#Trader Joe’s Kung Pao Chicken

[kitgiz]

Air fryer Trader Joe’s Kung Pao Chicken Recipe

Enjoy a quick and easy Air Fryer Trader Joe’s Kung Pao Chicken recipe! Perfect for a delicious and healthy dinner with minimal effort.

#AirFryerTraderJoesKungPaoChicken #AirFryerMeals #QuickDinner #EasyRecipes #HealthyMeals #TraderJoes #KungPaoChicken #DinnerIdeas #ChickenDinner #WeeknightMeals

[apnourry]

I have a tumblr friend who lives in Virginia, is 27, and whose name sounds like "lemony". We've only met twice (once was technically a sleepover?). I think this is a pattern? You must take me to your finest mac and cheese place to complete the circle! Unless you can be a fake lesbian wife? Can't be a real lesbian wife though because I've completed that..triangle. I had kung pao chicken and fried rice (leftovers) from Trader Joe's btw. What did you have for dinner? Sleep well!

imagine reading something that isn't about you but still having to convince yourself it isn't about you???? Dinner was chile relleno, enchiladas and lotssssss of vegetables lol

[blahandwhatever]

Coming home hungry after hours out and about, making myself a nice Trader Joe’s dinner with some rice (RIP shiitake mushroom chicken beloved - it’s Kung Pao chicken these days), and settling down for a new episode of Succession is truly one of the cornerstone experiences of my Arlington Heights life

Precious memories forever~

[nycfoodieblog]

Watch "I DISCOVERED A NEW PRODUCT AT TRADERS JOES/HOW WAS IT ?/ WILL I EVER EAT IT AGAIN?/KUNG PAO CHICKEN" on YouTube

[thehighestmountains]

some people arent too sure what to buy at trader joes. i usually take note of any interesting products from ppl reviewing items on instagram, so here’s my review of some late-summer items that you can probably no longer get, but no worries, this review is mostly for 2021 summer cathy. bolded items id repurchase.

cotton candy grapes $9 - this craze is insane, the price is insane, the fact that they still have seeds in them is insane. they also have gummy bear grapes, but i didnt see any at the store i went to. i wouldnt say they taste like cotton candy, but they do have a sweeter taste. sometimes it tastes like grass.

super sour scandinavian swimmers candy $3 - trader joes gummies tend to either be too chewy or too soft, this being the latter. the flavor is very tasty, but not quite the super sour i was hoping for. and one more complaint: it gets stuck in your back molars.

dry watermelon jerky $4 - jerky is a deceiving word, it looks like jerky, but its more like a crystallized watermelon. thats the only ingredient. downside, this also gets in your teeth. 

cherry pomegranate toaster pastries $2.70 - definitely tastes healthier than your regular pop tarts but its a great, just slightly sweet breakfast item.

passion fruit guava greek yogurt $1- a lot of greek yogurts have that super tangy sour cream taste or a watery texture, and this doesnt. the passion fruit and guava flavor is delightful.

yuzu hot sauce $5 - tried this with spring rolls and dumplings. its sweet, sour, light, and spicy. its not offensive like some hot sauces are. its really just the right amount of flavor to not overpower but still adds a citrusy spice. do i need it? probably not

sparkling coconut water with yuzu $4 - i really wanted to try everything yuzu, despite not liking coconut very much. this is exactly what youd expect the drink to taste like: half coconut and half yuzu, so if you like both, more power to you.

sparkling peach black tea $4 - these taste like haribos peach candy. theyre very good, but kind of expensive for four cans, so i wouldnt get again.

cheese-less cheesecakes $4 - these are a weird flavor. it hits you with a tangy-ness to start, but the aftertaste is very nice and vanilla-y. i added raspberries on top to hide the flavor, but id rather just eat raspberries alone then.

frozen shiitake mushroom chicken $5 - sauteed this with broccoli over rice for 3 servings. the flavor is very good, but it didnt taste as good as leftovers the next day. and im sure you could easily create this sauce yourself.

philly cheesesteak baos $3.50 - i think they changed the texture of this, because the last time i bought it maybe a year ago, it didnt have onions. 

chicken soup dumplings $3 - they only come with six and theyre kind of a pain to cook in the steamer without puncturing, but these were so flavorful and tasty its worth it.

kung pao chicken mochi balls $4 - i like the outside texture of these but the chicken mush inside is not good and they just added spice to give it flavor. otherwises it would havent any. the dough also gets stuck in my teeth, why is trader joes trying to give me cavities

frozen spicy thai eggplant $3.50 - sauteed this with cubed chicken over rice for two servings. the spicy basil taste is so good, this is a repurchase.

[sigmastolen]

scenes from a grocery run:

every freezer case in trader joe’s is completely empty… except for one item: hatch chile macaroni and cheese.

there is no bread.  there is no cereal.  there is no pasta.  there are no canned goods.  there are no reasonably-priced nuts.  only the overpriced nuts remain.

across the parking space divider, a young couple sits in the front seats, ritually rubbing on hand sanitizer like a piece of performance art.

all the all-purpose flour is gone, but only the all-purpose flour, not the whole wheat, enriched, cake, or bread.  all the active dry yeast is gone, but only the active dry yeast, not the instant or pizza.

paper signs bearing notification of per-customer limits on hand sanitizer and toilet paper are taped to shelves which are nevertheless bare.

every freezer case in trader joe’s is completely empty… except for one item: kung pao chicken mochi balls.

[krystles-life-love]

Gah, I had such a great day. It was a good refresh after my rough week.

1. Weigh in, down 2.4lbs! Yay.

2. Went to my FAVORITE restaurant, it’s a local joint and they have the BEST pastries ever. All locally sourced organic ingredients. So I made it work. I got their breakfast salad, and the hubby and I split a chocolate banana danish. It was just enough, I didn’t need a whole one. - 11pts (6 for 1/2 a danish, and 5 for the salad (points came from whipped feta, citrus tahini vinaigrette, bagel chips and oats). 3. We went for a 5+ mile bike ride, earned some good fit points there and my legs are jello. 4. Starving after that so we went to subway, I got a salad. 1 pt for the chicken teriyaki chicken, and 2pts for the sweet onion sauce. I skipped the cheese 👊. 5. I created a pumpkin Pie hummus recipe for zero points and it’s legit. Lol. 6. And last but not least it’s Chinese food Saturday so I got Trader Joe’s kung pao chicken and the mandarin orange chicken. 1/2 serving of each for 8pts, and 0pts for the cauliflower rice.

