Restaurant Evaluation

Authenticity. I’m still not sure what that constitutes, but I don’t think I found it at Zooroona. I remember walking into the restaurant thinking, “Wow, this place looks really different.” I realized upon leaving that I used to consider any place stocked with enough antiques and old-looking furniture to be authentic. I can’t help feel that Zooroona just tricked me into believing I was getting that unique experience. Maybe it was the crazy waiter, who tried so hard to impress his customers, who tricked me. No, it was definitely him. But this all goes back to my initial fear/question in my expectations piece: should we really believe our waiters wholeheartedly? I wanted to, and I didn't have any reason not to. Maybe that makes me a sucker.

I didn’t need authenticity though, because I was with good friends and I was eating good food (for the most part!). I guess in this sense, a place can be authentic if it’s conducive to friends enjoying each other’s company. But that’s certainly not the only, or most important, criteria for authenticity.

Eating at Zooroona was an enjoyable experience, no doubt about it. I initially feared being completely overwhelmed by foreign words on the menu (thankfully, I had an Armenian friend along to help me out) and feeling like a tourist, as strange as that sounds because I attend school down the hill. But the experience wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be. I tried the lamb, and everything I normally would not have tried if I wasn’t writing a restaurant review, and I surprised myself by how open I was to the experience. I didn’t revert to the familiar. After a while, I forgot I was at Zooroona for a class assignment and just tried new things for the sake of stepping out of my comfort zone.

Like I said in my expectations piece, based on my experience at Alhambra Palace, I believe the atmosphere can make up for a lot. I think this is true at Zooroona. Maybe the chairs were imported from World Market, and maybe the waiter stretched the truth just a little (who will ever know?), but at the end of the day, I was pleased with the atmosphere it offered--real antique furniture or not. I didn’t exactly feel transported to the Middle East, but I did feel, if just for a while, like I was somewhere special.

That’s what study abroad will be: a six-month experience of some place different and special. Eating at Zooroona might not have been as dramatic an experience as study abroad is likely to be, but it’s the idea of crossing borders, being vulnerable in a foreign situation, that came across with this assignment. I’m glad I reviewed Zooroona instead of a place like the Union, or Food Dance, or Roadhouse--and I’ll try not to stay in my comfort zone when I’m abroad either. Even if my future culinary excursions aren't so successful, and even if my experience abroad confuses my idea of authenticity even more, I want to at least be able to say that I tried something new and that it helped me grow.

Process Writing

I was never given the freedom to be so personal in my writing before this class. I felt drawn to writing about experiences with my family, the complex relationships with my mom and sister, because it’s all a huge part of who I am and who I will undoubtedly be in the future. Walking into the memoir assignment, I thought that writing about my memories would come easily because, well, they’re just memories and nobody can tell me that how I feel or how I respond to certain relationships is wrong. It wasn’t that easy though, and like Marin told me once, I will probably write about these relationships for years to come. Turns out that writing about the people I know so well and love so much isn't so easy. And what scares me is that, maybe I don't have these people figured out. Maybe I have this idea in my head that I should have a handle on them because I've been close with them for twenty years.

In this class, I became aware of that tendency to always be in control when it comes to my emotions and my relationships. I think that's why I was so drawn to the theme of family--I felt in control, and really confident, when creating those characters on the page. But more than anything, it was incredibly fun to write about my bully sister and my needy mom. I always knew that family was the most important part of my identity, but I didn't anticipate that they would be my favorite subject to write about...because I never had the opportunity to write about them so freely.

I found that controlling tendency to be true in my writing as well. I enjoyed receiving feedback on all of these pieces, but at the same time, it made me extremely vulnerable. It was difficult, and maybe even strange, to receive feedback/criticism about characters in my life from people who don’t know the complexities of my experiences with them. But I quickly realized that it’s my responsibility as a writer to recreate those memories and experiences so that my reader can understand all of those complexities.

Revision: Zooroona redefines good service

(Audience: the Index)

It might seem as if a waiter is overcompensating for mediocre food or stale atmosphere when he sweet-talks his customers and praises the establishment like it’s a refuge from Sodexo-run college cafeterias and 4am take-out. Or maybe his dramatizations are the only ways he knows how to convey a most sincere admiration for his place of work.

It’s the latter in the case of Zooroona, a ten-minute walk from Kalamazoo College’s campus, located up the hill on West Main.

The waiter, a part-time college student who could double as a professional salesman, argues that Zooroona offers the best Middle Eastern food in the state. Then he changes his mind: it’s the best in the United States. No, that’s not good enough either. It’s better than the food in Middle Eastern countries themselves, he raves.

But it isn’t just the food that gives this waiter the confidence to boast. He says anything that looks like an antique is actually an antique. That’s a bold statement, considering that almost every piece of tarnished furniture and stained-glass-covered lantern has the potential to fool the average college kid who’s not aspiring to a career as an art historian. (Forget the part where he mutters that the Moroccan chairs were purchased from World Market a few miles away.) Fortunately for this waiter, Zooroona is not so far-removed from Morocco. The experience is like a scene at Rick’s Café in the 1942 drama "Casablanca" with its antique brass necklaces framed against the walls and table lamps that provide that dramatic lighting effect.

The restaurant begs its visitors to perceive the antiquity of its décor as different from that of places like Applebee’s (which the waiter was quick to criticize) that give the allusion of antiquity with its faded prints and vintage posters. There’s no denying that Zooroona, with its hanging bejeweled lamps and tabletop candlelight reminiscent of classic cinema, offers a serene and romantic setting that is unparalleled in Kalamazoo.

Everything about Zooroona appeals to the senses, including the cuisine. Appetizers run from $6 to $8, while the aklaat, or dinner entrees, run from $12 to $22. It’s a relatively cheap ticket abroad for the Kalamazoo College-employed student earning $7.40 an hour.

At Zooroona, two or three hours worth of pay is well spent--for the most part.

The daily shorba, or soup, has a distinct Moroccan taste that differs from Middle Eastern flavors made famous by Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. The deep red, spicy, tomato-based soup with cubes of lamb and beef is a delicious alternative to the traditional choice: a lemony, Arabian-spiced lentil soup with a cream-based semblance (but hearty enough to believe it is cream-based).

A Syrian baba ghannouj made of charbroiled eggplant and served with thin slices of mazza, or pita, is a rustic interpretation of Zooroona’s creamy hummus; its visible eggplant fibers beg for the blended and smooth texture of the latter. The kibbeh mikliyah, a fried football-shaped appetizer made with a spiced lamb and beef filling surrounded by a fried meat and bulgur shell, offers a balance between the two meats that the Baghdad kabob fails to accomplish as a main entrée.

