Through most of my life, as a second generation Chinese American, I have detested the thought of Asian fusion. How dare they taint the deliciousness of my classic Chinese dishes with fortune cookies and orange chicken! Both of those were invented in America, so if I’m going out to eat Chinese food, I’ll never eat them! So many times after eating at an Asian restaurant I would say “the food was good, but it wasn’t authentic”. Authenticity became synonymous with quality. I told myself over and over that I’d rather eat in the hole in the wall restaurant with a B on it’s health safety rating than the fancy, Asian Fusion restaurants because the authentic Chinese street food ain’t even got a safety rating.

To be fair, the necessity for authenticity was more so inspired by my parents. We generally went to the same restaurants, because those were the ones that my parents approved as authentic. We’d always be jealous of locations like San Jose and Los Angeles because there would be so much more Chinese food there. Sometimes we would make weekend trips to San Jose just to eat food and meet up with some of my parents friends. There was only one acceptable Chinese restaurant in my city that was ran by a family friend. Even then, my parents didn’t really deem it as “very authentic”.

I’ve recently began to think about authenticity, and why I desire it so much. It seems obvious at least why it’s so important to my parents. My parents came to America in their early adulthood, and rarely have a chance to go back. Authentic food to them means nostalgia. It reminds them of the good food and good times that had when they were young. It reminds them of the culture that they knew so well, the dinners with family and the meals shared with friends.

I can’t say the same for myself. I was born in the US, raised in the US. I grew up eating chow mien one day and mac and cheese the next. Nostalgia for me is going to town at a Chinese Buffet, loading my plate with pizza, sushi, and egg rolls. Nostalgia for me is family dinners around a hotpot, even though I hated the way my parents mixed it. Nostalgia for me are the Chinese style noodles my parents made, but with spaghetti noodles instead.

I decided to investigate authentic Chinese food when I visited China in the summer of 2016. I tried dishes from different provinces, and tried learning techniques from my aunts and uncles. I had a ton of fun, and learned how to make dishes that I continue to make to this day. I will forever preserve facets of Chinese cooking in my arsenal.

It turns out that many authentic cooking techniques are rather hard to emulate in a home kitchen. I saw giant vats of boiling oil, Peking duck being hung out in the air to dry. It turns out that I actually didn’t enjoy the authentic Chinese food as much as I thought. The large amount of oil used in dishes made me feel sick. I couldn’t really understand why eating freshly killed fish made any difference, after eating store processed fish fillet from the local Safeway most of my life.

Perhaps for me, real authentic Chinese food is not what I desire. Perhaps what I, like my parents, are actually searching for is a semblance of nostalgia. The same nostalgia that defeated Anton Ego in Ratatouille. Except mine would not be of baked vegetables and tomato paste, but soy sauce and ginger. Perhaps what I look for in Asian foods are the flavors that my mom infused into my food. And it’s specific too, I know exactly which brand of soy sauce and vinegar my parents will get. At the same time, my cooking experiences and culinary training has mostly been with western foods.

I am Asian fusion: a mix of the cultures of East and West. There was so much more that I learned about myself when I went back to China. Through deep conversations with my relatives, I learned that I do not necessarily think like a Chinese person would. I would frequently be annoyed by things my relatives did whereas they thought those actions were respectful. I also did things that I thought was being respectful that my relatives thought were disrespectful. Everything about me is tinged by influences from both my Chinese heritage, and my American life.

I learned that I cannot really create “authentic Chinese food” because I am not necessarily an authentic Chinese, culturally. How can I claim to know the food from China as much as would a Chinese? I cannot cook authentic Chinese food without a grasp on the flavor palate of vegetables and spices that cannot be found at your local American grocery store. Such a palate can be produced to a level of fluency within a month or two, but it would take years before I would be able to claim it’s authenticity.

So I should give Asian Fusion food a second chance. Not only to try, but to create myself. Because then, I will be able to create dishes that are a true expression of myself, enough to satiate my bipolar palate. I’ll go hunting for Ramen Burgers and Sushirittos. I will try Orange chicken with a blank slate in my mind, and relish every letter from the fortune cookie. And maybe next time you’re sitting with me, incredulous about my sauce choices, I will confidently be able to tell you “Yes. I’ll have soy sauce with my fries.”