Post #540378 by woofmutt on Fri, Jul 2, 2010 1:18 AM

Today by complete chance (newspapers in the trunk of a friend's car) I came across an October 20, 2004 New York Times article Looks Like Diversity, But Tastes Like Tuna by Frank Bruni which gives some insight on the idea of authentic ethnic menus.

The gist of the article: Restaurants tend to serve the same things because people are familiar with them but each restaurant tweaks it slightly so people feel they're having a different dining experience.

From the article:

*...Fashionable, upscale New York City restaurants these days answer to higher authorities than ethnic fidelity. They kneel before the gods of conformity, and those gods will not be denied their tuna tartare.

...What is sold and heralded as ethnic variety is often just ethnic blending, with a frappéd result that changes little from one restaurant to the next. Behind a comforting illusion of diversity lies an even more comforting reality of sameness.

"All you need are some different condiments, some different lighting and a different-looking menu, and people think they're having a different meal," said Mitchell Davis, a cookbook writer who teaches in New York University's department of nutrition, food studies and public health. "They're not, because they really want to be eating the same things: steak, cod and tuna tartare."

These similar culinary tricks arise from similar conservative impulses: to coddle diners by diluting the exotic with the expected; to guarantee sales and satisfaction by using proven sellers and satisfiers.

"You have to appeal to a mass audience," said Linda M. Japngie, the chef at Ixta, an ostensibly Mexican restaurant on East 29th Street, during a telephone conversation a few months ago. I had asked her what made her menu Mexican when so many of the entrees — yellowfin tuna, baby lamb, wild striped bass, duck, salmon — were not the meats most closely associated with Mexico.

"It's not authentic," Ms. Japngie (pronounced jap-EN-gee) said of the cuisine at Ixta, adding that most restaurant owners, "don't want to take too much of a risk and put stuff on the menu that people won't recognize."