A fresh cucumber sauce is the sidekick to a smoky and spicy jumbo shrimp kebob. Disregard the occasional pecks of black that coat the shrimp—they only enhance the charred flavor. But the Baghdad kabob isn’t a promising second-place contender with a toughness that’s sure to work your hand and mouth muscles. A trip to the gym isn’t necessary. The saffron rice that rests in between the two is a necessary barricade, and it’s clear which half wins this battle.

The prize for the most aesthetically pleasing dish goes to the tawook, tender white cubes of chicken served with grilled vegetables and saffron rice whose juicy interior puts the Baghdad kabob to shame. But the shawermah, thin slices of seasoned lamb and beef cooked on a vertical rotisserie, does little to make up for the Baghdad kebob, both of which are overcooked.

The waiter has one more exaggeration to contribute, though initially hard to believe upon discovering that Zooroona doesn’t offer the best Middle Eastern food in the world. “People’s hands shake because it’s so amazing,” he says, referencing Zooroona’s surprisingly neglected date cake.

It’s a dessert with little curb appeal but a taste that makes it easy to believe the waiter when he says that it frequently elicits verses of sweet poetry from Western Michigan University students written on the walls by the restrooms. Great things come in small packages—or more specifically, a two-by-four-inch spiced square with a warm interior, topped with homemade whipped cream and slices of sweet chewy date. Only the greatest of friends would be willing to share with each other.

The same can’t be said about an ambitious rice pudding, created by a culinary-torch-happy chef who unsuccessfully imitates the caramelized sugar topping of crème brulee. Stick to one dessert or the other, please.

Zooroona accomplishes a lot in the modest space it occupies. And what is a waiter if not a restaurant’s most important advocate? Never mind the hyperboles, as long as they are somewhat justified. At Zooroona, they certainly are.

Zooroona redefines good service

(Audience: the Index)

It might seem that a waiter is overcompensating for mediocre food or dull ambiance when he sweet-talks his customers before they order and praises the establishment like it’s a refuge from college cafeterias and Chinese take-out. Or maybe his dramatizations are the only ways he knows how to convey a most sincere admiration for his place of work.

It’s the latter in the case of Zooroona, a ten-minute walk from Kalamazoo College’s campus, located up the hill on West Main.

The waiter, a part-time college student who could double as a professional salesman, argues that Zooroona offers the best Middle Eastern food in the state. Then he changes his mind: it’s the best in the United States. No, that’s not good enough either. It’s better than the food in Middle Eastern countries themselves, he says.

But it isn’t just the food that gives this waiter the confidence to boast. He says anything that looks like an antique is actually an antique. That’s a bold statement, considering that almost every piece of tarnished furniture and stained-glass-covered lantern has the potential to fool the average college kid who’s not aspiring to a career as an art historian. (Forget the part where he mutters that the Moroccan chairs are purchased from World Market a few miles away.)

The restaurant begs its visitors to perceive the antiquity of its décor as different from that of places like Applebee’s (which the waiter was quick to criticize) that give the allusion of antiquity with its faded prints and vintage posters. There’s no denying that Zooroona, with its hanging bejeweled lamps and tabletop candlelight, offers a serene and romantic setting that is unparalleled in Kalamazoo.

Everything about Zooroona appeals to the senses, not excluding the cuisine. Appetizers run from $6 to $8, while the aklaat, or dinner entrees, run from $12 to $22. It’s a relatively cheap ticket abroad for the Kalamazoo College-employed student earning $7.40 an hour.

At Zooroona, two or three hours worth of pay is well spent—for the most part.

The daily shorba, or soup, has a distinct Moroccan taste that differs from Middle Eastern flavors made famous by Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. The deep red, spicy, tomato-based soup with cubes of lamb and beef was a delicious alternative to the safer choice: a lemony, Arabian-spiced lentil soup that was fresh and light despite its cream-based appearance.

A Syrian baba ghannouj made of charbroiled eggplant and served with thin slices of mazza, or pita, was a rustic interpretation of Zooroona’s creamy hummus; its visible eggplant fibers begged for the blended and smooth texture of the latter. The kibbeh mikliyah, a fried football-shaped appetizer made with a spiced lamb and beef filling surrounded by a fried meat and bulgur shell, offered a balance between the two meats that the baghdad kabob failed to accomplish as a main entrée.

The cucumber sauce is a cool and fresh-tasting sidekick to spicy jumbo shrimp that is marinated to perfection. Disregard the occasional pecks of black that coat the outside—it only enhances the flavor. But the baghdad kabob isn’t a promising second-place contender with a toughness that’s sure to work your hand and mouth muscles. A trip to the gym isn’t necessary. The saffron rice that rests in between the two is a necessary barricade, and it’s clear which half wins this battle.

The prize for the most aesthetically pleasing dish goes to the tawook, tender white cubes of chicken served with grilled vegetables and saffron rice. It puts the baghdad kabob to shame with a juicy interior that doesn’t put the jaw muscles to work. But the shawermah, thin slices of seasoned lamb and beef cooked on a vertical rotisserie, does little to make up for the baghdad kebob, both of which are overcooked.

The waiter has one more exaggeration to contribute, though initially hard to believe upon discovering that Zooroona doesn’t offer the best Middle Eastern food in the world. “People’s hands shake because it’s so amazing,” he says referencing Zooroona’s surprisingly neglected date cake.


It’s a dessert with little curb appeal but with a taste that makes it easy to believe the waiter when he says that it frequently elicits verses of sweet poetry from Western Michigan University students written on the walls by the restrooms. Great things come in small packages—or more specifically, a two-by-four-inch spiced square with a warm interior, topped with homemade whipped cream and slices of sweet chewy date. Only the greatest of friends would be willing to share with each other.

The same can’t be said about an ambitious rice pudding, created by a culinary-torch-happy chef who unsuccessfully imitates the caramelized sugar topping of crème brulee. Stick to one or the other, please.

Zooroona accomplishes a lot in the modest space it occupies. And what is a waiter if not a restaurant’s most important advocate. Never mind the hyperboles, as long as they are somewhat justified. At Zooroona, they certainly are.

Zooroona: Authentic Authenticity?

