Hong Kong fencer Cheung Ka-long won his 2024 Olympic gold medal after a dramatic, exciting final. The close match against an Italian opponent required video reviews, with Cheung eventually edging the match with a score of 15-14.
Those comments were ignorant, but maybe understandable. Previously in Italy, I have seen restaurants that say they serve “Korean/Chinese” food. If you did not know better, you might assume it is kind of the same thing.
Most of my open-minded Italian friends rolled their eyes at this storm in a teacup, but there are those who still fume at pineapple as a pizza topping. To them, I say: it is time you get over it. The outrage is not worth your energy or the stress.
Italy’s delicious flat bread has done much for mankind and forms a significant part of world culinary history. The fact that pizza is popular everywhere is a tribute to its ingenious influence.
But you have to know, the farther abroad pizza is transported, the more likely local makers will bake a version different than the classic Margherita in Campania.
I mean, you do not see the Chinese blow their top when a classic Cantonese or Shanghainese dish gets the fusion treatment. A French guy at Man Mo Dim Sum in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan neighbourhood put foie gras in xiaolongbao and most of us said “Viva liberté!” (I still prefer the traditional version of the soup dumpling, but to each their own.)
Across the Indian subcontinent, Indian and Chinese flavours mash together to be called Hakka food – because many of the immigrants are originally Hakka. The cuisine is very different from authentic tribal Hakka dishes in China but no one is launching lawsuits to copyright the label.
In Madagascar and the French-African world, there is a popular soupe Chinoise that has very little to do with any actual Chinese soup except it is a noodle broth, which may contain ground mince, eggs or seafood.
Meanwhile, chefs in Mexico do beef stir-fries with cactus paddles instead of Chinese vegetables.
None of these items make us feel here that the integrity of Chinese cuisine has been ruined.
If folks in America want to call the chop suey, orange chicken or egg foo yong they order Chinese food, it is fine with me. We don’t consider it gastro-blasphemy or a cultural insult. In fact, save me a fortune cookie.
We also did not bat an eye when chef Wolfgang Puck put Peking duck and hoisin sauce on a pizza. Incidentally, where was the Italian outrage to that offence?
The reality is that “pizza” is now just a catch-all term for any kind of flat bread with toppings on it. I reckon hardline Italians who insist on this tight-fisted kind of food fundamentalism do it more for market protectionism.
Actually, the Greeks and Phoenicians were the first people to put toppings on flat bread. Some say the Romans got the idea for pizza from seeing Jews adding oil and cheese to their matzo.
Italians cannot even claim tomatoes as an indigenous product. The tasty fruit was brought over from the New World – and it was imported first not by Italians, but the Spanish. Cultural appropriation, anyone?
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