#68 - What the pho?

What the pho?

8/28/05 (#68)

I have never had inauthentic Mexican food. I certainly haven't in Portland, where every cart, cubby or restaurant "Mexican" enough to list a tamale on the menu attaches the adjective "authentic" to their sign. Oddly enough, many of these authentic Mexican restaurants do not taste anything like each other---I'm reminded of Mark Knopfler's line about the insane asylum: "Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong." ---so I have many times wondered if "auténtico" actually has other meanings in Spanish:

Auténtico (adj): 1. Authentic; 2. Unlike any other; 3. A word to describe any and all variations of refried beans.

Personally, in the restaurant trade, I generally find "authentic" to be anything but. I'm sure there is psychological research to support the concept of making the environs of the restaurant complimentary to the food that is being served, but so often the decor is a cartoonish exaggeration of the "authentic" feeling of the country in which the menu's dishes originated.

Think of the Italian restaurant: obligatory red-and-white checked table clothes, a candle lodged in (and dripping over) the thatched-straw-encased chianti bottle, Pavarotti or his ilk filling the room with operatic ambiance---not only is it rife with clichés, but is the customer really expected to be transported back to Old Italy when they arrived for dinner at a strip mall, eating in a joint wedged between Gentle Dental and a Hallmark store?

Think of the Caribbean restaurant: my favorite food, and I would love it even if it was served in the Italian restaurant described above, but it's hard to find any Caribbean food that is served without the obligatory reggae music soundtrack. (Unless it's "authentic" Caribbean food, then you get steel-drum calypso music.) The colors associated with the Caribbean are warm and lovely---rich fuschia, vibrant lime, cool aquamarine, pale lemon---and would make for lovely, simple decor, yet so many restaurants are not content with the color scheme, adding faux palm trees and wicker furniture so you can feel like you're home in the islands, mon---except you're wearing your office garb and would stand out as the most unhip person on the Kingston beach. I'm already genetically predisposed to a funk deficiency---wearing dress shoes in a faux bach cabana just makes it worse.

Think of the Mexican restaurant: stucco walls adorned with sombreros, bunches of dried chili peppers and the occasional southwest-colored poncho (in the budget restaurants) or stucco walls adorned with framed posters of toreadors, gauchos, or a man sleeping under a sombrero (in the expensive restaurants) all while a mariachi band serenades you with what sounds like anthems for great battle victories and /or drunken wedding celebrations. (Is it just me, or do you sometimes wonder if there is only two or three mariachi bands in the world? I realize that most mariachi bands have a similar line-up and thus will have a similar sound, and I also grant that folks in the south of Mexico there is likely little discernible difference between Green Day and Blink-182 (heck, the line is blurry for me even), but I am convinced that there is a reason I have never seen two mariachi bands in the same room.)

Which leads me to the Asian restaurant. I have no idea what an "authentic" Asian restaurant is supposed to "feel" like. I have certain expectations---a color scheme that includes pink or peach (or both), some pale and vaguely unappetizing fish swimming in a tremendously large tank, and scattered displays of plastic or glass floral blooms that seem designed to give a natural feeling but are about as convincing as a blue-sky window painted on the wall of a windowless basement.

I think the reason that Asian restaurants have a less rigorously cliched physical appearance is that proprietors of Asian restaurants (be they Asian or not) spend most of their cliche allotment on the name of the restaurant.

Surely there needs to be some government task force convened to examine (and stem) the rampant use of the pun in Asian restaurant signage. The strip malls of America are littered with these ill-conceived names whose cleverness wore out before the clerk was done typing them on the business license: All Thai'd Up; Thai Score; Thai a Yellow Ribbon; Thai Goes to the RunnerThai Foon (the audible but unwritten pun in Typhoon is forgiven); Thai Tanic (I didn't make that up!); Once Upon a Thai; Bow Thai (though Portland's Beau Thai is a clever fusion name); Thai Waits for No One; Taiwan On; Wok and Roll; Wok This Way; Wok on the Wild Side; Moonlit Wok; Wok's Up; Wok the Wok; Wok Star; Wonton Appetites; Wonton Lust; Chow Mein Street; The Mein Event; Shang-Hi; Shanghai Tide; Shanghai Five; Shanghai Noon. There is not limit to how low the bar can be set for this limbo wordplay---just when you think the corniness has hit bottom, along comes Sweet and Tsao. (take-out only);

Oddly enough, these proprietors are willing to massacre certain words and foods in the search for the perfect-groan worthy pun, yet other words are left alone: want to specialize in Chicken Sub Gum? How about Bubble Gum; Gum Ball; Gumshoe (or better yet, Gumshu); Gumdrop. Opening a shellfish eatery? The Prawn Shop; Queen Takes Prawn; Prawn with the Wind; Prawn to Fate. Does your menu concentrate on Pad Prik? Then...

Well, maybe we'll just leave it at that.

©2005 wpreagan

* In case the title is confusing, the Vietnamese word pho rhymes with "duh"