I went to Alhambra Palace Restaurant in Chicago a couple years back with some girlfriends, a place that serves authentic and healthy Moroccan Mediterranean cuisine. Named after an actual palace in Granada, Spain, it claims to be one of the largest restaurants in the world. It boasts over 24,000 square feet that includes five private and semi private rooms. According to the website, it’s an ode to Persian, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern culture and décor. It was cool, to say the least.

My girlfriends and I ended up ordering food items that looked familiar. Even though the menu was intimidating, I still felt like I had cheated myself by the end of the night.

I remember thinking that the quality of the food didn’t matter because the interior décor made up for any bad food or service. I really did feel transported to another part of the world, which is the owner’s hope (again, according to the website). He’s imported everything from chandeliers to tiles from the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Whatever it cost, it was worth it.

Authenticity isn’t so easy to define or to distinguish, like we talked about in class the other day. Looking back on my experience at Alhambra Palace, it was my first experience with Moroccan Mediterranean cuisine and I was so awestruck by the aesthetics that I wouldn’t have known (or cared) if the decorations or the food weren’t authentic. I would’ve believed anything anybody told me about the establishment.

My fear for this assignment is not recognizing authenticity when it’s sitting in front of me, or believing that something/some food is authentic when it’s really not. Like I mentioned in class the other day, I don’t want to be fooled into thinking a restaurant is authentic because I don’t understand what's listed on the menu.

And not to be cynical, but should I just believe my waiter when I ask him or her questions about the origin of the food? Are waiters trained to tell us what we want to hear...at least about things that seem as harmless as where the decorations are imported from? A restaurant is just like any other business that wants to keep the customers happy. I supposed that’s a whole different discussion on restaurant ethics.

I’ve decided to review Zooroona—Middle Eastern cuisine. As cliché as it may sound, I want to be transported to a different place, both through food and décor. I want a comfortable atmosphere, and good service, too.

Aside from becoming disenchanted by the lack of authenticity or my willingness to believe my own assumptions without question, my biggest concern is that, as a picky eater, I’ll revert to the familiar dishes like I did at Alhambra Palace. I tend to get overwhelmed by large menus in general, and even more so when it’s written in a language I’m not familiar with.

Furthermore, after our conversation about authenticity the other day, I don’t want Zooroona to be like the Thai restaurants from Molz’s article in Culinary Tourism that cater to the average American consumer; I don’t need to “understand” everything. I just want to experience it and not be the ignorant first-time-Middle-Eastern-cuisine-eater who orders crispy chicken wings (Yes, it’s on the menu.) I’m willing to get lost in the language and not know exactly what I’m eating until it reaches the table, as long as it’s authentic.

Perfect Meal Revision: Needing to Feel Needed

In her desire to be cool in the company of my childhood friends, my mom pushed me away instead of bringing us closer together. I hated that she tried so hard to relate to a bunch of teenagers who thought that their parents were embarrassing no matter what. I didn’t like when she gossiped with my high school friends, and when she passed it as “engaging them in conversation.” She was my mom, not my friend, and nothing was going to change that.

It might have been the recent physical separation that comes with moving out for the first time to begin the four-year transition called college that allowed for an unanticipated emotional closeness. Maybe it was a newfound awareness of the vulnerability that radiates from her, as strongly as her seeming immaturity, which allowed me to let her into my life more than before. I know that she just wants to feel needed.

At times she seems so far removed from my life away from home because of the physical distance, which is why I chose to make the 150-mile drive from Kalamazoo to Chicago to make the perfect meal with her for a class assignment.

Our idea of fun rarely coincided when I was in grade school, but we agreed that making homemade pizza was one of those activities that my friends would, and did, enjoy. We decided that we wanted spinach, onion, mushrooms, red bell peppers, red vine tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella cheese on our pizza. We already had the dough ingredients, including salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil at home.

We went to Trader Joe’s for the ingredients—a quirky grocery store that sells a good selection of organic food and where the cashiers wear Hawaiian shirts to work and say things that my mom enjoys like “Cowabunga dude!” I like to watch her engage them in conversations about their extensive vocabulary of Hawaiian slang because it’s borderline flirtatious. I joke that she’s a “BA (badass) mom” for flirting with younger men, which has become a catchphrase she tries to whip out as much as possible.

I can trace the first times I was embarrassed of my mom to lunchtime in kindergarten, where I arrived with my boxed lunch of turkey sandwiches on four-grain bread (the ends fully attached), carrot or celery sticks, and apple slices for dessert. I was embarrassed by my healthy food, and I knew that everybody assumed it was my mom who prepared it for me. I blamed her for the awkward stares I received through my eighth grade year. I appreciate her insistence on a healthy lifestyle today, which unfortunately never extended to a desire for local foods because the grocery store was more convenient, so Trader Joe’s was a solid alternative. I felt guilty not using local ingredients, but my mom is stubborn so what she says always goes.

We prepared the dough in the food processor before cooking the pizza toppings so it had time to rise. When I was younger, we made it by hand and let it rise for at least several hours. I often made the five-minute walk home from grade school to find my mom and the almost-ready dough in the kitchen. I know I annoyed her when I popped my head into the kitchen every few minutes and whined, “Is it ready NOW?”


The dough was simple: we pulsed warm water, yeast, and flour until it formed a sticky white ball. We placed it in a glass bowl coated with non-stick spray, covered it with plastic wrap, and let it rise for an hour or so. We cooked the onion, spinach, peppers, and mushrooms while we waited. We assembled the toppings in bowls before I rolled out the dough, which was a source of anxiety when I was little because I feel incompetent when my mom was forced to reroll my attempted circle.

I still feel like I’m in grade school when I make pizza with her because I grudgingly ask for her approval on the thickness of the dough and the amount of oil and mozzarella cheese to distribute on top. I want to know how to do it without Mom’s help, but I let her invade my workspace. Even when I’m not dependent on her, she knows how to make me feel like a kid. So I let her pretend that I’m still the golden-blonde-haired toddler who seized her legs when I needed her, and I let her squeeze me tightly as she suffocates me with kisses, because I know a part of her grows sad when witnessing my independence.

But I’m an adult now, so I transfer the dough onto the pizza paddle sprinkled with cornmeal, coat it with olive oil, and arrange the ingredients on top, without her help. I put the olive oil too close to the edge, and there’s too much mozzarella cheese covering the spinach, red peppers, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, vine tomatoes, and basil.

So I ask for her approval in the end because it’s what I’m used to. She informs me of the mistakes I am already aware I’ve made. She does it reluctantly though, because to her I’m still the toddler who doesn’t know any better.

