It's really "in praise of the supermarket cornchip taco-shape" because it doesn't seem to note there are soft-shell taco kits. The point is probably substantively the same though. Most british 'curry' experiences run up against the same problem. At least one cooking show (Rick Stein in India) explored the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing. And others have noted all the varietal restaurants of the sub-continent in the UK appear to depend on Bangladeshi cooks, Just as all the distinct US restaurant cuisines are employing huge numbers of mexicans and other southern immigrants.
There was an instant porridge campaign which had a wee scots laddy saying "thats noo how ye mak purridge" as various people made instant oats without a concern. So the idea "we know its not authentic, move on" is actually embedded in the model.
Probably in due course the explosion of ethiopian, somalian and other places using Teff to make giant grey rubbery pancakes underneath their food will morph into using more normalised grains, with necessary textural change to the pancake.
Most UK Chinese restaurants are Cantonese. Finding that northern Chinese eat grilled lamb and that not all Chinese food has cornstarch thickener was a revalation. But it would be a mistake to say "thick sauce Chinese food is inauthentic" -it's maybe just western palette adjusted.
I freely admit that when I use a food court, my sense of real or unreal is heavily conditioned. I reject an aussie roast with trimmings because they don't give me decent crackling and go for the "real Japanese curry" option which is an analogue of the actual curry-don experience, passed through a sieve of what works with the tools and inputs in an Australian food court. They're using much the same ingredients. The Aussie roast is but a shadow of the english roots, but when you need some crispy pork skin, its good to go. Should the gravy be bonox or somebodys stock pot? Chicken Salt or not on the chips?
Is Ethiopian and Somali food taking off in the UK?
I discovered Ethiopian cuisine a few years ago, and once you know about it it can be found in large-ish cities in the US, but the businesses all seemed like they were on the edge of collapse. It makes no sense because the food is incredibly delicious, approachable, and unique.
And I guess by taking off I mean: likely to be present in small communities, present in abundance (competition, market segmentation) in large communities, and available (not in an exclusive way) in a form tailored to western lifestyles (on DoorDash/ Deliveroo, available as supermarket kits comparable to the taco shell kits or pizza-making kits, or made into fast food like Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Panda Express, etc).
It seems like it’s about time for a new cultural cuisine to be mainstreamed in the US, IMO.
There are Ethiopian restaurants in medium-sized towns, but I don't think ready-made or "kit" versions are available at supermarkets. You can buy teff flour from health food shops or online.
I wouldn't expect large fast-food chains to appear in the UK -- these are almost exclusively American food. Indian and Chinese food has been widespread for years, and there are many restaurants and takeaways but they are all small/local businesses.
In the city I live, there's a vegan market twice a month and they have a nice food market. One of the stalls was Ethiopian food, and I'd never tried it before so I decided to get lunch there.
It was really tasty, from what I remember a lot of it was mashed up in a texture similar to hummous. No idea how authentic it was as I have nothing to compare it to but amazing whatever it was.
so I wouldn't so it's taking off yet, but it probably will :)
Approachable meaning it doesn’t take a giant leap for an American to consume it - it isn’t bugs (ants, grasshoppers, locusts) and it isn’t raw fish.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those things - Americans do in fact eat those things, but there can be some mental hurdles around eating something that is identifiably an insect.
The Ethiopian food I’ve seen is injira and various combinations of spices, chicken, beef, eggs, and common vegetables. The least “approachable” part is that you eat it with your hands, but in practice it’s not any different from a burrito or taco.
A fast food take on Ethiopian would almost certainly include a wrap made with injera, maybe tibs, and gomen wat. Doro wat would work as well. In restaurants it is often served platter style, which is directly analogous to many Chinese restaurants in the US.
By "approachable", you mean more familiar and less adventurous or exotic, right?
What makes Mexican cuisine popular beside the usual reasons like taste and flavors is that it lends itself very well to the operations of fast food businesses with all those diverse and rich offerings that make the life of the business owner easier and enjoyable than with other challenging cuisines like that of Horn of Africa to adopt to the type of operation seen in this kind of establishments.
I don’t think that really makes sense. There are plenty of popular/commercially successful cuisines that involve long prep times or intricate procedures. And Ethiopian cuisine doesn’t have to be super difficult to make - I took a class last year and made doro wat and gomen wat. The teacher (who immigrated from Ethiopia) made some adaptations so the recipe could be made within class time, but also told us how to do it with a slower traditional process.
And like I said, approachable means approachable to western audiences. In other words, less of a hurdle than asking people to eat bugs. I don’t see anything about the Ethiopian cuisine at restaurants that explains why those restaurants aren’t more successful or common (like Thai, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Sushi, etc).