Love happy days ❤️

[allaboutfoodgwu]

Soy Sauce: Salty Misconceptions

As an Asian American woman, I have grown to connect with and appreciate my heritage through food. While I enjoy fried chicken and steak, I also enjoy having a nice bowl of 牛肉面  (niu rou mian=beef noodle soup) and 米粥 (mi zhou= rice congee). Despite indulging in both American and Chinese cuisines, I was brought up with the notion that to have real Chinese food, one had to go to Asian grocery markets and Chinese restaurants. Simply put, going to Panda Express or Walmart was a sin in my house. For my anthropological fieldwork grocery project, I chose to investigate how soy sauce, a preconceived international food by Western consumers, is marketed on American shelves.  

Soy sauce (shoyu in Japanese) originated in China roughly 2,200 years ago and is believed to have been introduced to Japan by a Buddhist monk in the mid-13th century (Stein and Shibata). It is made from soybeans, wheat, salt, and water that is fermented in a four year process. The ingredients are not the make it or break it of a good soy sauce, but rather its production environment. Traditional Japanese brewers use koike or specially crafted wooden vessels to ferment the soybeans. The grains of the wood enrich the millions of microbes that deepen the fermentation to produce a savory umami flavor.

However, most modern-day soy sauces are produced within stainless steel vats that shorten the multi-year fermenting process to just three months. Because the bacteria produced in koikes cannot survive in steel tanks, many commercial companies pump their soy sauces with additives like monosodium glutamate or MSG in order to keep up with the demand and production of soy sauce--something I would discover to be true during my project.

During the spring of 2019, I examined soy sauce brands across 4 grocery stores in the Washington, D.C. area. My research was conducted through participant observation, which involves walking around the store as a potential customer and observing the ambiance of the store and its customers, while taking note of the location and sensory details of the soy sauce options offered. I conducted optical research as I observed my surroundings without personal interviews. Over the course of a semester, I learn that soy sauce, in its labeling and aisle surroundings, has been modified to fit into Western perceptions of Asian cuisine--revealing deeper connotations behind its ingredients and authenticity.

My first store visit was at the Whole Foods Market in the Foggy Bottom campus of the George Washington University. I paid close attention to the logos of each brand, nitpicking the logos for its embodiment of Asian culture through symbols like bamboo shoots and cranes. I later observed the design was not the most striking element, but rather the emphasis on reduced sodium and non-GMO ingredients. 

Every bottle addressed it through writing, logos, or both. Health reasons aside, I came into this project with a preconceived notion that buying soy sauce from an American grocery store equated to not only buying from a market that addressed negative connotations of an Asian cuisine but also one that implied Chinese manufacturers were careless for placing MSG in their products.

Talk of Asian cuisine being too salty or not healthy for consumers was rarely discussed in my family nor did Asian food markets I went to as a child address it in the labelling. Seeing this language on American-brand soy sauce bottles made me feel culturally isolated as someone who had Chinese food almost every day of her life.

I visited Hana Japanese Market to see if the same language of reduced sodium appeared on its bottles. Hana Market is on the first floor of a quaint gray townhouse in a quiet neighborhood on U Street. I not only found Japanese-imported soy sauce on the bottom shelf, but also the American brands with reduced sodium and non-GMO stickers were on the shelf above. I was shocked to see the overall bottom placement of a renowned Japanese seasoning staple.

I wondered if it was because Hana’s store owners tailored their products towards the perceptions of Western customers--fully aware that MSG was a health concern and they had made efforts to address it. They even printed out English labels that said reduced sodium for the bottles written in Japanese. On an eye-level shelf, Hana offered ponzu or citrus “seasoned” (not flavored) soy sauce. I had never heard of ponzu until this site visit. To see traditional and authentic Japanese products at Hana made me feel more part of the Japanese culture and where we were borrowing this Asian cuisine from.

Visiting Safeway and Streets Market was a pivotal point in my research. The Safeway I visited in Georgetown was a superstore that focused on convenience and value. However, I was quickly appalled by the selection of soy sauces at Safeway. The soy sauces at Safeway were found in the “Asian/International” section.  In the collage below, Safeway had big jugs of soy sauce that reminded me of gallons of gasoline. All options had cheap prices of $2-4.  While the prices were tempting, La Choy proved that the quality was not worth it. 

The bottle said “Inspired by Traditional Asian Cuisine”, yet its ingredients of hydrolyzed soy protein, corn syrup, caramel coloring, and potassium sorbate (a preservative) were quite the contrary. Might I add it was also produced in Omaha, Nebraska. After seeing the natural and traditionally brewed bottles that Whole Foods and Hana offered, La Choy was an insult to the traditional Japanese soy sauce brewers and the Asian culture itself.

Streets Market revealed a different connotation to how soy sauce was marketed. The store was located in a busy part of D.C., near the border of the Northeast sector. Prices at Streets were sky-high, yet the instant ramen noodles and ready-made “Asian” meals surrounding the soy tiny bottles of soy sauce did not portray Asian food as appealing. Streets perceived Asian food as an on-the-go and quick bite rather than a cuisine to be appreciated.

Perhaps this perception was why it took me 3 stores to locate a place with more than one type of soy sauce. Prior to Streets, I visited Trader Joe’s, Dean & DeLuca, and GWU’s Gallery Market only to discover they had one option. A bottle of soy sauce is not something to be consumed in a day, but I expected more variety. After my visit at Streets, with its array of plastic bowled and preservative-filled instant noodles, perhaps the purpose of soy sauce to Western consumers was nothing more than just a condiment that was put on things to make them saltier.

I went back to the Foggy Bottom Whole Foods for my final site report and was glad to see the wide selection of soy sauces with no worries of added preservatives.  It gave me a greater appreciation for the store’s strides towards lower prices and high quality standards.