We turned the oven light on every few minutes to watch the mozzarella cheese melt and blanket the vegetables. It came out of the oven as a painter’s palette of crimson, forest green, golden yellow, sepia, and ivory. I started to eat standing up, but she reprimanded me for it so I sat down with her at the table in our kitchenette. Since I only ate it with cheese when I was younger, the sweetness from the onion, the sharpness of the sun dried tomatoes and the peppers, the subtlety of the spinach, the crunch of the thin yet chewy crust, all tasted like adulthood.

At the table, we talked about my life away from home.

It took me eighteen years to understand that she’s allowed to be vulnerable. She wants to be close to me, to feel needed, like she was when we were under the same roof. She clings to the past and reverts to the fondest childhood memories—it’s how she compensates for the distance.

This meal wasn’t about the food. She treasures time spent in the kitchen no matter what she’s cooking because it’s where she as a mother will keep giving to her daughter.

If I were Sifton, I'd be obese by now

A restaurant critic seems to have a lot of freedom to write what he or she wants. I noticed some consistencies in the descriptions of the surroundings in and outside of the restaurant, the intended audience or consumer, important figures like owners and chefs, type of cuisine served, and the food itself. Some of the most interesting pieces, not necessarily reviews, engaged the reader in a conversation. For example, in his blog about the John Dory Oyster Bar, Sifton asks his readers how they feel about the restaurant’s no reservations policy, and he always gets lots of response. Is time in NYC really a form of wealth? I agree with some readers that I probably wouldn’t take a group of five to dinner at John Dory because of the wait, but a dinner for two might be a different story.

I liked the storytelling approach that Sifton uses in one of his reviews, or the pieces in which I learned something about the author him/herself other than food preference. I liked that in “The Cheat: A Winter’s Tale", oxtail stew was the subject, and the restaurants that offered all sorts of variations of it were secondary characters.

Sifton’s cares about his readers, which is obvious from his blog posts and responses to questions about his life as a professional food critic. The internet really is your friend, Sifton proves, and it’s a good place to discuss big issues like health, culture, society—and the greater costs and implications that come from purchasing McDonald’s in general. He has a great online presence, which opens the door to a larger audience.

It was cool to see the way that these restaurant reviews unfolded because the authors (mostly Sifton) approached the subject differently each time. Sometimes he’d start with a description of the food, or the head chef, or traits of the surrounding neighborhood. So, structurally, it seems to me like anything could work, as long as it holds some significance. A difficulty I encountered in Arts Journalism last year when writing reviews was the “in-between” pieces—when I didn’t love, or hate, something, and trying to create that balance on the page without sounding boring or not being able to develop my own voice. In the article about Bar Basque, Sifton writes about a mediocre restaurant experience, and the need to contrast/shift between good and bad doesn’t lose me as a reader, partly because he writes about both so well that I wasn’t thinking about the mediocrity of the experience.

In Sifton’s Q&A, it’s easy to see that he feels all the pressures of his job on a daily basis. I imagine it’d be hard to transition into or out of a lifestyle that requires eating out four times a day, and exercising enough to continue to do so. But he’s very much aware of, and open about, his professionalism and doesn’t mask the complications, which makes him very real to me.

Secret Ingredients

I have to agree with some of my classmates that most of the articles written before the 1990s in the “Dining Out” section of Secret Ingredients didn’t hold my attention for very long. I sensed a noticeable shift in writing style once I reached Adam Gopnik’s “Is there a crisis in French cooking?” The story and the vocabulary appeared less lavish and more relatable in Anthony Bourdain's and Jim Harrison’s pieces. Bourdain’s, “Don’t eat before reading this” was my favorite article in the section, mostly because of the content itself, but it was like a splash of color in a sea of gray. In class, we’ve talked a lot of about food justice, knowing where our food is coming from, but we haven’t touched as much on the ethics of restaurant kitchens (I don’t want to be punished for wanting a well-done piece of meat, nor do I want my hollandaise to consist of recycled butter. I’m slightly less comfortable eating in restaurants now knowing that my food’s probably been picked at over and over--which Bourdain claims is a sign of good cooking).

I admit that I read him differently than the other authors because I liked and knew him from A Cook’s Tour; I expected the same humor and wit, and wasn’t sidetracked by his comments on unfamiliar French cooking like other pieces. I could hear the voice I read in his novel, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have enjoyed the other authors as much had I been more familiar with their work. I also wondered if my lack of interest in the first 60 pages of “Dining Out” had anything to do with everything being about France and French cooking. I didn’t know what to expect from these pieces as a whole and was anxious to find a connecting thread, and I suppose it is the authors’ experiences with the French cuisine. As I was hoping for a break from this, I experienced a greater appreciation for the variety in Bourdain's novel, his different food and travel experiences across the world.

Like the last couple of articles in “Dining Out,” I could relate to the more personal descriptions from “Dining In.” M.F.K. Fisher’s descriptions of family and casseroles, although meant for mass feeding he says, were more intimate and relatable. Tomkins’ article on Julia Child was the most entertaining because I kept picturing Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci in the film Julie & Julia. In Tomkins’ descriptions of Julia Child and her path to success, I thought about the progress that female chefs have made in the cooking industry and if/how they are treated differently than male chefs today. Is the industry male-dominated? If we as an American society are still so inclined to perceive women primarily in a traditionally domestic setting, does that mean female chefs should be dominating the networks? I’m interested to hear what others think about this. The piece also got me thinking about television personalities; is Tomkins right when he says that cooking stars like Child just don’t exist anymore? I’ve never seen any of her episodes, but just the descriptions of her provoked a comparison with present-day TV stars. My knowledge of famous chefs is limited to the Food Network, where it’s not hard to find quirky chefs like Alton Brown, but I wonder if there’s anybody who exists today who can match up to what Julia Child meant to the world in the 1950s.

Reading film

“We have allowed ourselves to become so disconnected and ignorant about something that is as intimate as the food that we eat.” –Joel Salatin

Watching Salatin sitting in the grass with his pig, wearing a pair of mud-stained jean suspenders is quite a contrast to Carole Morison’s chicken house, which she admits is more like mass production than farming. We’ve already discussed in class the idea of knowing exactly where our food is coming from, and we’ve read powerful descriptions from Bourdain and Pollan about the impact of staring our food in the eye before it makes its way into our stomachs. There is, however, something different about seeing it on film and having live images of Polyface farms to supplement our understanding of it from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Characters like Salatin seem more real when we have visuals.