It’s not really about adventurism or exoticism because I think Ethiopian is plenty adventurous and exotic for probably a sizable portion, if not majority, of Americans.
Eating 4 "curries" from a shared platter on grey-purple rubbery pancake you tear up requires people to overcome their "yuk" instinct, for touching food other people are also touching. It breaches the "no double dipping" rule.
So the first approximation here might be, individual portions. Once you morph to serving single-serve plates from a communal platter, its down the road to wrapping the meat and veg stew to make an enchilada and calling it "ethiopian tacos" or something.
> its down the road to wrapping the meat and veg stew to make an enchilada and calling it "ethiopian tacos" or something.
and then they have to outdo the established items in that food category from other international cuisines like burritos and pizzas, and the outlook doesn't look very promising for the Ethiopian fast food.
We weren't discussing preparation times or elaborate procedures, we were discussing convenience, portability and service time, or in other words; overall friendliness, and those factors are what matter in running a fast food restaurant and for your information Mexican fast food preparation takes long time for some items but the service should be quick for the customer for the business to flourish.
Most of the cuisines you cited in your defense of Ethiopian cuisine has robust and rich fast food offerings esp. those of Mexico, Italy and China, a point which is lacking in that of Ethiopia and thus poses a challenge to enjoy wide adoption and achieve the status of mass-market fast food category.
A side note - Teff flour is a bit of a godsend to gluten-free folks. Genuine teff doesn't illicit a response in Celiacs so my wife has been able to use it (along with other less common flours like buckwheat(yes, the name is super misleading) and even crushed chickpeas) to make all sorts of baked treats.
As we internationalize we can pick from the wide bounty of ingredients to our personal tastes and allergic requirements... I will be a happy man if I never again eat mock duck (aka wheat gluten with weird things done to it) in a vegan chinese dish.
I had Vietnamese veg "pho" in San Jose which included wooden "drumsticks" to eat the seitan off. Cute, but surprising. Unlike chicken bones, they didn't splinter.
> the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing
It is not a word for gravy. In Tamil kari can refer to any cooked accompaniment to rice or bread. Even a dry stir fry. The Telugu equivalent kura is even more generic and can mean either a cooked dish or a vegetable.
And Tamil and Telugu are both distinct languages, not dialects.
Indo-Aryan is a real dialect continuum where people in the next village over can understand each other extending from pretty deep in Central Asia and Iran into Southern India until you reach Dravidian speaking peoples. Same deal from Punjab to Bengal. It's not the same language but it's the same family of them. punjabi and Bengali aren't mutually intelligible just as Spanish and Romanian aren't but if you speak one the other is not difficult to pick up.
> There is actually, its called Hindustani - the mix (pidgin?) of the dialects that is actually spoken by people rather than any pure single dialect.
Every single assertion in that sentence is wrong.
Hindustani is only spoken by ~60% of the population and a even lower percentage speak it as a first language. It is not a pan-Indian language. Hindustani is not a pidgin. Hindi and Urdu are both standardized registers of Hindustani. And Telugu and Tamil are not even in the same language family as Hindustani.
My understanding is that Hindustani is more of a continuum than a single language, a sort of umbrella term for all Hindi and Urdu standard languages and sister languages/dialects.
>>> At least one cooking show (Rick Stein in India) explored the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing. And others have noted all the varietal restaurants of the sub-continent in the UK appear to depend on Bangladeshi cooks,
Just one cooking show does not prove anything. Curry is not an "indial dialect word for gravy". Some curries maybe gravy-like, but others may not be.
Also Bangladesh was partitioned off from India, so food culture is common between India, Bangladesh and pakistan
There was an instant porridge campaign which had a wee scots laddy saying "thats noo how ye mak purridge" as various people made instant oats without a concern. So the idea "we know its not authentic, move on" is actually embedded in the model.
Probably in due course the explosion of ethiopian, somalian and other places using Teff to make giant grey rubbery pancakes underneath their food will morph into using more normalised grains, with necessary textural change to the pancake.
Most UK Chinese restaurants are Cantonese. Finding that northern Chinese eat grilled lamb and that not all Chinese food has cornstarch thickener was a revalation. But it would be a mistake to say "thick sauce Chinese food is inauthentic" -it's maybe just western palette adjusted.
I freely admit that when I use a food court, my sense of real or unreal is heavily conditioned. I reject an aussie roast with trimmings because they don't give me decent crackling and go for the "real Japanese curry" option which is an analogue of the actual curry-don experience, passed through a sieve of what works with the tools and inputs in an Australian food court. They're using much the same ingredients. The Aussie roast is but a shadow of the english roots, but when you need some crispy pork skin, its good to go. Should the gravy be bonox or somebodys stock pot? Chicken Salt or not on the chips?
That tempura? It was the Portugese...
That spam fritter in the Philippines...