Teaching my White Boyfriend to eat "Ethnic Food"

Germany does not have cuisine, it has nutrition – Rasheed Guo

It is a near universal experience at this point to take one’s white boyfriend in the Bay Area and expand his palate. I am currently dating a German man, whose home cuisine I can only describe as breaking the fourth wall between food and ingredients. When you are eating a burger in Germany, you are not eating a burger, you are fully cognizant of the fact you’re eating a bun stacked on lettuce stacked on a beef patty.

In the style of Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide, I write this in a more paternalistic rather than autonomy enhancing way because I’m currently dating one such man right now. Here are some lessons I’ve learnt:

1. On dealing with spice:

   1. Use children’s foods as a gateway for spice tolerance. Many foods associated with children in ethnic cuisine: e.g. Lassis, mapo tofu, onion bajis, etc.

   2. Use the spice reducers of the cuisine at hand instead of water (e.g. Lassis and Tieguanyin), it’s often better than water and extends their palate.

   3. Teach them how to describe heat vs. spice so you have a better mental model of what they’re experiencing. Most restaurants will do an adjustment when they see a white customer. The key is to elicit that adjustment and make it explicit such that said white boyfriend is able to self-calibrate.

   4. Intermix dishes that have a combination of carbs and meats. Western foods are intermixed by eating methods (you fork together a piece of steak and potato or eat fries in sequence). Eating with chopsticks means that certain noodle dishes need to be slurped and blended beforehand such that each bite has sauce (e.g. Dandan noodles).

   5. Teach them the source of spice, e.g. a chilli is not uniformly spicy, the heat comes from the seeds and then one can remove the seeds.

2. On dealing with odd meats:

   1. Offal and Offcuts 

      1. Describe the meat as it is cooked and textually, avoid biological descriptors that evoke the meat as uncooked protein or through dissection. 

      2. Do not argue from a place of cultural relativism (e.g. white cuisines also eat [insert X] part of the animal) but rather argue from a place of utility (e.g. Oxtail uniquely has a high gelatin content that makes it good for stews).

   2. Exotic Meats (Kangaroo)

      1. Sometimes the animal the protein comes from is the problem. In a trip to Sydney, we had Kangaroo meat served at the wonderful pop up kitchen Bush. Gojuchang Kangaroo Tail looked bewildering but was a wonderful dish that was enjoyed on its own terms.

   3. Cooked Texture

      1. You are allowed to lie to your partner about what they’re eating if it’s so exotic that the disclosure of information is likely to mislead. For instance, the poaching of Hainanese Chicken creates a lack of “crispiness” that is coveted in Western cooking but creates a texture profile that makes it better when paired with rice and able to take on more flavor from condiments.

3. On ordering dishes and picking:

   1. Picking adventurous dishes should be adventurous along one dimension not many at once. For instance, picking a Durian dish would mean picking a Durian paste bao rather than a durian savoury dish.

   2. Avoid dishes with intermixing of small objects that are removed in the eating process normally (e.g. fishbones or cardamon pods). Western eating does not have the tongue dexterity to remove these as you go and have an inbuilt expectation against them.

   3. Picking a good combination of appetizers is more important than ordering a singular dish that will wow them. You need to optimise for future palate expansion and appreciation of flavors.

4. On learning signals:

   1. Rustic foods and restaurants are brought forward by aggregation services like the Bib Gourmand. Other markers of authenticity are very high noise to signal and open to Goodharting. 

5. On the baseline:

   1. German food is nutrition and in turn one cannot suspend disbelief that one is eating plants and animals. For instance, when one eats fries in Germany, it is impossible to escape the fact you are eating fried potatoes. As such many Asian dishes that require the consumer to bind things together or compose a bite for themselves — learning how to use chopsticks is in turn a macro-level planning act too.

   2. Conversely, Chinese food works with variable ingredients whose aim is to layer upon flavors through garnishes, spices, and other accompaniment. The act of eating is a choice in what flavors to imbue your foods as to your own tastes. For instance, dumplings often come with three dipping sauces: black vinegar, soy sauce, and chilli oil. It is up to the diner to choose the ratios they wish adorn their dumpling.