t any less ‘authentic’ because of it. Similarly, when the likes of the aforementioned Chang and other renowned Asian American chefs are asked why the dishes and products they sell are ‘fusionised’ and not recreations of the original, they tend to remark that their creations are an homage to the flavours that they, as Asian Americans, grew up relishing.

Our Identities article, ‘Serving diaspora in the homeland: Korean American culinary entrepreneurs in Seoul’s food and beverage industry’, is in many ways extends these broader queries encircling Asian American food. Focusing on the experiences of Korean American culinary entrepreneurs not in the US but in Seoul, South Korea, we ask: what happens when Asian American food travels to the ancestral homeland?

What we find is a continuation of the scholarship on Asian American foodways, where an Asian American cuisine so centrally informed by U.S. (neo)colonial efforts abroad, makes its way ‘back’ to the ‘homeland’ not through militarism or capital but through the endeavours of the children of former emigres. These children, more precisely 1.5- and 2nd-generation Korean Americans, move to their ancestral homeland of Korea as adults, in some cases opening food & beverage (F&B) establishments to make ends meet.

In almost all cases, these establishments are nods to their upbringings as Asian Americans in the US – soda shops, taquerias, barbecue joints, craft breweries. Though it’s not incorrect to assume that many of these decisions are economically motivated, we contend that equally important are the identity-based motivations for these undertakings. Specifically, utilizing Helene K. Lee’s theory of ‘cosmopolitan Koreanness’, we argue that participating in the F&B industry in Korea serves, in part, as meaning-making endeavours that position these Korean Americans within and against the dominant populations of both the US and Korea. Ultimately, much like the broader Asian American experience itself, the act of selling Asian American food in Seoul is as much a culturally-defining and -productive move as it is economic.

Returning to the David Chang incident, it should come as little surprise that attempting to trademark a variant of the ubiquitous chili oil condiment fomented such vehement backlash within the Asian American community. While what qualifies as Asian American food has often been up for debate, one way to interpret this debate is to think of Asian American food as consistently transcending boundaries. Both geographically and symbolically, the Korean American culinary entrepreneurs in our study showcase this exactly.   

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Image credit: Photo by Simon Hua on Unsplash

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Read the Identities article:
Suh, Stephen Cho & Kim, Brian Woohyun. (2024). Serving diaspora in the homeland: Korean American culinary entrepreneurs in Seoul’s food and beverage industry. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2362011

Read further in Identities:

A story of food and place: constructing Chinese identities in a multicultural Malaysian society

The contingent construction of local identities: Koreans and Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia

‘My multiple cultural backgrounds are pulling me in all directions with my identity’: Asian and Latino Canadian youth experiences of cultural identity