The first time I discovered fusion food was also the first time I didn’t throw away my mom’s cooking. I know the idea of tossing your parents’ hard work into the compost bin is practically a declaration of war, but in my defense I was young and stupid — very stupid. The absurdity is not lost on me, seeing as I was an Asian boy growing up in a predominantly Asian community, ashamed of my own Asian food. Truthfully, it wasn’t as though I felt like my ethnicity was underrepresented — it was my food that I was ashamed of.
I remember my first day of seventh grade, after the implementation of the free lunch program. My parents, concerned that the program was fake, equipped me with enough lunch to feed three grown men — onions, curry and all. And so, when I arrived at the school, the only one with a homemade lunch while everyone else received lunch for free, my embarrassment was near palpable. I opened my plastic bag, smelling the overwhelming spice of the cinnamon wafting from my lunch as my rice compressed in a tin box under the beating sun, and as I began to eat, questions like, “Where’s that smell coming from?” or “What’s that supposed to be?” pierced the air.
Even though most of these questions weren’t supposed to be negative, when others saw my lunch, it felt as though the brightest spotlight shone on my body, as though its foreignness made me an alien. My food kept me chained to the table, far away from the kids who all had the same lunches: odorless and unseasoned, yet “normal.” But I learned that if I tossed my lunch in the trash and ran to the line just before the bell rang, I could get food just like them. In just a couple seconds my weight was lifted, even though the guilt of seeing the food in the trash tugged at my heart.
Every day would follow like this, with me greeting my mom with a smile at the door before I left, and by the end of the day, the lunch she carefully packed for me would be in the trash, rotting. However, one day, just as I was about to dump my food again, a girl ran to me, telling me to wait. Before I could react, she paused, caught her breath, and said, “Well if you’re not gonna eat that, just give some of it to me.” She reached out her hand, and I poured half of my curry into her bowl, while she poured half of her noodles into mine. After an awkward silence, seeing as though I couldn’t pour her noodles into the trash without being rude, I mixed my curry with it and shoved them into my mouth. A desperate attempt to appease a stranger I had met just minutes ago would become my first taste of fusion culture.
Before she asked to have some, I never thought that anyone would be interested in my lunch. I always hid it or dumped it before anyone could see it to avoid the questions, and I myself seldom tasted what my mom made. And yet, this newly created food in my bowl was as delicious as it was disgusting-looking.
The spice of the curry mixed perfectly with the silky texture of the noodles, and the smell I used to criticize as being different was perfectly dampened with the aroma of the broth. The aspects of my food that I was once ashamed of not only disappeared, but complimented the dish when mixed with another. For the first time in my life, I raised my lunch, away from the shade of the trash can and into the light for everyone to see.
From then on I began to treasure my lunch, imagining all the combinations I could make. I would come back home, finding ingredients to add to my aloo paratha or my samosas. The realization that food is much less a monolith, but a flexible, everchanging art that grows with every addition was the start of my quest to create the best fusion foods, and also a beginning to my love for Gobi Manchurian.
Fusion food is a still developing cuisine, one I’ve been exposed to for years with some being the best food I’ve ever tasted, while some also being of the worst. I’ve seen soy sauce packets straight from Panda Express being thrown haphazardly onto Maggi noodles and called an Indo-Chinese blend. I’ve seen abominations, most of them being chocolate mixed on just about any dish and marketed as authentic to both cultures.
I believe that’s where most people go wrong. The fusion food I created was never authentic, nor did it seek to mirror original dishes. When I set out to create fusion foods, I added things to alter its flavor and make it something that better suited my own tastes. That is what I believe fusion food should stand for — innovation without misrepresentation.
It took me a while to accept my own lunch, regardless of what I added to it, but I eventually learned that Indian food was something to be proud of, not something to hide. By surrounding myself with people who unapologetically expressed their culture in their food, I learned to stop fearing questions, but to answer them in stride, realizing that they originated from a place of curiosity rather than judgment.
Regardless, before I grew the emotional maturity to stop fearing others’ opinions on my lunch, fusion food was my crutch. It was my way of displaying my culture and being proud of it without having to confront those scary questions in school, and increasingly scarier questions at home when my mother wondered about my increased hunger. Fusion food not only saved my mom’s lunches from the fate of the trash can, but probably saved myself from getting grounded by my mom.