Above all, the Asian culinary identity was present in its surroundings and labelling. The International aisle lived up to its name as the soy sauce was next to Asian ingredients rather than instant bowls of ramen. Offering actual ingredients encouraged customers to make Asian dishes themselves, allowing for a greater appreciation of the Asian culture they are consuming.  The labelling of bottles like San-J educated customers on the usage and meaning behind soy sauce.

My fieldwork has lead me to draw two conclusions on the implications surrounding the culture of Asian food in America.  First, Asian cuisine is modified to fit the tastes of the” average American consumer”.  Dishes like Kung Pao or General Tso’s chicken would never be found in China. When Panda Express was established in 1983, the Cherng family knew it would be difficult to for mainstream American customers, especially outside of metropolitan areas, to accept a Chinese dish in its original form and flavor (Liu, 138). Although its original flavor was salty and spicy, Andrew Cherng invented a new sweet and spicy orange sauce for chicken which allegedly came from Hunan cuisine in South China. 

In addition, the famous P.F. Chang’s restaurant chain was named after restaurateurs Peter Flemming (PF) and Philip Chiang.  However, “Chiang” was purposely changed into “Chang” in order to make the brand less foreign to the American public (Liu, 130). For many years, authentic Chinese food has had no market in America--pointing to a dangerous conception among many Americans that Chinese product owners are not in control of their own culture in the American food market.  At the same time, food is both a culture and commodity.  When food becomes a commodity, it is no longer an inherited culture as corporate America can easily appropriate it from the Chinese community (Liu 135).

Second, the use of MSG instead of soybeans in soy sauce points to a loss of authenticity in Japanese culture.  The health dangers of replacing soybeans with artificial flavoring first occurred in the mid 20th century when Chairman Mao seized control of China in 1949.  Perceptions of the Chinese changed as they were seen as threatening to US democracy.  The association between Chinese food and health problems was an easy connection for Americans to adopt the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome or CRS (Germain, 2).  People complained of having numbness in the back of the neck that gradually carried through the arms and back, leading to overall weakness.

CRS confirmed a pre-existing unease regarding the Chinese people during that time.  Although MSG is also commonly used by manufacturers of processed foods like Doritos and KFC, it is inextricably tied to Chinese food.  The consequences of CRS remain today, as demonstrated in my research, virtually almost all soy sauce bottles in the US have some sort of reduced sodium or no-MSG identification.

This project has taught me to appreciate the authenticity rather than the convenience of an international food. Culinary culture is a public domain in where everyone has the right to access or own it. Yet grocery stores need to remember that culture cannot be separated from tradition. It has to be respected. From the item’s placement in a store and on shelves, to its surroundings and design, more stores need to pay tribute to the culture from which their products migrate. Essentially, mixing caramel coloring, preservatives, and water is not Asian cuisine. And on that salty note, I sign off.

  -- Caitlyn Phung

References

Liu, H. (n.d.). Who Owns Culture? In From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese

   Food in the United States (pp. 128-145). Rutgers University Press.

Germain, Thomas. A Racist Little Hat: The MSG Debate and American Culture. Columbia Undergraduate Research Journal. 2017; 2:1. doi: 10.7916/D8MG7VVN

Stein, E., & Shibata, M. (2019, February 26). Is Japan losing its umami? Retrieved April 20, 2019,

   from http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20190225-a-750-year-old-japanese-secret

[celesteiscute]

My favorite fridge dump meal is the frozen kung pao chicken from Trader Joe’s with whatever veggies are about to go bad in my fridge because that sauce will stretch pretty far with

[imgdm]

2 days til 2022! :)

So grateful for making it through and surviving another day. Grateful for all the wins and everything in between. Grateful for my life, my health, for the time to be alive and healthy and to be with Raf and Hopper.

-Iced latte (as usual lol) + grilled cheese for brunchie

-Cooked raf's lunch (Kung Pao Chicken from Trader Joe's)

-washed the dishes, cleaned the toilet, changed the trash bags as well

-Qt with my baby boo

-painted my nails for the first time since raf always does it for me hihi not bad

-did the laundry, went to the asian store/dollar tree/beall's/tj maxx

-got home safely, watched the holidate while folding the laundry, such a nice, feel-good movie.. Love it!

-grateful that raf got home safely too

-grateful for the chance/opportunity to cry out my feelings, and to control my thoughts/mind.. "I'm stronger than I give myself credit for, it's just a phase, it's gonna be ok, i'm gonna be ok." HELPED BIG TIME.

-Raf and i made flan for tom.

I'm just so happy and proud of myself : ) and I know that it's only gonna get better from here ✨

So thankful for 2021 ❤️

[blahandwhatever]

Yesterday I had a good walk and (finally) delicious sushi

Today I woke up feeling great for the first time in weeks, and my Trader Joe’s Kung Pao chicken turned out better than usual

I’m stocked up on Fiji water and my favorite chocolate, stocked up on most everything

I have some new clothes and shoes to try

And there’s so much more to my life, a life that lately has become more abstract, closer to what it once was, but I’ll always cherish these little pleasures

[easyfoodnetwork]

What Can Chipotle Teach Us About Mexican Food?

White-centered food narratives appear most often at major chains. It’s time to hold them accountable.

I’m a professional chef, and up until three years ago, I had no idea what barbacoa really meant.

I thought I did. I’d eaten my fair share of “barbacoa” at Chipotle, where its shredded-beef burrito was my splurge order. But on a tour of Xochimilco, a tapestry of canals and artificial islands that was once a major source of local produce for Mexico City, Paco, my tour guide, took me to his favorite barbacoa stall, where we were greeted with three juicy tacos and a bowl of lamb broth to wash it all down. When I mentioned that I’d thought barbacoa was only beef, he gave me a quizzical look: “Oh yeah? Where have you been eating barbacoa?”

As a chef, I was a little embarrassed by my lack of knowledge. But as someone deeply convinced that food is an extension of identity, who has experienced first-hand the harmful impacts of stereotypes seeping into cultural norms and is now actively working toward changing them, I was horrified at how easily I accepted something completely stripped of cultural context sold to me by a chain.

