Food memories: Cuisine eye openers

When I was a kid, ethnic cuisines consisted of
(a) Italian - spaghetti, linguini, veal parm, lasagna, ravioli (actually pretty deep, compared to the ones below)
(b) Mexican - hard-shell tacos with ground beef was pretty much it -- oh, and hot dog stand tamales, and the occasional deep-fried burrito
(c) Chinese - Egg drop soup, egg rolls, egg foo young (hmm, lots of egg), shrimp with lobster sauce, moo goo gai pan and the like

What woke you up to various cuisines?
For me, Mexican food got elevated in college, with the long-gone Los Magueyes in Evanston: Cilantro was never a major flavoring, it was a big discovery that Mexican food could be bright and fresh tasting.

Chinese food was earlier: a Szechuan place opened up in Northbrook in the late 70s, and it set the standard for Kung Pao Chicken and other dishes that seemed to get worse and worse as the decades wore on, until I rediscovered that the quality had been hiding in Chinatown at places like Lao Sze Chuan.

Italian's subtlety probably came slowest - partly FoodTV, a visit to a Milan office, and a trip to Batali's Babbo in NYC.

Thai was initially exciting: new flavors and a lot of spice that showed up I think around late high school years... but like Chinese, seemed to get dumbed down and sweeter over time (ooh! mee grob!), until I found Spoon through this board.


So... when did food change for you?

1. Up until about 10 yrs ago, I thought Indian food was essentially chicken cooked with Mccormick Curry Powder, onions and raisins, served over rice. That was pretty much the recipe that mom would whip up every so often in my youth, and I was never impressed with it at all. One of my friends nearly freaked out when I told her I wasn't a big fan of Indian cuisine, since we routinely ate Thai food (the good stuff,) and she knew I was an adventurous eater, and a big fan of very spicy foods. SO, one day, I agreed to meet her at Hema's on Devon, (was it on Oakley?) on a random night. Hema was walking the room that night, and came and chatted us up. She pretty much explained the entire menu, and recommened some of this, some of that, according to what she thought I might like. I have no idea what the meal consisted of, but I do remember one of the dishes was her chicken vindaloo. I've had a pantry full of Indian staples ever since, and "cabbie joints" are higher on my list of must tries than any multi star restaurant in town.

2.Smoked Brisket. Nuff Said.

I thought my mom's Pope's recipe for Chicken Tetrazzini was ethnic. It was rich and delicious and her go-to fancy dish, but not really ethnic. We still ate iceberg lettuce, tomatoes that tasted like Kleenex boxes and Wishbone Italian dressing.

In high school I dated an Italian boy and his dad made his own wine and vinegar. His fish was caught on fishing trips. His mom made delicious, fresh salads with the vinegar and homemade tortellacci and tortellini. They made bagna cauda to nosh on and Zuppe Inglese at Christmas. I was in heaven.

In college in the mid-70s in Boston I dated a guy from NYC and he knew Szechuan ad Mandarin. He had a favorite place in Cambridge and we went to Chinatown in New York when visiting his family. When we ordered spicy, we'd order Campari and orange juice. It worked well. I had no idea that Chinese food could be so bold and bright.

As an adult, I'm often the one to encourage exploration, so I didn't connect it until I wrote this that old boyfriends had turned me on to new tastes.

I'm Chinese, and have been eating authentic Chinese food all my life. Nevertheless, about ten years ago, my parents took me to out for my very first Xiao Long Bao. I was stunned, and then angry with my parents for withholding this from me all my life. (Of course, Shanghainese food had only recently begun to trickle into the US back then, but still... they wouldn't have withheld XLB from me if they really loved me). It was an eye-opener that may have kickstarted my food obsession.

For Italian, my NY upbringing had me absolutely convinced for years that the Italian-American food I grew up with was authentic Italian (not that there's anything wrong with it - I still do love the stuff). Then I decided to try and impress a date with a dinner at Spiaggia, and for the first time realized what I was missing out on. My wallet was emptied, the date was a disaster, the girl long-gone, but that night still gives me warm memories.

