Editor Ruby here today, fresh off writing our Food Trivia, to talk to you about fusion cuisine.

The idea of “fusion cuisine” is a controversial one, as with any conversation about food and authenticity. What I’m interested in talking about today isn’t your southwestern eggrolls of the world, but the cross-cultural foods that are too old for us to think of them as fusion, or very cool food combinations that aren’t quite mainstream enough in the U.S. for a trivia question. (If you think I’m missing something obvious, make sure you come to Food Trivia before emailing us! I’m leaving out a few things we have questions about.)

One of the biggest categories to think about is foods from the Americas being integrated into European, Asian, and African cuisines. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and corn are all New World foods, cultivated by Indigenous peoples from the Andes to the Great Plains. Think Italian food with no pomodoro, no corn polenta, no peperoncino. A lot of farro, lentils, and almonds. While there’s plenty of evidence for the absence of all those New World foods from the Italian diet before the 15th century, let’s talk about one of the most famous mysteries of is-it-or-isn’t-it fusion cuisine in the world: pasta. You, like me, may have a vague sense that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China to Italy in the 13th century. That is a myth, very possibly invented by a Canadian macaroni company in the 1920s. The Marco Polo story plays on the many imports of European colonialism, but does not seem to be true in the specifics. There’s kinds of pasta all over Europe and North Africa dating back to the first century CE. Seems like lots of different people figured out you could make and boil noodles independently.

Speaking of the colonization of the Americas, here’s a fusion cuisine you may not think of as fusion and that you may have a lot of in your house after Halloween: sweet chocolate. As anyone who snuck some baking chocolate as a child knows, pure chocolate is extremely bitter. Cacao, grown and traded across Mesoamerica since 1900 BCE, was mostly prepared as a fermented, bitter drink for both ritual and nutritional purposes. In fact, the word “chocolate” is commonly thought to derive from the Nahuatl word “xocolātl,” meaning “bitter water” (though the etymology is disputed). The Spanish added sugar to it, still in beverage form. While of course there are sources of sweetness all over the world — honey, maple syrup, agave, fruit — sugar itself is an Indian plant, likely only making its way to Spain after the Crusades. (Scroll two inches down that Wikipedia page for information about the Triangle Trade, where sugar formed a key leg of the exchange for enslaved human beings. Food is foundational, and therefore always political. We’re going to go talk about more fun things, but it’s important to remember that a lot of this historical “fusion” was not exactly a collaboration.)

Let’s switch focus to some smaller regional fusion cuisines popular today. You are probably familiar with Tex-Mex, Cajun cooking, and American sushi, so let’s look at some other examples.

Chifa: a Cantonese Peruvian fusion style coming out of Lima’s Chinatown. Marked by the use of Chinese staples like ginger and soy along with local Peruvian ingredients, chifa sounds really great. Check out this profile of Chef Rodrigo Serrano, a Peruvian opening a chifa restaurant in Singapore, where you can get “tiger grouper fish in two other contrasting expressions: the traditional Peruvian style, roasted in sudado sauce and wrapped in bijao leaf, or the punchy Sichuan style, spiked with spicy chopped pickled jalapenos and dried chillies.”
Yōshoku: meaning “Western food,” this cuisine refers to a cluster of Japanese dishes invented during the Meiji Restoration, when European and American powers were allowed into Japan in much higher numbers than before. Some characteristic yōshoku dishes include breaded and fried chicken katsu; a beef, mushroom, and tomato stew served over rice called Hayashi rice; and Napolitan, a pasta dish of soft-cooked spaghetti served with ketchup.
Cape Malay and Cape Dutch: remember before, about how food is very political? Here we go: enslaved Javanese and Malay people brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company invented a big chunk of what is today thought of as “South African” food. Bobotie, a spiced meat dish with a savory custard topping, probably derives in its form from an ancient Roman dish called “patinam ex lacte,” but its flavors are decidedly Malay.

In the more traditional (if there is such a thing) definition of fusion cuisine, I leave our Twin Cities readers with a restaurant recommendation. Check out Chin Dian Kitchen in Northeast Minneapolis, run by married couple Nina Wong and Thomas Gnanapragasam, which combines Chinese and Malaysian food. It’s really, really good!