It takes a great descriptive writer to use his or her words to compete with the image of a sobbing mother advocating for Kevin’s Law and condemning the USDA for being unable to exercise more power in the matter of her son’s death by meat contamination. We talk about unfair working conditions and how the industry’s laborers earn barely enough to sustain their families; the film gave us the opportunity to see an example of where a migrant worker lives, and to watch the police track down illegal immigrants, arrest them, and let the companies who hired them go free and continue making billions.

On Monday I attended the second annual Valentine’s Day Dinner in Hicks Banquet Hall. Like last year, a note card with a discussion question awaited guests at their seats. Unlike last year, Farms to K teamed up with MiRA (Migrant Rights Action), the Kalamazoo service-learning program that works closely with Farmworker Legal Services. Due to the collaboration, the dinner didn’t focus solely on the importance of eating locally, but also on the migrant worker experience. My note card, for example, asked if we as consumers worry about how pesticides in our food affect the workers; the answer read something like, “We worry about pesticides in our food…”—but what about the workers? Some interesting discussions emerged from the dinner that night.

On a different note: I tend to consider reading a book a more intimate experience than watching a film (because people almost always say the book is better than the movie), but “Food, Inc.” changed my perception of the intimacy of documentary films. This whole movie highlighted the helplessness of farmers, farm workers, and consumers. Until I watched the film, I never gave much thought to the illusion of diversity in a supermarket, or the marriage between science and technology and McDonald’s burgers. Or how farmers are so helplessly in debt that they would compromise their morals to keep their contracts. They have families to support, too.

So who is more protected: the industry or the consumer? Would farmers like Moe Parr win their cases in seed saving if they aren’t forced to settle with powerful companies because they can’t pay the legal fees? Why does the government subsidize fast food and not healthy food? What about looking at this issue from the standpoint of our health? And is obesity truly a crisis of personal responsibility? I wonder how much we should really allow the government and the food industry to step in and control the way we eat.

Old Habits Die Hard

It’s not that my family and I are savages because we never make it to the dinner table before we’ve picked at every food cooking on the stove. We’re all guilty of standing up while we eat because we love food too much to sit down and wait for it to reach our plates. We make it to the dinner table eventually, but not before our fingers get a little dirty. My mom usually asks my sister or me to set the dinner table, and we only half set it before we’re back to dipping our fingers in the pots and pans. We don’t always care about what’s for dinner as long as we’re with each other. I knew this was true the time my sister made mashed cauliflower in high school as a substitute for mashed potatoes. I supported her adventurous side until I remembered how much she bullied me throughout my life and I said, “This sucks.” I got in trouble for using that phrase, but at least Lauren never made cauliflower again.

My perfect meal doesn’t take place at the dining room table of my house where the crystal chandelier hangs above the vanilla-scented-candle display and the silk red tablecloth. It’s in the kitchenette, where I’m surrounded by lime green walls with white trimming and framed, sepia-toned pictures of foods like hard eggs and onions. It’s the closest to abstract artwork that we own, and it looks out of place against the walls that haven’t been repainted since we moved to the south side of Chicago in 1991.

We’ve had the same kitchen since I was two years old. It’s the one room in the house that my mom never considers remodeling. My mom, dad, sister and I sat for dinner here every night of the week before my sister went to college two years before me. My sister and I fought each other for the brown bench against the wall because we didn’t like sitting in the black chairs that made us feel like grown ups. I can trace the start of our rocky relationship back to the nights we fought over that uncomfortable bench that neither of us enjoys anymore.

The dining room table was reserved for family barbecues, birthdays and other holidays. Or whenever my mom entertained guests like our parish priest Father Raftery, who I informed at dinner one night that my mom was making us strawberry daiquiris for dessert. I forgot to tell him they were virgin and my mother reprimanded me for that later. She also loved to entertain my grade school friends; our idea of a good time rarely coincides even today, but we both agreed that whenever my girlfriends came to the house for sleepovers, we would make homemade pizza. I was proud of her when she made it. It’s one of the few foods that has the power to make me angry once it fills my belly to the point where I can’t consume any more. I always regret eating more than I can stomach the next morning, but it’s worth it in the moment.

My idea of a perfect meal starts with who I spend my time with in the kitchen; my mom did most of the cooking when I was younger, a role my dad has assumed since the success of his breakfast taco experiments gave him the confidence he needs to cook more ambitious foods. I wanted to cook this meal with my mom because I didn’t spend much time with her in the kitchen as a kid; I was curious to know how to make her flan, her Mexican rice, her rice pudding, but she was a working mom who didn’t always have the patience to teach me the recipes when she got back from work. But pizza was one of the simplest recipes she had, so I almost always had a role in preparing it.

I traveled back home to Chicago this weekend to create my perfect meal with my parents. My mom and I shopped at Trader Joe’s—a quirky grocery store that serves a good selection of organic food where the cashiers wear Hawaiian shirts to work and say things like “Cowabunga dude!” They’re all about cutting costs and keeping it cool, according to my mom. We bought a box of organic spinach greens, a yellow onion, mushrooms, red bell peppers, tomatoes on the vine, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and BelGioioso fresh mozzarella cheese. We already had the dough ingredients, salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil at home.

I prepared the dough in the food processor before cooking the pizza toppings so it had time to rise (When I was younger, my mom would let the dough rise for several hours and sometimes we made it by hand.). I added warm water, yeast, and flour before we pulsed it and let it mix together and form a sticky white ball. I placed it in a glass bowl sprayed with non-stick spray, covered it with plastic wrap, and waited an hour or so until it was ready.

Next was the reason I loved pizza as a kid: the fumes that filled the kitchen from cooking the onion, spinach, peppers, and mushrooms, even though I didn’t allow them on my pizza at the time. Red bell pepper is one of those underappreciated foods that I misunderstood in grade school, but that I make all kinds of excuses to incorporate into my meals now. We placed the peppers on all four burners and let the flesh of the peppers grow a dark black jacket that we later stripped away along with the seeds inside. After those were finished, we cooked down the spinach, mushrooms, and onions.

We assembled everything that we wanted on the pizza in bowls before I rolled the dough, often a source of anxiety in grade school because I felt incompetent when my mom was forced to reroll what I thought was a good circle. An even greater challenge was transferring the dough onto the pizza paddle. Then we added the toppings; first the spinach, then the onions, mushrooms, sun-dried and vine tomatoes.

I still feel like a kid when I make pizza with my mom because I ask for her approval on the thickness of the dough, the amount of olive oil I should spread on it before I lay the toppings on, and if the amount of mozzarella cheese I crumble on top is excessive. Even if she tells me the crust is too thin, the way I like it, or if there’s too much cheese, I follow my own instincts.

