What is "authentic"?

It's not as simple a term as one would like to think. 


Authentic conjures rustic imagery: old wooden tables, copper pots, cast-iron skillets, old women wearing aprons while stirring giant pots of bubbling stew, misshapen loaves of crusty bread, at least it does in my head. You probably have your own ideas as to what is authentic to you when it comes to food....




...and therein lies the issue with the word "authentic" as it is applied to cuisine.


Cuisine, much like language or society, is a living, breathing organism, constantly evolving; in a never-ending state of flux. Authentic is static. It is an snapshot of a time, a place, a person and/or group of people. What is currently labelled authentic may have been something new and different 20, 50, 100 years ago. As technologies, access to foodstuffs, and tastes change, so do recipes. And often those recipes are interpreted and reinterpreted within the same ethnic context time and time again. I could eat a plate of tagliatelle alla bolognese from two different restaurants in Bologna and, while they may look the same, they probably won't taste quite the same. One might decide to use tomato sauce, while the other uses puree. One might use a little more pancetta than the other. Is one of these authentic while the other isn't? Who decides this?


You do, actually.


Authenticity is a product of nostalgia. What is authentic is what you grew up with, what is familiar. Some ethnic cuisines have put more effort into defining authenticity, however, even to the point of creating culinary schools and societies that apply empirical methodologies in establishing authenticity, (often for legal purposes as the world becomes more globalized and producers what to protect their products from cheap imitation.) An example of this would be the Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine.)


Which leads me to authenticity of cuisine in America.


As I said before, authentic is tied to the idea of nostalgia. In post-modern America, nostalgia is a powerful force to be reckoned with. As everything around us becomes commodified, one of the unfortunate side effects of this commodification is a steady loss of the meanings we apply to everything around us. Shopping for food once had meaning beyond just purchasing sustenance for yourself or your family. Shopping was a social event, allowing one to create and maintain social ties to friends, family, and food producers. Unless you regularly buy food from a farmer's market, you probably don't know where you food comes from, other than maybe a little tag on the packaging, telling you which state or country your apples were grown and shipped from. Our way of life has become so commodified, in fact, the very ideas of nostalgia and authenticity are in and of themselves commodities. "Authentic" foodstuffs are regularly packaged and sold to consumers in hopes of connecting with that sense of nostalgia, a commodity that people will pay top dollar for these days. For when the present begins to lose meaning, we quickly turn to the past.


I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject, but for the sake of time, attention span, and space, I'll stop here. Next week, I'll talk about my curiosity about restaurant reviewing and perhaps I'll post a chili recipe. Until then, have a great weekend!