How to explore a cuisine you are unfamiliar with
It would be an understatement to say that I love food. I have cultivated my food expertise over the last 15 years, and my increasing knowledge of delicious dishes from around the world has further spurred my interest, forming a virtuous cycle. While my love pertains to both eating out in restaurants and cooking at home, this post will primarily focus on the first aspect. I will describe a systematic approach to ensure you can go on a culinary adventure without breaking the bank, while limiting the chance of a disappointing meal.
Step 1: Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an underappreciated treasure, which is why I named the first step after it. But more broadly, I mean googling about the cuisine itself. Let’s say you want to explore Jamaican cuisine. Wikipedia will tell you about the history of the cuisine, which will help you identify the influences, namely, West African, Indian, and many others. Now if you are familiar with one of the influences, say Indian food, that gives you some insight into this unfamiliar terrain. The other thing to do is to look at the popular dishes from that cuisine, read the description, and see if it appeals to you. You can take this exercise further by a google search like “top dishes of Jamaican cuisine”. Ideally, as a starting point, you want to identify 3–5 dishes that seem to be the best known. Do image searches to see if the visuals excite you. For Jamaican cuisine, the top choices may end up being jerk chicken/pork, curry chicken/goat, beef/chicken patty, saltfish, and rice and peas.
Step 2: Youtube
Youtube may not be underappreciated like Wikipedia, but it is certainly not used by most people to its full potential. If you are lucky, someone famous like Anthony Bourdain has made an episode or more about the cuisine you are trying to explore. If you are even luckier, he did it on The Layover or No Reservations, when food still excited him (rather than Parts Unknown, which really used food as a starting point but was more about the people and the culture). There might be lesser shows like Somebody Feed Phil that have done an episode as well. You might want to start with these options, because the production values and slick editing will be hard to beat. But then head over to youtube to learn more. There are several channels I can recommend: Mark Wiens, The Food Ranger (Trevor James), Best Ever Food Review Show (Sonny Side), Strictly Dumpling (Mikey Chen). If you are looking for Asian food (Middle East, India, East Asia), these guys will give you a deep dive that nothing mainstream can match.
Step 3: Pick restaurants, and make a ranked list
This is arguably the most important step, and how difficult it is will depend on which cuisine you have chosen. If you chose Malaysian food and live in North America, it is unlikely you will have a great restaurant in your town. If you are lucky enough to be living in a city that takes food seriously, this step will be quite straightforward. When picking the restaurant, besides just checking to see that the average score on google reviews is above 4, look at the menu to make sure it has most if not all of the dishes you identified in step 1. Then look at the food pictures from the restaurant to make sure the dishes are aesthetically similar to what you saw in step 1. Turn down restaurants that seem to be doing a pale impression of the real deal, say by focusing on making pretty plates of food. Most great cuisines of the world are about soul, food that moves you, comforts you, and transports you. Most traditional food is Ugly Delicious, as David Chang would say.
Step 4: Go to the restaurant
Ideally, go in a group of 4 people, or at least 2 people. It is essential that you try 3–5 dishes, because it is very much possible that you will not like some of the dishes (either because it’s not actually a good match for your palate, or because the restaurant is not as good as the reviews suggest). If you end up liking most or all of the dishes, go back the restaurant for another meal about a month later, before trying a different restaurant from your list that you created in step 4. Sometimes you like a meal just because of the novelty, and trying the restaurant again a month later is a good way to check if your first impressions were not affected by your exuberance. Plus, this is about exploring a cuisine, so if you are lucky enough to stumble upon a good restaurant, make sure to explore the menu (research the other dishes during the month-long gap). Do not be one of those people who say they love Indian food when all they mean is they order Butter Chicken in every Indian restaurant they go to… that is not exploring, that is cherry-picking.
Step 5 (optional): Cook at home
Personally, this is my favorite step, but it is only viable if you are an experienced cook in other cuisines, so that you at least have a basic knowledge of cooking techniques and understand how to balance flavors. The reason it is important to do step 4 is because eating the cuisine is a much more powerful way to understand it compared to reading about it or watching videos. But once you have done step 4, unless you are lucky enough to have found a truly special restaurant that can be worth multiple visits, it is time to move things to your kitchen. Here, youtube is basically unbeatable. Just look up videos for the dish you are trying to make.
I would recommend starting with something easy, so you can build confidence. I would discourage you from watching videos of celebrity chefs, and instead watch something made by a person of that country (and has at least a few thousand views). I would suggest watching at least 3 videos for a single dish, so you understand the variations. It is not enough to read the recipe… technique is a huge part of cooking, and this is much easier to pick up in a video. After visiting many Ethiopian restaurants over the years, I finally made Doro Wat this year. My first attempt was better than anything I have had in a restaurant, including in NYC. Don’t expect such a positive outcome in your first attempt (what helped me is being an expert in Indian food, and starting from a great recipe for Doro Wat). But if you try even 2–3 times, I promise your efforts will be rewarded.
But how do you know if what you are eating is “authentic”?
You don’t. Unless you are able to travel to the country of origin, or at least have a sizeable immigrant population from that country living in your town, you won’t know for sure. But that’s OK. Start with what your taste buds are drawn to, even if it is not a true representation. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, try to eat dishes that are closer to the real thing. For example, if you are trying to explore Thai food, whenever you are traveling to a city that has a better selection of Thai restaurants, give them a shot. I can say that while exploring Mexican cuisine, I learned a lot from Chicago, Austin, and NYC before I visited Mexico, and when I got to Mexico, the “real deal” was not that much of a surprise. The steps I have described in this article are a lot of work, but if you are truly interested in food, this is pleasurable work, and work that yields great rewards!