I’m reminded of the beauty of cooking with color and the artistic value of food when I make pizza; it’s a painter’s palette of crimson, forest green, golden yellow, sepia, ivory. It proves that an ordinary dish can be beautiful. Even though my mother’s pizza is more sophisticated than it was in the years I did the five-minute walk to school from my front steps, old habits die hard. We still picked at the vegetables while they were cooking in the pan. We turned on the oven light every few minutes to watch the mozzarella cheese melt and blanket the vegetables. We ate standing up and made loud noises as we licked our fingers. We skipped the salad so we had room for the maximum amount of pizza. We ate strawberries for dessert because my mom never bought ice cream and cookies when I was a kid. We talked at the dinner table about my life in college that sometimes feels so removed from my life back home. We watched the last colors of the palette disappear before we submitted to the couch, holding our stomachs with both hands.

Memoir revision--In my grandma's kitchen

I was five years old the first time my grandma made gorditas for my sister and me. We stood on our tiptoes to reach the level of my grandma’s hands on the kitchen counter where she molded the thick, circular tortillas made of masa harina in her wrinkled palms. Our eyes paced back and forth with her hand movements as we struggled to maintain our grip on the counter’s edge. We watched her place the masa cakes in a pan full of bubbling-hot oil situated on her outdated stovetop. I fought my sister for the protection of my grandma’s leg when drops of oil escaped from the pan above our heads. The masa-colored surfaces transformed into a light golden brown as they fried. She made sure to cook them long enough for the insides to remain moist and chewy, and so an abundance of steam flowed from within when she seized them with her fork.

It was a simple food, not even a dish, but the experience was so gratifying because it was something my mom never made at home. I longed to taste the gorditas in the setting of my own kitchen, but my sister and I knew it was a rare food experience that we needed to savor while my mom wasn’t around. My grandma, on the other hand, was indifferent to our taking two extra spoonfuls of margarine and smothering it into the crevices of the gordita. We felt like fugitives trying to escape the health-conscious ways of our one-time marathon-running mother and past Miss Panamerican titleholder—memories she dwells on often.

My mom isn’t my grandma Carolina’s daughter, but she treats her like one. When my mom was around to witness the event of my and my sister’s overindulgences, she gave us the smile of a mother who knew she couldn’t compete with Grandma. My mom had authority, but my grandma had just a little bit more. When we returned home, it was apple slices and turkey sandwiches on four-grain bread, but the gorditas were so satisfying that we felt full for a week. It was a sweet victory over Mom.

To anyone who doesn’t know my grandma, a smashed gordita soaked in butter sounds like the average junk most Mexican children crave. It’s a cheap food that she made for the six kids she had to raise by herself on the east side of Chicago after she left an abusive husband in Guadalajara. I had the chance to visit my estranged grandfather on his cattle farm big enough for a family of 15 during a trip to Mexico with my immediate family when I was nine years old. He lived alone with two dogs whose visible rib cages said it all: he was a selfish man. He had the leathery and tired face of someone who worked in the sun all day and cared little for contact with family or friends. His closest relationships were with a bottle of tequila and a rusty pick-up truck. He didn’t know my name.

My grandma never went on these trips with us to Mexico. The kid in me thought it was because she was still in love with my grandpa and wasn’t prepared to dig up old emotions. My sister was the mature one who realized she just hated him.

I have learned more about my grandma through her cooking than in the conversations we have. She lets her two-foot-tall steel pot do the talking—the one that is dented and scratched all over the silver surface from years of cooking caldos for the big family she created. Her servings of caldo de albóniga, caldo de camarón, pozole and menudo always reached the rim of the bowl, especially with the frequent and welcome addition of her Mexican rice—the envy of every Guzman who tries to replicate the recipe. Generous portions of food awaited my sister and me on her thick wooden table tainted with the aesthetically displeasing floral patterns on her cups and placemats. Florals have since become engrained in my head as an indication of old age.

But the grandma from my childhood never seemed to age. She was a short, plump and proud Mexican woman with all the confidence I could hope to attain by her age. She was always in the kitchen, always wearing the same cotton thermal underwear tops and bottoms. Year after year, when I visited her small home, I was expected to march straight to that wooden dinner table upon arrival where I was greeted with the foods she knew I loved. I didn’t know much about my grandma other than she loved me enough to feed me my weight in foods with a chicken bouillon aftertaste. And I felt safe whenever I sat down to eat in her home. Everything she cooked tasted better because I ate it in her kitchen, a modest space with warm carpeted floors, outdated brown tile and kitchenware she kept from her previous life in Mexico.

Her kitchen had all the reminders of family: family pictures from the early 90s taped onto her enamel icebox, their white edges visible from the rips and tears created by all the hands they have passed through.

Her home reflected the most important values I grew up with. There was always something cooking in her house because she knew the way into her family’s hearts was through their stomachs. Once I was old enough to understand the vulgarity of swear words, she yelled in my direction, “Pinche cabrón! You better stop fighting with your sister or I’ll kick your ass!” I let out a childish giggle because I found her obscenities endearing. Later on, I realized that what she meant to say was, “Without family, you have nothing.” And she was the best example of this. When she was up for the task, she would invite the family to her house to make tamales for Christmas. She made it easy for my six cousins and me to assemble the cornhusks and the masa—my favorite part of the tamal. Every year we formed an assembly line that stayed intact for just a few minutes because we got the bright idea of sneaking upstairs to steal animal crackers, artificial fruit cups and Welch’s grape juice from her pantry. We were gluttons, but my grandma wouldn’t have it any other way. Food brought the family together, so the more the better.

I remember the first time I went to my grandma’s house and wasn’t greeted with food. It was an afternoon last November after she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. When she didn’t let me approach her for a kiss on the cheek, I turned the corner to see what was cooking. I realized that day that I had finally grown up and my grandma won’t always be there to remind me that I am nothing without my family.

Local Foods Debated: Is Changing Our Eating a Pressing Social Justice Issue?

Check out the article from the Index last week on local food in the cafeteria, and what Dean Westfall had to say about Farms to K's purchasing policy. Check out some of the comments that people made on the article as well!