But such is the world of giant quick-service and fast-casual business: Find interesting, “trendy,” flavorful ideas from any culture, dilute them into their most mass-marketable forms, and reap monetary gain without acknowledging the sources. Although these chains, due to sheer size and reach, are often representing certain dishes or cuisines to large swaths of people — sometimes for the first or only time — they do very little to contextualize the foods they serve. So far, these companies have experienced little pushback and are under no compulsion to change. But as we reckon with the complicated intersection of social and political structures behind food, we have an opportunity to demand a very different future for fast casual.

Barbacoa’s history is a fascinating case study of Caribbean “barbecue” (aka barbacoa) evolving as it moved through Mexico, where lamb or mutton would be wrapped in maguey leaves and steamed underground, and into Texas, where cattle heads were substituted for sheep due to regional availability. It is a laborious process, hence why devotees happily line up for chefs they believe can work magic in the meat, like Cristina Martinez of Philadelphia’s South Philly Barbacoa.

While the final shredded texture of beef barbacoa may resemble that of Chipotle’s “slow-cooked beef combined with water” — as it’s described by Chipotle’s culinary director, Chad Brauze — it comes nowhere close to representing barbacoa technique. In calling this filling “barbacoa,” a sharp contrast to its straightforward “chicken” and “steak,” Chipotle has found an easy way to add a marketable tinge of foreignness to its menu to back up its cred as a “Mexican” grill.

This is not to say food can’t, or shouldn’t, evolve. The very core of food culture is adaptation to new environments, new palates, new people, new ingredients — and these exchanges are not always peaceful or mutually beneficial. Barbacoa has changed over time to include beef as a common protein choice, Spam musubi is now a well-loved Hawaiian staple, and so forth — but ignoring history in search of “approachability” only serves to entrench distorted power dynamics that persist to this day.

As barbacoa becomes another “familiar” option on the steam table, we must examine who has the power to force the process of adaptation and assimilation for profit, and who does not. In the case of food, all that PR fluff about bringing people together completely misses — or perhaps purposefully conceals — the truth that with power, the food of another culture can become a mere commodity, a cog in the wheel of capitalism separate and distinct from the people closest to it.

At $4.9 billion in revenue and close to 2,500 locations as of 2018, Chipotle’s influence is undeniable. “One of the best things about Chipotle is our reach ... in many diverse communities throughout the United States and beyond,” Brauze said in an email. Yet when it comes to educating this diverse audience — some of whose view of “Mexican” food has been shaped specifically by Chipotle’s interpretation — he deflects observations of the chain’s responsibility. “We hope that all people will arm themselves with a greater knowledge of where their food comes from, what ingredients are utilized, and how it’s prepared.”

Maybe it is too much to expect a giant company like Chipotle, run by a primarily white C-suite and most famed for an efficient assembly line, to provide an anthropological perspective for each dish. But what is the inflection point of scale and profit where accountability also sets in, whether it feels “fair” or not?

Nomenclature is arguably the most visible — and therefore hotly contested — aspect of food representation. To have the ability to name something is power, and to proliferate that name widely is influence. At Noodles & Company, with 460 locations and a revenue of $458 million in 2018, dishes are titled “Japanese Pan Noodles” or “Spicy Korean Beef Noodles,” harking back to a likely inspiration (yakisoba) or arbitrary ingredient choice (gochujang). It’s easy to assume these are the results of a flippant naming process, but they’re in fact quite deliberate; as the chain’s executive chef, Nick Graff, explains, names are determined after conducting “online screening tests and taste panels where guests can tell us what naming convention best represents their expectations once they have experienced the dish.”

Consumers do not produce these flattened, generic names in a vacuum. It’s a result of centuries of blurring and erasure of geographic, historical, and cultural nuance, socialized into an idea that “other” places are more homogenous and less important. Consistent exposure to governmental and corporate propaganda has reduced vast regions like “Asia,” “Africa,” and “the Middle East” into amorphous descriptors barely varied enough to distinguish, their differences of little regard, and the essence of their cuisine easily distilled into a few fried wonton strips or a pinch of garam masala.

Generic menu names are the result of centuries of erasure of geographic, historical, and cultural nuance.

Within this self-reinforcing cycle, it’s unsurprising to see examples like Wendy’s limited-run “Asian” Cashew Chicken Salad, a riff on “Chinese” chicken salad that conflates China with Asia and disregards its complicated roots in assimilation and cultural adaption. (Wendy’s declined to comment for this story.) Even a trip to the grocery store yields similar findings: Enter Trader Joe’s painfully stereotyped Trader Ming’s line, which sells blurry pan-Asian items like Kung Pao Tempura Cauliflower in a package accentuated by a “Chinese”-ish font. (Recently, Trader Joe’s vowed to rebrand its “ethnic” lines, but has since reversed course.)

It’s easy to dismiss these collective occurrences as a byproduct of capitalism, to make excuses for the middle managers who aren’t willing to risk their own necks to push back. But food has always been entrenched in Western colonization, imperialism, and enslavement, and it continues to shape (and change) public opinion. The way we allow these national and international chains to treat a food culture implicitly shows the respect (or lack thereof) we have for the people represented by these cuisines — and it is with this backing that appropriative, white-centered food narratives can take place.

For instance, Google searches for “Nashville hot chicken” jumped from an interest index of 4 to 100 after KFC released its version in January 2016, with the New Yorker calling it a “viral sensation.” Yet no part of KFC’s marketing includes a mention of Prince’s, where the dish originated. (KFC declined to comment for this story.) The chasm left by KFC’s silence gives way to a very different, white narrative. Within the year, Food Republic treated the African-American soul of hot chicken as a mere footnote: “Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack may have created hot chicken in the 1930s ... but Hattie B’s has made hot chicken cool,” it said of a newer hot chicken contender in Nashville, after calling Hattie B’s chef “the man who launched the Nashville hot chicken craze.”

This erasure of foodways has further manifested in disasters like “pho gate,” where Bon Appétit anointed a white male chef as the expert on pho, allowing him to bend the narrative of an iconic Vietnamese dish with his own “rules”; Andrew Zimmern’s restaurant Lucky Cricket, where the celebrity chef insulted “horseshit” Chinese restaurants to tout his own “authenticity,” ignoring the foundation laid by early Chinese restaurateurs adjusting to an American palate and subsequent creation of a distinct Chinese-American cuisine; and Kooks, the Portland, Oregon, burrito cart whose two young female entrepreneurs proudly admitted to snooping their way into the intellectual property of “tortilla ladies” in Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, in order to profit off of their techniques back home.