A business dinner at Frontera Grill was what opened my eyes to Mexican food. I went in expecting giant burritos and refried beans, and walked out on an endorphin high that eventually led me down the road taking me to watching Top Chef, reading Dom's blog, and finally joining LTH and eating at Birrieria Zaragoza.

My own Mr. Pie fixed me and made me like ethnic food. I see a trend here. I never would have tried Middle Eastern, Indian, or sushi if it wasn't for him. He told me all about the virtues of hummus and I believe I started being less of a wuss at that point. It was March 24 2002, during the longest Oscar Night ever; our hostess for the evening's festivities made hummus, and I was enraptured. "What is this wonderful stuff!" I asked. "Hummus!" he told me, and so it began. He is appalled that I still hate olives and have yet to eat a brat, but we are working on the latter. And in summer of that year, I was told by my boss that the Mexican food I knew (see OP) was nothing like what they really eat in Mexico; tacos were often not much more than meat, spices, onions and cilantro on a soft tortilla. I thought that sounded a little plain. Idiot.

Thai - I had never had Thai food when a professor in college, who spent time in the 60's in the Peace Corp in Thailand, mentioned what he said was the best Northern Thai restaurant in the country out by the airport (I went to college in Atlanta, and this would've been fall of '97). A friend of mine in the class and I drove out there to check it out. Tucked in this kind of sketchy strip mall was a Thai restaurant that, to this day, think may have been the best panang curry I've ever had. I've now had the dish in probably 50 different Thai restaurants and it still remains atop the list. After discovering Thai, I began frequenting a number of other Atlanta Thai restaurants over the next couple years. I remember moving back to Chicago in fall of '01 and, stuck living at home with my parents, horrified by the lack of Thai on the North Shore. There was one place below Edwardo's Pizza on Skokie Blvd, but then the building was torn down soon after to become a bank. Fortunately, I moved downtown and there was a ton of Thai food, and I've been expanding my repertoire ever since -- especially thanks to discoveries from LTH.

Mexican - I'm having trouble remembering one specific place that opened my eyes to Mexican food. There was the visit to my uncle in L.A. and the divey burrito joint he took me to a couple times. There was Horaldo's in Highland Park in the early 90's, with my first exposure to soft tortilla tacos and green salsa. There are the annual vacations to Puerto Vallarta (17 years and counting...) which opened my eyes to the diversity of the cuisine beyond the meat & veggies wrapped in some form of tortilla & covered with cheese. And then of course, there is the endless exploration of the cuisine here in Chicago. There's hardly a corner of the city I haven ventured off to in search of some Mexican dish raved about on here.

Some cuisines that I enjoyed a long time ago and didn't appreciate how hard they were to come by are Indonesian, Filipino and Malaysian. When I was in 7th grade, my family moved to Holland for a year and I was exposed to all three cuisines. Indonesian was as common in Holland as sushi is here, seeing as Indonesia had been a Dutch colony. And while I knew we didn't have Indonesian on the North Shore, I didn't realize how rare it was even in big cities. Filipino and Malaysian food came via friends' mothers. Again, I had no idea how hard to come by the spicy beef and sweet, crispy lumpia would be upon my return to the U.S.

I remember pretty clearly when my eyes were opened to the difference between Americanized foreign food (pizza, spaghetti, fried rice, etc.) and The Real Thing. My dad worked in a hospital in the Mission district of San Francisco. Apparently a number of the nurses were Filipino, and would bring food with them to work to share. One day, maybe in the late 60s, he brought home a tray of homemade lumpia, and I was shocked out of my hot-dog/white rice routine... this stuff was GOOD! It was really an awakening of the awareness of flavors from far away, not out of a box or a TV dinner, fresh and delicious food.