The cow that was never meant to eat corn

Michael Pollan says that in the Mexican tradition, to allow corn to lay on the ground is considered sacrilegious--talk about having respect for the food you eat. Mexico is just one example of a country deeply rooted in traditions surrounding food and eating. He argues that in a country like the U.S. with such an unstable food culture, we’re susceptible to believing what we read in diet books instead of making the effort to visit the gym, and we treat on-the-go foods like protein bars as meal substitutes. How much do we respect the food we eat? Better yet, how much we respect our bodies? I fall victim to the temptation of fast food chicken nuggets and Burger King whoppers every now and then, but I have enough respect for my body that I wouldn’t eat like that all the time.

This notion of stability is important; if we had a more stable food culture, would we still feed our children fast food or obsessively count calories? I agree with Pollan that the answer is no, we would be a much healthier population if we had this stability in our daily routine. There are many things missing from the American Dining Experience, as Bourdain argues in A Cook's Tour, like the element of family and of community. While I looked forward the rare occasions in grade school when my mom decided to take me to White Castle instead of making me a turkey sandwich and sliced apples for lunch, now that I’m older, I appreciate the process of cooking (or rather, watching my mom cooking) a healthy meal and sitting down to eat it with the family.

This whole idea of stability for me is more about assessing our values as it is about having one food or one set of foods to define our country by. Part of the appeal of traveling to cities within the U.S. with large, diverse populations is visiting a number of neighborhoods and having different food experiences within that one city. In Chicago, you’ll find neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, Ukranian Village, Greektown, Lithuanian Plaza, and the Polish Village, each food tradition hoping to claim the prize for Chicago’s soul food. Pilsen, with its beloved restaurants like El Milagro, is no exception. With so much food, it’s hard to single out just one as representing Chicago’s dining scene. In the United States, we call ourselves the Melting Pot because we all come from different cultures and customs around the world. With this much diversity comes the difficult task of unifying our nation in terms of food. Is it possible? Maybe not in the near future, but is it even necessary? Most of me says no.

I often got lost in Pollan’s complex and technical descriptions of food’s journey from the cow that was never meant to eat corn to our processed-food-happy bodies. But he’s introduced me to a number of concepts that I’ve heard others speak passionately about but have never been proactive enough to research on my own. This seems to be at least one of the audiences he’s writing for. Like he says, this book isn’t for people who prefer to eat in ignorance.

In my grandma's kitchen

I remember the first time my grandma made gorditas, smashed in with a fork, drenched in the butter-like spread that my sister and I always longed to taste in the setting of our own kitchen. My grandma would mold the thick, circular pancake made of masa harina in her wrinkled palms—she knew exactly what size they should be for her big-bellied grandchildren—and then placed it on the heated pan situated on her outdated stovetop. It was such a simple food, not even a dish, but the experience was so gratifying because it was something my mom would never make at home. It’s plain masa-colored surface turned golden brown as she cooked it, making sure that the inside was warm and chewy, and that plenty of steam would flow from the top when she stabbed her fork into it.

My sister and I knew this was a rare food experience that we needed to savor while my mom wasn’t around. My grandma, on the other hand, was indifferent to our taking two extra spoonfuls of artificial-looking butter and smothering it into the crevices of the gordita. We’d wait for it to melt before we dug in. We felt like fugitives trying to escape the health-conscious ways of our one-time marathon-running mother and previous Miss Panamerican titleholder, a memory she dwells on often.

To anyone who doesn’t know my grandma, a smashed gordita soaked in butter sounds like the average junk most Mexican children crave. It’s a cheap food that she would make for the six kids she had to raise by herself on the east side of Chicago after she ran away from an abusive husband in Guadalajara. I had the chance to visit my estranged grandfather on his cattle farm big enough for a family of 15 during a family trip to Mexico when I was nine years old. He lived there by himself with two dogs whose visible rib cages said it all: he was a selfish man. He had the leathery and tired face of someone who worked in the sun all day and cared little for personal relationships. His closest relationships were with a bottle of tequila and his rusted, mud-stained pick-up truck. He didn’t know my name, but it didn’t phase me. My grandma never went on these trips with us to Mexico. The kid in me thought it was because she was still in love with my grandpa and wasn’t prepared to dig up all those old emotions. My sister was the mature one and thought she just hated him.

I’ve learned more about my grandma through her cooking than in the conversations we’ve had. She let her two-foot-tall steel pot do the talking—the one that was dented and scratched all over the silver surface from years of cooking caldos for the big family she created. Her servings of caldo de albóniga, caldo de camarón, pozole and menudo always reached the rim of the bowl, especially after the frequent and welcome addition of her Mexican rice—the envy of every Guzman who tries to replicate her recipe on holidays. Generous portions of food waited for my sister and me on her thick wooden table tainted with the aesthetically displeasing floral patterns on her cups and placemats. Florals have since become engrained in my head as an indication of old age.

But my grandma never seemed to age. She was a short, plump and proud Mexican woman with all the confidence I could hope to attain by her age. She was always in the kitchen, always wearing the same cotton thermal underwear tops and bottoms. Year after year, when I would visit her small home, I was expected to march straight to that wooden dinner table upon arrival where I’d be greeted with the foods she knew I loved. I didn’t know much about my grandma other than that she loved me enough to feed me my weight in foods with a chicken bouillon aftertaste. But I felt safe whenever I sat down to eat in her home. Everything she cooked, especially the gorditas, tasted better because I ate it in her kitchen, a modest space with warm carpeted floors, outdated brown tile and kitchenware she kept from her previous life in Mexico.

Her kitchen had all the reminders of family; family pictures from the early 90s taped onto her enamel icebox, their white edges visible all around from the rips and tears and all the hands they’ve passed through.

Her home reflected the most important values I grew up with. There was always something cooking in her house because she knew the way into her family’s hearts was through their stomachs. Once I was old enough to understand the vulgarity of swear words, she would yell in my direction, “Pinche cabrón! You better stop fighting with your sister or I’ll kick your ass!” I let out a childish giggle because I found her obscenities endearing. Later on, I would realize that what she meant to say was, “Without family, you have nothing.” And she was the best example of this, something I remembered once I stopped holding a grudge after she took out the paddle to slap my behind when I misbehaved. When she was up for the task, she would invite the family to her house to make tamales for Christmas. She made it easy for my six cousins and me to assemble the cornhusks and the masa—my favorite part of the tamal. We’d form an assembly line that stayed intact for just a few minutes, until we got the bright idea of sneaking upstairs to steal animal crackers, artificial fruit cups and Welch’s grape juice from her pantry. We were gluttons, but my grandma wouldn’t have it any other way. Food brought the family together, so the more the better.