These are far from the only times Black culture has been co-opted or immigrants’ contributions dismissed. But the stakes are now higher than ever. Stripping food from its undoubtedly political history in order to offer a sanitized version digestible by the majority allows for the frightening notion that minorities are separate and distinct from what they offer to the country. It suggests that after “we” as Americans have harnessed what we want from them, those people can be discarded.

Protesters shouted at Kirstjen Nielsen for dining at a Mexican restaurant after escalating the “zero tolerance” immigration policy in 2018, but her actions are eerily consistent with those of her predecessors. In the 19th century, Chinese restaurants were lauded as having some of the best food in the country; in spite of that, anti-Chinese political rhetoric was widespread enough to pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act — after Chinese laborers had been hired specifically to construct the most hazardous points of the transcontinental railway — which was not repealed until 1943.

How and when foods and cultures are embraced by a historically white-dominant America has had hefty implications. Without racial, socioeconomic, and political power, without the right “image,” ideas command little value — at most they are trendy, at worst “indecent” or even “criminal” if embraced by the minority. But demographics are changing: According to the Brookings Institute, at 45 percent minority, millennials are the most diverse adult generation in U.S. history (Gen Z will be even more so), and this presents an opportunity to push back on problematic nomenclature and representation.

If the actions of these big companies have demonstrated anything, it is that there is power in numbers. It is up to our generation to scrutinize these brands, whose reach permeates our lives on the daily, whose executives (inaccurately) treat America as though they are as white as they are, whose menus and messaging influence the next wave of restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs. One start would be for Chipotle to consider an accurate rebranding of its barbacoa to “shredded beef.”

To light the way, a new wave of fast casuals is actively changing the status quo. For these restaurateurs, the first step has been to hold their own menus accountable.

“A big issue we faced as operators [of a healthy Indian concept] was finding a way to meet consumers midway with their vision of Indian food and what we wanted to present them with,” explains Viraj Borkar, co-creator and culinary director of Inday, an Ayurvedic-based Indian chain. Now in its fifth year, Inday has learned its own lessons: a smooth chickpea puree originally called “chickpea masala” went through a sequence of name changes so as to not misrepresent it to those unfamiliar. (Now it’s no longer on the menu.) The “cauliflower biryani” was further clarified to give the backstory of biryani while explaining the Inday version as non-traditional, with its base of “cauliflower ‘rice’” now available separately on the menu. Borkar stands by the statement that “it is the fast casual’s job to educate people and give clarity” on what it is offering, which sometimes means the company needs to scrap a product causing more harm than good, and start over.

Lucas Sin, a 2019 Eater Young Gun and the culinary director of Junzi, a Chinese fast-casual chain, emphasizes this notion of education with the prevalent use of Chinese characters throughout his menu. No one dish is titled as if it represents a region, even if the flavor combinations may hail from one, and unfamiliar ingredients are deliberately not renamed so guests must actively learn what they are. Finding a balance between the “60 seconds or so” guests take to assess the menu and the terminology he deems important to promote has not been easy. Furu tofu, for example, a lacto-fermented type of tofu unfamiliar to most American consumers, is used throughout the menu and elicits questions, which Junzi’s staff is trained to answer thoroughly.

“The future of fast casual is not to tell people, ‘This is what you should eat because that’s what’s affordable.’”

“[One of the few terms] we’ve ever made up is our Jaja sauce,” Sin says. Because the Junzi sauce resembles the classic zha jiang sauce in flavor, but doesn’t have the ground pork component, he opted to create a phonetically similar word for it.

It is possible to reset the framework for making and serving foods from other backgrounds, too. Sofia Luna, president of Sophie’s Cuban, a Cuban fast-casual chain, hails from Lima, Peru, but saw that Cuban food was particularly popular among the Latinx community in the Financial District, where her family first started operating food stands. To open the restaurant, they brought on Cuban chef Eduardo Morgado to create the menu (with most items still available today) not just as a consultant or research and development chef, but an active owner of the business.

In particular, Luna has paid attention to the implications of naming: “If something is tweaked or modified, we want to be transparent with our customer. Our ‘Pernil with a Twist’ was named that way to ensure customers knew they were not getting a traditional pernil sandwich.”

Chef JJ Johnson of Field Trip, a rice-centered fast-casual restaurant with two locations in New York City, sees menus as a way to celebrate and expand, not marginalize, consumer perceptions of its roots by providing cultural context. As the menu spans many cuisines, from a loosely Thai-inspired sticky rice shrimp dish with green curry (simply titled “Shrimp”) to a jollof-style basmati rice bowl (“Veggie”), Johnson is adamant that “every culture deserves specificity” and “we don’t call something for a selling point, like ‘The Jamaican Bowl,’ because that’s just lazy.”

“Take jollof, for example,” he explains, “it’s a tomato-based rice, and jollof is about the preparation of the rice. The inspiration of the overall bowl [Veggie] comes from India. It’s somewhat similar to biryani [the bowl uses basmati rice]. We have a map showing people where the rice is from, and we lead with service by explaining the technique behind the rice. So if someone asks for ‘Spanish rice,’ we can say, ‘What kind of Spanish rice?’ and show them how there are styles, and there are regions.” By using straightforward language accented with in-person dialogue, Johnson is demonstrating that no restaurant “has” to lean on tired tropes to express flavor.

And it’s working: All of these fast casuals have seen steady engagement from customers since opening, disproving the idea that consumers exclusively care about convenience. The owners attribute part of this brand loyalty to their larger commitment to raising conscientiousness and increasing community access to new foods and food cultures. “Every community needs some sort of impact structure to improve,” Johnson says. “I opened in Harlem because I was tired of people telling Black and brown folks that we don’t care about what we eat. The future of fast casual is not to tell people, ‘This is what you should eat because that’s what’s affordable,’ it’s where you can understand your food, where someone can talk to you about it, where you want to try new things and expand what you know.”