It took me many years before I had the means or ability to start exploring cooking these cuisines on my own. I know that if we had more disposable income, we would definitely enjoy a wide variety of restaurant cuisines. But until then, I'm gonna fake it 'til we make it!

I had the great good fortune to grow up in a family of foodies. My mom was a wonderful cook who would tackle anything and generally succeed (her mom had a degree in food science and home economics, so it appears to be genetic), but it was my dad who was the serious food adventurer. He grew up in St. Petersburg, FL, so I was introduced to Cuban food while still quite young, as well as smoked mullet and coquina stew, during visits to his family. He'd been in North African during WW II, but also spent time in Israel, Iran, Greece, and Italy, and he brought back recipes and food ideas, which he shared with mom, my brother, and me, when we came along (his shish kebab was sensational). He loved great food, the more exotic the better, and sought it out with great enthusiasm all over Chicagoland -- and always brought the family along. So I've kind of grown up expecting food to be amazing.

But that's not to say there were no eye openers. The first time I ate at Le Français (after I was on my own and working) -- discovering just how far food could be taken. And then Trio, back when Grant Achatz was finding his feet.

However, while they were not eye openers in the sense that I didn't know there was great food in the world, every new cuisine was a joy and delight. My first taste of so many of the things I've tried are still sharp in my memory: the first black bean soup and first plantains at Columbia Restaurant in Tampa, about a half a century ago; my first reuben sandwich; my first chiles rellenos; my first artichokes and snails and arni pilafi; my first whole fish in a Chinese restaurant; my first Indonesian riis tafel; my first falafel. Years and years of amazing food memories -- even before LTHForum came into my life. Which is not to say I didn't have less exotic joys -- I particularly loved hush puppies when I was growing up. And garlic bread. But I was always ready to head off when dad came home from work excited about some new ethnic place he'd heard about. He was my hero.

I don't have an essay in mind to write about a particular memory, just thought I'd mention it briefly. I was introduced to both French food and French film by a high school French teacher who organized class trips into the city to expose us to both. Hard to imagine now what high-brow French restaurant was willing to seat 25 noisy teenagers at one time. The first such outing I remember was "The Man Who Loved Women" followed by a dinner of coq au vin.

The Owl and the Tanager:

It's generally good to be gentle about the keys.

My best food memory.

I'd flown out to Seattle hooking up with my best friend, his partner and a favorite acquaintance, now dead of liver cancer, John Holmes, not THAT John Holmes, but he did try to get me into a hotel swimming pool in some desert town in northern Nevada. I DID get into the swimming pool in my skivvies. I was hung over in that town, as dust sped through and nowhere was nothing, got caught up in naught, saw itself eaten up in dust. We were on our way to Burning Man '98. Sex in the desert. Gypsum playa caked moustaches; the desert eagerly leached us. John Holmes(not THAT John Holmes) had a pup tent and we wandered around, bartered for, wormed our ways from pyre ziggurat to porn tent to people fucking in the sand. Eventually, John held me in the evening windstorm, the burning mountains burnished by sandstorms, reminding me of Big Bend on the North Rim hiking with my dad

The food memory is this: before we all went out; my best friend Mark, his partner Ralph, my soon to be acquaintance John Holmes, my dear friends late of Atlanta, then Seattle, then Manhattan Beach, then Seattle, now Atlanta

my best friend's partner before we set out from Washington to Black Rock City in '98

he made a simple pasta of well-considered semolina spaghetti, lightly-processed canned tomatoes, a seattle baguette from somewhere excellent slathered in roasted garlic compound butter

and afterwards we imbibed something superb
and played playstation
and John Holmes(not THAT John Holmes) took me on a walk around the neighborhood

and I will always be grateful, THAT is my culinary awakening

The site was born one day, and has been inexorably hurtling toward this very post ever since.

asteroids are best striked

those expecting snark shall find what thou wilt

really, a pedestrian homemade pasta dinner in '98 opened my eyes to the capacity of performance nee' engagement as one recipes oneself; my dear friend

hermeticism is a recipe

my best friend's partner who is a cancer survivor and flashmob performer made a a fucking simple pasta recipe for me and it blew my mind(god, that sounds ridiculous)

at the same time we all lifted off for the last meaningful Burning Man(as far as I'm concerned)

'98

Santander wrote:The site was born one day, and has been inexorably hurtling toward this very post ever since.