These gorditas defined my childhood food experience: the longing for food I always wanted but could never have, and the embarrassment that came with eating authentic Mexican food when everybody else was eating Lunchables. Lunchtime at my grade school was what set the cool kids apart from the weirdos. And it was weird to bring cheese quesadillas and rice in a plastic lunch bag. I liked eating traditional Mexican food in the security of my own home, but it was never something I wanted to eat in the presence of my grade school girlfriends. The ends that were cut off of their PB&J sandwiches on white Wonder bread were the cherry on top of what I considered to be the epitome of the All-American Girl’s lunch.

I forgot about these silly concerns in my grandma’s kitchen, the one place within a reasonable distance where I wasn’t embarrassed to be Mexican, and where I was proud to be part of a family who shows their love through food. But it was also a reminder that I had a long way to go before I could be the person I was inside my grandma’s house outside of it as well.

A lesson in culture, genuine emotion

After his gruesome account of the Portuguese pig slaughter, Tony Bourdain says he starts to notice the things missing from the average American dining experience: large groups eating together, the family element, living close to your food, and the resistance to change at the expense of maintaining food traditions. Although I often lost focus during his breathtaking and incredibly detailed descriptions due to the constant reminder that no matter how intimate a moment might have been, the camera crew was nagging at him to extract more information from his subjects, I was always brought back to this idea.

In my opinion, eating with a group of people makes for a better experience than eating solo. But in the U.S., the family and group element of dining is generally absent from the culture (the living close to your food and food tradition arguments will be put on hold for the sake of length). We settle for fast food instead of slow food, and sacrifice dinner with the family because it’s convenient with our long workdays. Of course everything is relative, and it’s easy to criticize our culture when juxtaposed with foreign ones that seem refreshing at first glance. This isn’t always fair if the comparison at hand is based on a snapshot of that culture taken from a chapter in a book like Bourdain's. I don’t know much about cultures outside of the U.S. and Mexico, so I feel guilty for condemning our values and priorities in the U.S. when all I have for comparison is an author’s words that I have no reason not to believe.

As somebody who places a high value on family (which is due in part to the Mexican cultural values I’ve grown up around) and has grown up in a neighborhood with similar values, I’m hesitant to generalize that we fail to appreciate the beauty of family, of large groups eating together, in the American dining experience. Part of this is because I believe we’re social people in the U.S.—we like to go out, to spend time in large groups.

On a different note: Bourdain's book on extreme cuisine reads like a travel book just as much as one all about food. He knows it's impossible to understand and appreciate a country without knowledge of its history and the events that have shaped its present-day culture--a culture and identity that he shows us can be reflected as much in the food as in the surroundings. I've always been one to pass up a history lesson for the fun stuff like a pig slaughter, a tapas marathon, or a desert lamb feast. Knowing about a country's customs and cultural values, however, made the experience of reading about these events much more rewarding. I was blown away by the amount of detailed information he provided about the people and their history, even if he did it while smoking himself into a state of enlightenment that he proudly, and often, describes.

I didn’t know much about Anthony Bourdain before I started this book, so after the first several pages, I assumed he was the insensitive and intrusive Giant American Savage that radiated from the introduction. I still don’t know him very well, but what struck me in these first several chapters was his ability to take a real emotion like guilt and translate that so honestly onto the page with an intensity that made me feel like I was present in real life.

(Side note: I found an interesting interview with Bourdain from Time magazine. Check it out!)

Always a visitor

Food is more than a substance that brings back memories of a childhood in which Bich longed to be another Judy Blume character. She was the kid with the bulky lunch box instead of the brown paper bag and the one Girl Scout member whose food contribution tasted like construction paper. She knows that her life isn’t the fantasy she escapes to when she reads about the Ingalls family. Food is the way she fills the voids in her life; she sneaks American food into her room to feel more American; she’s enamored with the descriptions in her children’s books of food prepared by families that set the standard for what she thinks her family must look like; and she steals a plum from underneath the statue of Buddha in the hope that he’ll awaken and answer her prayers for a 20/20 vision and prettier clothes.

Food is her way to cope with the reality of being a Vietnamese-born, not-quite-as-American-as-she-would-like-to-be American, and her way to salvage the fantasy that she has of being a leggy blonde; when she eats like her Grand Rapids neighbors, for those moments she believes she has the power to change herself from the inside.

But food is what snaps her back to reality as well. After all of those visits to Ponderosa, a place more like a cafeteria than an actual restaurant, she sees the false hope it represents as it brings her family together then fails to keep them that way. Ponderosa represents a world of possibility, like the move to Ada, but like her and her family, it doesn't turn out to be what she hoped for. And stealing Jennifer's Toll House cookie doesn't make her any less Vietnamese on the outside.

Food is also the way through which she begins to recognize the complexities of her adolescence. She writes, “Gone were the days of bread and honey.” Bread and honey are reminders of Anh and Crissy, who have embraced the teenage lifestyle and left Bich behind. Once Bich realizes she is old enough to deny her sisters' commands without feeling fearful of not fitting in, it comes at a point where she is so disconnected with them that they no longer share any playful moments. I think it's this detachment from her sister and stepsister that she becomes aware of the influence of other female figures in her life--Rosa and Noi.

A part of me was expecting an ending in which Bich totally abandons any feelings of shame in being Vietnamese, and rejects the part of her that tried so hard to be American. It makes sense that the ending is ambiguous (will she see the turtle and find good fortune, or will she be the person who sits day after day waiting for it to appear?). I get the sense that she has come to peace with being a "Vietnamese-born American girl", but still has the same internal conflict; Bich ends the book in a scene where she's in Hanoi, left with an empty journal that she cannot fill in this place where she's always a visitor.

Finding an identity through food

I chose this article from the New York Times as my choose your own adventure piece because it's a great start to talking about the connection between food and place, and it’s something people from all backgrounds can relate to. The article discusses the importance of food to a city's identity, and how the food that a city is known for is most often the city’s best food as well; for example, the pierogi in Pittsburgh or the Philadelphia cheesesteak. Whenever my family and I travel to a place we’ve never been to before and we’re overwhelmed with dining options, we ask the locals because they know the town the best. This article brings back memories of a small restaurant/tortilla factory back home in Chicago called El Milagro (see picture) that I would never have visited if my dad had not forced me. It’s in the middle of a run-down street that receives very little traffic.

At a place like Kalamazoo College where students come from all parts of the world, everybody has a unique story about their experience with food back home. Food is an important part of any culture, and an important way for a place to create an identity among a sea of chains.