The Melting Pot … Literally
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It’s on the shore of the Caspian Sea, which I’ve always wanted to see (today it is flat and gray, like a sheet of pewter). The air is … well, we’ll just gloss over that part, shall we? *cough* The architecture, though, is spectacular.
The Melting Pot … Literally
While we were in the US, I ate a lot of southern food, because that’s the thing I miss most when we’re away—grits, biscuits, pimento cheese, perfect fresh peaches, fried okra, fragrant NC blueberries, and sweet corn in all kinds of permutations. Summer produce in North Carolina is nearly unrivaled. From the kitchens where those meals were being prepared, I could hear Spanish mingling with the Southern accents.
While we were there, though, I also had:
Lebanese mjadarah
Mexican tacos and guacamole
Cuban plantains (aka maduros)
A sesame bagel
Half of a square Detroit-style pizza
They were all delicious, and all made with fabulous ingredients—fresh, seasonal, and mostly local.
I didn’t have any permutation of Asian food, but only because we’re heading for China in October, and will spend the subsequent few months bopping around South/Southeast/East Asia. I’ll eat that food in situ, and it will be delicious. But if I’d wanted to, I could’ve had Laotian, Vietnamese, Japanese, South Indian, Nepalese, Korean, Ethiopian, or Thai for lunch, all without driving more than a few minutes from our hotel.
That is, I think, one of the things America does best: food diversity. When immigrants enter the country and settle into our cities and suburbs and small rural towns, they bring along the foods they ate and treasured in their former lives. More often than not, the lowest barrier to entry into the ‘own-your-own-business’ American dream is a restaurant of some kind. A restaurant can become a place of familiarity and social support for a diaspora group; it can also become a place of introduction for the rest of the local community. If the Smiths try Ms. Panupat ’s Spicy Thai Chicken and realize it’s delicious and they can’t get enough, eventually Ms. Panupat will be a valued resident of podunk-ville.
And the rest of us can have Thai on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, sushi on Wednesday, Italian on Thursday, and Sri Lankan on Friday. Oh, and on Saturday we can have Chinese and then Indian on Sunday. I’m not sure of the best day for Lebanese so you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.
None of that happens without immigrants. Having a real range of culinary choices is a function of immigration, full stop. Too often we take that diversity for granted; we absorb the culinary delights of the rest of the world and learn to love them as if they were our own.
Fast forward five days, and we’re in Azerbaijan. For lunch today we had kuku, qurza, kutab, and manqal.
I realize you have no idea what any of those are. I didn’t either (except kuku; I had that once at the international festival in Raleigh and it blew my mind). Take my word for it: they were all absolutely delicious. So, so good.
There was nothing ‘diverse’ about it—our lunch was pure Azerbaijani. There are probably edible versions of pizza here, and I know there are some Lebanese places. There’s probably generic ‘Chinese’ food, because there almost always is. But I suspect that in Azerbaijan, one really needs to eat Azerbaijani food, if one wants the good stuff.
Not every country is appealing enough to attract large numbers of immigrants. For example, I don’t think North Korea gets a lot of immigrants. (I mean, there was that one American soldier, but I believe he’s back in the US now). And ChatGPT says the most popular food in NK is kimchi. Not pizza, not tacos, not sushi, not hamburgers. I don’t know what the international food scene is like in North Korea, but I can’t imagine it’s thriving.
The countries that do draw a lot of immigrants? They’re delicious.
Take care,
Lisa
P.S. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear it. And if someone forwarded this to you, thank them for me, and go to https://bookwoman.com/ to subscribe.