It's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I was also lucky enough to be born into a family of great cooks and gardeners who taught me a lot about traditional German, Irish and British cooking, as well as having close family friends from Italy and Armenia who also taught me quite a bit. I have a series of eye openers that happened to me through my life.

One of the first ones was when I was 10 and had grilled lamb made by the patriarch of a friend's family. He was in his 80's at the time, and had been born in Armenia around 1895 or so. They were just perfectly tender and "lamby", at the time I loved my British grandmother's roast lamb and these things just blew my mind. I asked him for the recipe and he started by teaching me how to keep the fire going while he went to get more wine. The next weekend he took me to a butcher in Worcester MA to show me the cut to use (basically use the sirloin part of the lamb, not the leg). Over the next few years I learned a lot from him, about both cooking and gardening.

Another big thing for me was when I first went to college and randomly stumbled across a tapas place in Hartford CT. It probably wasn't that great, but the entire concept and the way so many of the ingredients were used was totally new to me. I practically lived at that place for awhile.

My first eye opener in Chicago happened a few years after moving here and Savoy Truffle opened up. I went soon after it opened, and once again had a transcendent experience with lamb (shank in this instance). What was even more important to me was talking with Wendy Gilbert, it broke down all the walls I felt existed between kitchen and customer and vastly changed the way I looked at restaurants.

After yabbering on like that I feel like I'm not giving my own grandparents enough credit, I'm sure my grandmothers' fresh donuts and homemade pickles, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, my grandfather's tomatoes and radishes, and loads of other things I remember fondly were my first true eye openers, but I was too young at the time to remember them.

Born to an Irish/French Canadian mother and an Italian father, I grew up eating the cooking of my maternal grandmother, who lived with us. She was born in 1890 in Prince Edward Island in the Maritime Provinces, and had served as a cook on her sea captain father's ship when she was 15. She prepared most of the food when I was growing up, and I suppose I tired after awhile of her New England boiled dinners of corned beef, carrots, potatoes, turnip & onions, and her 'hamburgs' in a skillet with sauteed onions, and homemade french fries. I didn't fully appreciate her salmon croquettes made from, well, nothing. But it's funny that now I will recreate those simple dishes with care, and love them to pieces.

As far as the Italian side, I wouldn't really get a taste except for the trips back to Boston to visit my dad's parents. With all my cousins, my grandmother would prepare polenta (her pronunciation 'puh-LAND-uh') on large flat boards. The cooked corn meal was spread on 'the boards', as we would call them, then she would spread spaghetti gravy on top, and place homemade meatballs, sausage, and neck bones in the middle. To get to the good stuff, one had to tunnel with a spoon to the middle of the boards. Of course, the method to the madness was that the kids would be too full of cornmeal by the time they got to the meat, which worked only sometimes. But she cooked in the 1960's like she was still in the Depression with 5 kids, as I suppose a lot of that generation did.

For me, REAL Italian food was discovered simultaneously in Boston & Chicago in my early twenties--at a dive in Chelsea called Rita's Place, where a business associate turned me on to the wonders of calamari in gravy and rapini in olive oil. In this area, I must admit that Chicago magazine guided me around town in those days, discovering the virtues of penne puttanesca at Bruna's, curried goat and 'cow's feet soup' at El Dinamico Dallas, teriyaki at Koto (now Renga-Tei), and lemongrass chicken at Mekong. I haven't looked back since.