Can Chinese chefs appreciate western food?

Fuchsia Dunlop famously brought some Sichuan chefs to the French Laundry, and they left underwhelmed. Here's why I think that is.

There’s a story that Fuchsia Dunlop likes to tell about when she took a bunch of Sichuanese chefs to the French Laundry — the Thomas Keller institution, considered the best restaurant in America at the time — and the chefs left duly unimpressed.

It’s a fun little story, but a while back (a good while back now) Fuchsia repeated it on the podcast Conversations with Tyler. And in it, there’s an exchange there that my brain keeps on coming back to, where Mark Miller seemed to be almost personally offended by the tale:

MILLER: My question is, one, within Chinese perceptional framing, why can’t they move over to, for instance, a meal at The French Laundry? Why can’t, when they say, “nature,” just appreciate like a roast squab, a roast chicken with nothing done. None of the fishiness or the wildness taken out, but just accept it as natural and then roasted?

DUNLOP: Well. I don’t think that their experience at The French Laundry is any different from a Westerner’s. You could get a very accomplished Western eater who’s eaten at many fine restaurants, but who will not ‘get’ sea cucumber. The texture of sea cucumber is totally alien.

MILLER: I only eat sea cucumber in Spain, where they actually do a better job because they don’t have that slimy part. They’ve actually perceptively changed it. They’re called espadrilles in the south of Spain.

COWEN: That’s sea cucumber? Oh I like those.

MILLER: See? So there’s cultural framing, again. One culture doesn’t accept, it’s not the ingredient, but basically how we use our senses and frame that experience. One part is food that’s accepted to the body. The other part, “These things are very strange. I have no reference, and I really don’t like it.”

DUNLOP: I don’t think there’s anything remarkable about this. I think it’s just how people —

MILLER: No, it’s not. But the Chinese have this problem with accepting — you said you cooked a meal of Western food for your Chinese friends in your memoir. They said, “It’s so boring.” Yet, I think, roast chicken or roast squab, just by itself, is perfect. Roast game, roast beef.

DUNLOP: Yeah, but from a Chinese point of view, it is very boring.

MILLER: But there are subtleties within aged beef, for instance, that they’re not getting.

I’ll give you a good example. I’ve spent most of my time in Japan. We have a really developed rice culture in Japan. A Japanese person will pick up a bowl. They’ll smell it. It’s not fresh meaning that it’s milled more than a month ago. They can tell you where it’s from.

The chefs will talk about their mixtures of rice and sushi. In China, I have never, myself, personally, had seen that sort of connoisseurship about rice.

…Fuchsia’s always had the patience of a saint.

With that said though, in that particular moment… I think she kind of fumbled the response.

Because in my opinion at least, I think there’s a really interesting reason why the Sichuan chefs were likely unimpressed with the French Laundry — and no, it’s not xenophobia.

How to Appreciate a Roast Chicken

It’s important to understand New California cuisine — i.e. the style of The French Laundry — as a reaction.

Alice Waters, the legendary chef of Chez Panisse, considered the pioneer of California Cuisine.

As a society develops, agriculture gets increasingly mechanized. This has a tremendous amount of benefit on net, but ingredient quality certainly suffers. Fruits and vegetables become larger. Meats become softer. The flavor of everything becomes somewhat muted. This process happened in America, in Europe, in Japan, in China… everywhere. The intensity differs between societies and where you are on the development curve. Modernity is a trade that everyone should want to make, but it’s not a completely costless one: as Dawei (Steph’s Dad) sometimes wistfully reminisces, “if only we had modern restaurants with those ingredients…”

The food of Alice Waters and that whole movement was (and is) an attempt to chase that concept: a modern restaurant, with those ingredients. Thomas Keller can impress Americans with ‘extremely high quality chicken, executed simply but well’, because many Americans have never tasted a chicken that tastes like chicken. And I mean, a heritage breed, with good feed, given some space to roam? It’s a beautiful thing. No one should be ashamed for loving the French Laundry.

But a little like the Provence that Waters fell in love with in the 60s, China today is at an earlier point on the development curve. And that means that you can find chicken that tastes like chicken in China… and you don’t have to go to one of the most expensive restaurants in the country for the privilege. You simply drive outside of the city — sometimes not even all that far! — and go to a nongjiale (农家乐).

A nongjiale outside of Pu’er. This one is a Dai restaurant - thus the architecture - but it’s a decent look at the vibe nevertheless.

Alternatively called nongzhuang (农庄), these are small restaurants that run out of village houses. They’re generally family run, use high quality ingredients, with some uncle whipping up simple, traditional dishes whipped up over an (at times, even wood powered) wok. If you’re getting something like an entire free range chicken, it’s still not going to be cheap, but it’ll be approachable.

Top left, a nongjiale outside of Xichang, Sichuan; Top middle, a Nongzhuang outside of Shunde, Guangdong; Top right, inside the wood-powered kitchen of a Nongjiale in Sichuan; Center Left, roasting chickens outside of Shenzhen; Center middle, roast chicken in Shunde; Center right, a roast free range silkie chicken outside of Kunming, Yunnan; Bottom left, what pork *should* look like; Bottom middle, grilled pork outside of Xichang using such pork; Bottom right, an Yi people meal of Tuotuorou (fantastic pork quality)

So, no, it’s not that Chinese chefs “can’t appreciate the pure taste of roast chicken”. It’s that if you’re going to a restaurant famed for being The Best In America, you’re going to expect something… more… than an American nongjiale with fancy plating. It’s going to be extremely unimpressive, because you can already get good chicken in China, right?

Layer in the cultural and economic power differential between the two countries — that you’re socially expected to be wow’d — and I could imagine even being a bit miffed: “I can literally turn chicken into tofu, but it’s Thomas Keller that’s rich and world famous, for… roasting a chicken? Go down into the mountains, and Yi peasants can roast you a chicken…”

If Fuchsia truly wanted to impress the Sichuan chefs, I think technically demanding classical French dishes, or perhaps something along the lines of Molecular Gastronomy, might have been a better bet. Or, alternatively, maybe she could have set some expectations:

Hey, we’re going to an American nongjiale. It’s super popular, everyone loves their chicken. The area’s also really famous for their local wine, let me get us all a few bottles. My treat, get me back the next time we’re eating in Chengdu…

我带你去一个美式农家乐吃饭！那里很有名，烤鸡是他们的招牌菜。本地的酒也很有名，我叫几瓶，大家试一下！这次我做东，不要客气，下次在成都你们再请。(just in case you ever find yourself in this exact situation)