These varied dishes all contribute to the growing tapestry of American cuisine, a multi-dimensional story of adaptation, innovation, and survival. Increasing a restaurant’s reach or volume does not entitle operators to shirk the responsibility of explaining the very complexities its foods are based on. Instead, we can embrace learning about food as a natural part of the eating process, each meal an opportunity to deepen our understanding of ourselves and each other.

Jenny Dorsey is a professional chef, writer, and the founder of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit community think tank working at the intersection of food, art, and social impact. Bug Robbins is a non-binary queer illustrator obsessed with printmaking, folklore, and green witchcraft. Edited by Rachel Kreiter Fact-checked by Andrea López-Cruzado

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33wNu2R https://ift.tt/3iCMTB8

White-centered food narratives appear most often at major chains. It’s time to hold them accountable.

I’m a professional chef, and up until three years ago, I had no idea what barbacoa really meant.

I thought I did. I’d eaten my fair share of “barbacoa” at Chipotle, where its shredded-beef burrito was my splurge order. But on a tour of Xochimilco, a tapestry of canals and artificial islands that was once a major source of local produce for Mexico City, Paco, my tour guide, took me to his favorite barbacoa stall, where we were greeted with three juicy tacos and a bowl of lamb broth to wash it all down. When I mentioned that I’d thought barbacoa was only beef, he gave me a quizzical look: “Oh yeah? Where have you been eating barbacoa?”

As a chef, I was a little embarrassed by my lack of knowledge. But as someone deeply convinced that food is an extension of identity, who has experienced first-hand the harmful impacts of stereotypes seeping into cultural norms and is now actively working toward changing them, I was horrified at how easily I accepted something completely stripped of cultural context sold to me by a chain.

But such is the world of giant quick-service and fast-casual business: Find interesting, “trendy,” flavorful ideas from any culture, dilute them into their most mass-marketable forms, and reap monetary gain without acknowledging the sources. Although these chains, due to sheer size and reach, are often representing certain dishes or cuisines to large swaths of people — sometimes for the first or only time — they do very little to contextualize the foods they serve. So far, these companies have experienced little pushback and are under no compulsion to change. But as we reckon with the complicated intersection of social and political structures behind food, we have an opportunity to demand a very different future for fast casual.

Barbacoa’s history is a fascinating case study of Caribbean “barbecue” (aka barbacoa) evolving as it moved through Mexico, where lamb or mutton would be wrapped in maguey leaves and steamed underground, and into Texas, where cattle heads were substituted for sheep due to regional availability. It is a laborious process, hence why devotees happily line up for chefs they believe can work magic in the meat, like Cristina Martinez of Philadelphia’s South Philly Barbacoa.

While the final shredded texture of beef barbacoa may resemble that of Chipotle’s “slow-cooked beef combined with water” — as it’s described by Chipotle’s culinary director, Chad Brauze — it comes nowhere close to representing barbacoa technique. In calling this filling “barbacoa,” a sharp contrast to its straightforward “chicken” and “steak,” Chipotle has found an easy way to add a marketable tinge of foreignness to its menu to back up its cred as a “Mexican” grill.

This is not to say food can’t, or shouldn’t, evolve. The very core of food culture is adaptation to new environments, new palates, new people, new ingredients — and these exchanges are not always peaceful or mutually beneficial. Barbacoa has changed over time to include beef as a common protein choice, Spam musubi is now a well-loved Hawaiian staple, and so forth — but ignoring history in search of “approachability” only serves to entrench distorted power dynamics that persist to this day.

As barbacoa becomes another “familiar” option on the steam table, we must examine who has the power to force the process of adaptation and assimilation for profit, and who does not. In the case of food, all that PR fluff about bringing people together completely misses — or perhaps purposefully conceals — the truth that with power, the food of another culture can become a mere commodity, a cog in the wheel of capitalism separate and distinct from the people closest to it.

At $4.9 billion in revenue and close to 2,500 locations as of 2018, Chipotle’s influence is undeniable. “One of the best things about Chipotle is our reach ... in many diverse communities throughout the United States and beyond,” Brauze said in an email. Yet when it comes to educating this diverse audience — some of whose view of “Mexican” food has been shaped specifically by Chipotle’s interpretation — he deflects observations of the chain’s responsibility. “We hope that all people will arm themselves with a greater knowledge of where their food comes from, what ingredients are utilized, and how it’s prepared.”

Maybe it is too much to expect a giant company like Chipotle, run by a primarily white C-suite and most famed for an efficient assembly line, to provide an anthropological perspective for each dish. But what is the inflection point of scale and profit where accountability also sets in, whether it feels “fair” or not?

Nomenclature is arguably the most visible — and therefore hotly contested — aspect of food representation. To have the ability to name something is power, and to proliferate that name widely is influence. At Noodles & Company, with 460 locations and a revenue of $458 million in 2018, dishes are titled “Japanese Pan Noodles” or “Spicy Korean Beef Noodles,” harking back to a likely inspiration (yakisoba) or arbitrary ingredient choice (gochujang). It’s easy to assume these are the results of a flippant naming process, but they’re in fact quite deliberate; as the chain’s executive chef, Nick Graff, explains, names are determined after conducting “online screening tests and taste panels where guests can tell us what naming convention best represents their expectations once they have experienced the dish.”

Consumers do not produce these flattened, generic names in a vacuum. It’s a result of centuries of blurring and erasure of geographic, historical, and cultural nuance, socialized into an idea that “other” places are more homogenous and less important. Consistent exposure to governmental and corporate propaganda has reduced vast regions like “Asia,” “Africa,” and “the Middle East” into amorphous descriptors barely varied enough to distinguish, their differences of little regard, and the essence of their cuisine easily distilled into a few fried wonton strips or a pinch of garam masala.

Generic menu names are the result of centuries of erasure of geographic, historical, and cultural nuance.

Within this self-reinforcing cycle, it’s unsurprising to see examples like Wendy’s limited-run “Asian” Cashew Chicken Salad, a riff on “Chinese” chicken salad that conflates China with Asia and disregards its complicated roots in assimilation and cultural adaption. (Wendy’s declined to comment for this story.) Even a trip to the grocery store yields similar findings: Enter Trader Joe’s painfully stereotyped Trader Ming’s line, which sells blurry pan-Asian items like Kung Pao Tempura Cauliflower in a package accentuated by a “Chinese”-ish font. (Recently, Trader Joe’s vowed to rebrand its “ethnic” lines, but has since reversed course.)

