Food for Thought with Bumbu Roux
Bumbu Roux food truck
There are two broad categories of interactions that I have when working the Bumbu Roux food truck window: Most frequent are, of course, questions directly related to the food: “Can you describe the different kinds of fries?” “What’s in your gumbo?”—or as one man put it, “What is your gumbo philosophy?” There is also the always baffling question, “Is your [insert menu item] good today?” [What am I supposed to say here? “No sir, today the gumbo is terrible, but I hope you’re impressed enough with my audacity and honesty to still pay me for a bowl of it.” What kind of a business model is that?] Closely following the menu questions is a category of interactions that can perhaps be described as authentication moments: “Where are you from?” “Are you based in Louisiana?” “I was just in [Indonesia/New Orleans/the Netherlands].” These interactions seem to serve as a sort of wayfinding, in which the patron finds a need to establish why I’m here, why this food is here, and why they are here, all within a few questions. It’s an interesting and common urge that reveals a lot of motivations around food that have nothing to do with bodily hunger or taste or satiation.
To be fair, they are not walking into an immediately legible situation: I am a blonde, white woman serving/representing/telling stories about Creole and Indonesian food. I am speaking with an authority that indicates I am more invested than a hired front counter girl, but I also don’t look like I “should”; also, my familiarity with [Indonesia/New Orleans geography/New Orleans restaurants/Creole food terms] runs aground quickly. The following two sentences seem to deliver a sense of grounding and relief to everyone involved: “My husband, Chris, is the chef and this is his food truck [points into the dim interior, where Chris may or may not be standing at that moment]. His mom is from Indonesia and his dad is from rural Louisiana [subtext: please stop asking me very specific questions about New Orleans], so this is their family cooking!” And now, finally, geographic relationships articulated, authenticity has been established, they can finally order with confidence.
It is an interesting experience to marry into a strong cultural identity, and further, to now be the literal face of it. What do I have to share about this heritage and history? I have a lot of remembered facts and parts of stories:
My mother-in-law, Jane, moved to Chicago from the Netherlands [or maybe at that point it was from Germany?] 54 years ago to start her married life with a Black man from rural Louisiana, whom she met while he was stationed overseas in the US military. According to her stories, nothing could have prepared her for how difficult it would be to live in the United States as a non-white interracial couple in the 1970s. At the same time, they seemed to thrive, and were deeply embedded in their north Chicago community. She brought with her a deep knowledge of how to entertain and of Bandung cooking, both learned from her mother, with her own twists applied. She thought grits looked like puke on a plate the first time she saw them. She learned Creole cooking from her husband and maybe also from his sisters [or he learned it from his sisters?]. These recipes are handwritten in a ledger that we keep on a bookshelf in the living room. Chris also discovered only a few years ago that many of these recipes have a lot in common with Louis Armstrong’s “Red Beans & Ricely Yours.”
Wherever they came from, the Creole recipes are now also fully her own and have been hers for decades. They are, you might say, authentically hers. Which makes me wonder, as we explore food cultures and heritages: How might we ask better questions? How might we decouple our curiosity with cuisine from a sort of geographic purism and the almost-meaningless idea of “authenticity”? Because if anything proves that geography has nothing to do with authenticity, it’s that one of the best bowls of red beans and rice that I’ve ever had is made by an Indonesian woman who grew up in the Netherlands, fell in love with a Black man in Germany, and moved to Skokie. How can we make room for both the inherent complexity and simplicity of heritage in our conversations?
If we recognize authentication interactions as a sort of wayfinding, as I find my own way into this space, I believe I’ll follow my in-laws’ lead and focus on the simplicity of it: two people fell in love, and now a blonde girl from Texas will be serving you your Nasi Goreng in Chicago, probably for decades to come. With each serving, I look forward to complicating the authenticity of this culinary heritage a little more.
By Olivia Junell