#Sl33pT3rr0r

[nuttysaladtree]

(sighs) OK, so this is from a March 2, 2014 Reddit post by Sl33pT3rr0r in r/funny. In a comment, they clarify:

For everyone who is curious, The Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, NH puts olives on their fish burrito.

To those, ten years ago and now, asking who puts olives on their burritos, I feel like you're asking less about taste and more about authenticity. So I'm just going to quote John Paul Brammer on this.

In "Food Fight!" a July 18, 2023 post on his ¡Hola Papi! Substack, he sympathizes with those "wary of interlopers into their culture, people who will denigrate their cuisine one day and be celebrated the next for adding peas to it in a recipe for the New York Times or something" (italics original). Yet cooks or chefs with family ties to the region in question are punished for innovation:

Back in 2019, when I was smarter, I wrote about the Authenticity Trap, or the expectation on restaurants, particularly those serving Mexican or Chinese cuisine, to meet the criteria for what constitutes an "authentically ethnic" experience. In the essay, I discussed how Mexican restaurants in the U.S. will be punished for daring to experiment with recipes, as in the case of a Kansas City eatery founded by an immigrant from Guadalajara that garnered negative reviews for frying taco shells with Parmesan cheese, an ingredient sourced from nearby Italian-American establishments.

Brammer also mentions that a lot of what we consider classic dishes of a cuisine are much less old than we imagine (citing tiramisu and use of tomatoes in Italian cuisine). I myself have also fallen in the trap of considering Chinese American food inferior to Chinese food when they're just...different. Chinese American food should be evaluated on its own merits: that it allowed a marginalized people to thrive in an discriminatory environment hostile to them and, like many other immigrant-American cuisines, shows adaptability of their traditions to new ingredients and new customers.

That said: what a cute little doodle. Even without it, I, too, would prefer no olives in my fish burrito. Find olives too salty and overpowering, especially if the fish itself is cooked and seasoned thoroughly. But if someone else likes it: in matters of taste, there is no dispute.