It’s easy to dismiss these collective occurrences as a byproduct of capitalism, to make excuses for the middle managers who aren’t willing to risk their own necks to push back. But food has always been entrenched in Western colonization, imperialism, and enslavement, and it continues to shape (and change) public opinion. The way we allow these national and international chains to treat a food culture implicitly shows the respect (or lack thereof) we have for the people represented by these cuisines — and it is with this backing that appropriative, white-centered food narratives can take place.

For instance, Google searches for “Nashville hot chicken” jumped from an interest index of 4 to 100 after KFC released its version in January 2016, with the New Yorker calling it a “viral sensation.” Yet no part of KFC’s marketing includes a mention of Prince’s, where the dish originated. (KFC declined to comment for this story.) The chasm left by KFC’s silence gives way to a very different, white narrative. Within the year, Food Republic treated the African-American soul of hot chicken as a mere footnote: “Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack may have created hot chicken in the 1930s ... but Hattie B’s has made hot chicken cool,” it said of a newer hot chicken contender in Nashville, after calling Hattie B’s chef “the man who launched the Nashville hot chicken craze.”

This erasure of foodways has further manifested in disasters like “pho gate,” where Bon Appétit anointed a white male chef as the expert on pho, allowing him to bend the narrative of an iconic Vietnamese dish with his own “rules”; Andrew Zimmern’s restaurant Lucky Cricket, where the celebrity chef insulted “horseshit” Chinese restaurants to tout his own “authenticity,” ignoring the foundation laid by early Chinese restaurateurs adjusting to an American palate and subsequent creation of a distinct Chinese-American cuisine; and Kooks, the Portland, Oregon, burrito cart whose two young female entrepreneurs proudly admitted to snooping their way into the intellectual property of “tortilla ladies” in Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, in order to profit off of their techniques back home.

These are far from the only times Black culture has been co-opted or immigrants’ contributions dismissed. But the stakes are now higher than ever. Stripping food from its undoubtedly political history in order to offer a sanitized version digestible by the majority allows for the frightening notion that minorities are separate and distinct from what they offer to the country. It suggests that after “we” as Americans have harnessed what we want from them, those people can be discarded.

Protesters shouted at Kirstjen Nielsen for dining at a Mexican restaurant after escalating the “zero tolerance” immigration policy in 2018, but her actions are eerily consistent with those of her predecessors. In the 19th century, Chinese restaurants were lauded as having some of the best food in the country; in spite of that, anti-Chinese political rhetoric was widespread enough to pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act — after Chinese laborers had been hired specifically to construct the most hazardous points of the transcontinental railway — which was not repealed until 1943.

How and when foods and cultures are embraced by a historically white-dominant America has had hefty implications. Without racial, socioeconomic, and political power, without the right “image,” ideas command little value — at most they are trendy, at worst “indecent” or even “criminal” if embraced by the minority. But demographics are changing: According to the Brookings Institute, at 45 percent minority, millennials are the most diverse adult generation in U.S. history (Gen Z will be even more so), and this presents an opportunity to push back on problematic nomenclature and representation.

If the actions of these big companies have demonstrated anything, it is that there is power in numbers. It is up to our generation to scrutinize these brands, whose reach permeates our lives on the daily, whose executives (inaccurately) treat America as though they are as white as they are, whose menus and messaging influence the next wave of restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs. One start would be for Chipotle to consider an accurate rebranding of its barbacoa to “shredded beef.”

To light the way, a new wave of fast casuals is actively changing the status quo. For these restaurateurs, the first step has been to hold their own menus accountable.

“A big issue we faced as operators [of a healthy Indian concept] was finding a way to meet consumers midway with their vision of Indian food and what we wanted to present them with,” explains Viraj Borkar, co-creator and culinary director of Inday, an Ayurvedic-based Indian chain. Now in its fifth year, Inday has learned its own lessons: a smooth chickpea puree originally called “chickpea masala” went through a sequence of name changes so as to not misrepresent it to those unfamiliar. (Now it’s no longer on the menu.) The “cauliflower biryani” was further clarified to give the backstory of biryani while explaining the Inday version as non-traditional, with its base of “cauliflower ‘rice’” now available separately on the menu. Borkar stands by the statement that “it is the fast casual’s job to educate people and give clarity” on what it is offering, which sometimes means the company needs to scrap a product causing more harm than good, and start over.

Lucas Sin, a 2019 Eater Young Gun and the culinary director of Junzi, a Chinese fast-casual chain, emphasizes this notion of education with the prevalent use of Chinese characters throughout his menu. No one dish is titled as if it represents a region, even if the flavor combinations may hail from one, and unfamiliar ingredients are deliberately not renamed so guests must actively learn what they are. Finding a balance between the “60 seconds or so” guests take to assess the menu and the terminology he deems important to promote has not been easy. Furu tofu, for example, a lacto-fermented type of tofu unfamiliar to most American consumers, is used throughout the menu and elicits questions, which Junzi’s staff is trained to answer thoroughly.

“The future of fast casual is not to tell people, ‘This is what you should eat because that’s what’s affordable.’”

“[One of the few terms] we’ve ever made up is our Jaja sauce,” Sin says. Because the Junzi sauce resembles the classic zha jiang sauce in flavor, but doesn’t have the ground pork component, he opted to create a phonetically similar word for it.

It is possible to reset the framework for making and serving foods from other backgrounds, too. Sofia Luna, president of Sophie’s Cuban, a Cuban fast-casual chain, hails from Lima, Peru, but saw that Cuban food was particularly popular among the Latinx community in the Financial District, where her family first started operating food stands. To open the restaurant, they brought on Cuban chef Eduardo Morgado to create the menu (with most items still available today) not just as a consultant or research and development chef, but an active owner of the business.

In particular, Luna has paid attention to the implications of naming: “If something is tweaked or modified, we want to be transparent with our customer. Our ‘Pernil with a Twist’ was named that way to ensure customers knew they were not getting a traditional pernil sandwich.”

Chef JJ Johnson of Field Trip, a rice-centered fast-casual restaurant with two locations in New York City, sees menus as a way to celebrate and expand, not marginalize, consumer perceptions of its roots by providing cultural context. As the menu spans many cuisines, from a loosely Thai-inspired sticky rice shrimp dish with green curry (simply titled “Shrimp”) to a jollof-style basmati rice bowl (“Veggie”), Johnson is adamant that “every culture deserves specificity” and “we don’t call something for a selling point, like ‘The Jamaican Bowl,’ because that’s just lazy.”

“Take jollof, for example,” he explains, “it’s a tomato-based rice, and jollof is about the preparation of the rice. The inspiration of the overall bowl [Veggie] comes from India. It’s somewhat similar to biryani [the bowl uses basmati rice]. We have a map showing people where the rice is from, and we lead with service by explaining the technique behind the rice. So if someone asks for ‘Spanish rice,’ we can say, ‘What kind of Spanish rice?’ and show them how there are styles, and there are regions.” By using straightforward language accented with in-person dialogue, Johnson is demonstrating that no restaurant “has” to lean on tired tropes to express flavor.

And it’s working: All of these fast casuals have seen steady engagement from customers since opening, disproving the idea that consumers exclusively care about convenience. The owners attribute part of this brand loyalty to their larger commitment to raising conscientiousness and increasing community access to new foods and food cultures. “Every community needs some sort of impact structure to improve,” Johnson says. “I opened in Harlem because I was tired of people telling Black and brown folks that we don’t care about what we eat. The future of fast casual is not to tell people, ‘This is what you should eat because that’s what’s affordable,’ it’s where you can understand your food, where someone can talk to you about it, where you want to try new things and expand what you know.”

These varied dishes all contribute to the growing tapestry of American cuisine, a multi-dimensional story of adaptation, innovation, and survival. Increasing a restaurant’s reach or volume does not entitle operators to shirk the responsibility of explaining the very complexities its foods are based on. Instead, we can embrace learning about food as a natural part of the eating process, each meal an opportunity to deepen our understanding of ourselves and each other.

Jenny Dorsey is a professional chef, writer, and the founder of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit community think tank working at the intersection of food, art, and social impact. Bug Robbins is a non-binary queer illustrator obsessed with printmaking, folklore, and green witchcraft. Edited by Rachel Kreiter Fact-checked by Andrea López-Cruzado

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33wNu2R via Blogger https://ift.tt/3jA38QQ

[harborstock0-blog]

This is the most popular item at Trader Joe’s

While it may seem like there is a new cult-favorite Trader Joe’s item every month, some products are consistently more popular than others. And as it turns out, TJ’s shoppers across America tend to especially love one particular product. Customer service software company WorkWise compiled Google search interest data on the top-purchased and most-searched-for Trader Joe’s products in every state and found that the supermarket chain’s Sweet Chili Sauce is the most popular Trader Joe’s item in America.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Trader Joe’s Products

WorkWise’s data discovered that TJ’s Sweet Chili Sauce was the top product in 13 states including Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The sweet dipping sauce which features a blend of chiles and garlic is known for pairing well with Trader Joe’s frozen appetizers — especially their Asian-inspired dishes.

The second most popular Trader Joe’s product is their Macaron Variés. The recent customer favorite is the top TJ’s product in 10 states. Surprisingly, Everything but the Bagel seasoning came in third place as the favorite in nine states. We’re only stunned it didn’t make number one, because we know how much Trader Joe’s customers love their seasonings.

Other most-popular Trader Joe’s products include their vegan banana bread, key lime pie, kung pao chicken, and frozen spanakopita. It’s no wonder a few frozen dishes made the list — when paired with something like TJ’s Sweet Chili Sauce, these Trader Joe's products can really save weeknight dinner.

Source: https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/most-popular-trader-joes-item-america/022519

[seedertitle0-blog]

This is the most popular item at Trader Joe’s

While it may seem like there is a new cult-favorite Trader Joe’s item every month, some products are consistently more popular than others. And as it turns out, TJ’s shoppers across America tend to especially love one particular product. Customer service software company WorkWise compiled Google search interest data on the top-purchased and most-searched-for Trader Joe’s products in every state and found that the supermarket chain’s Sweet Chili Sauce is the most popular Trader Joe’s item in America.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Trader Joe’s Products

WorkWise’s data discovered that TJ’s Sweet Chili Sauce was the top product in 13 states including Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The sweet dipping sauce which features a blend of chiles and garlic is known for pairing well with Trader Joe’s frozen appetizers — especially their Asian-inspired dishes.

The second most popular Trader Joe’s product is their Macaron Variés. The recent customer favorite is the top TJ’s product in 10 states. Surprisingly, Everything but the Bagel seasoning came in third place as the favorite in nine states. We’re only stunned it didn’t make number one, because we know how much Trader Joe’s customers love their seasonings.

Other most-popular Trader Joe’s products include their vegan banana bread, key lime pie, kung pao chicken, and frozen spanakopita. It’s no wonder a few frozen dishes made the list — when paired with something like TJ’s Sweet Chili Sauce, these Trader Joe's products can really save weeknight dinner.

Source: https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/most-popular-trader-joes-item-america/022519

[superfitbabe]

Currently diving headfirst into some raw and crunchy almond butter from the good ol’ Trader Joe’s, but I thought I’d share my Saturday dinner at @lovinghutorganic in Claremont! The lovely staff recommended the vegan Kung Pao chicken with brown rice, peanuts, chili peppers, bell peppers, onions, garlic, and soy chicken in a flavorful sauce, and I accepted. The portion was smaller than what I’m used to, but it was actually perfect because I don’t normally like heavy meals in the evening. Overall, I heartily enjoyed this dish! The chicken was pretty darn realistic and the veggies with the peanuts, peppers, and brown rice combined in the sauce were sublime. 😊💚🥜🌶🍘 Not to mention, I was pretty envious of @sweet.kyle.roline because of his amazing vegan carrot cake. I did sneak a bite, but I ended up taking home a chocolate cake that, FUN FACT, was meant for a friend but my sister dug into it while I was putting stuff away! 😂 You know, I didn’t blame her, so I tried it myself. No regrets. 🍫🍰🥕👀 (at Loving Hut Claremont Green Cuisine) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzqiH7-Jmy3/?igshid=11k3rfie3c532