"I’ll Have the Chipotle Shrimp"

Consumers Seek Spicy Ethnic Cuisines

by Dave DeWitt

What does the term "ethnic cuisine" mean these days? A couple of decades ago, it applied to Chinese, Mexican, and Italian food. But that was before the surge of chain restaurants serving their homogenized versions of these cuisines, plus the plethora of consumer cookbooks, magazines, and websites devoted to such foods. Now I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing for consumers to enjoy our conception of the foods that originated in these countries, but it’s a sad fact the chain restaurants have barely scratched the surface of the incredibly diverse cuisines of these countries. Kung Pao Chicken in American Chinese restaurants is as ubiquitous as a Big Mac in a McDonald’s–and it tastes the same in every Chinese restaurant I’ve eaten it in. I know I’m jaded living in Albuquerque, but I defy anyone to find a really good enchilada in a major Mexican chain restaurant such as Chi-Chi’s. However, I must confess that I’ve had excellent Italian meals at Macaroni Grills in various cities. But is it ethnic cuisine, or now just mainstream American, considering the number of Americans of Italian descent?

The phenomenon of "mainstream ethnic" is driving discerning consumers to seek out more original and interesting foods. The boredom with mainstream ethnic cuisines is forcing trends toward restaurants, cookbooks and speciality foods devoted to regional Chinese, Mexican, and Italian food. We are now offered Sichuan and Hunan Chinese, Mexican seafood or Sonoran cuisine, and Italian Tuscan restaurant choices. Also, adventurous consumers are seeking out the cuisines of other countries known for their spicy cuisines: Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, India, and Jamaica. This trend is mirrored in the quest for authentic chiles and spices to create these cuisines at home.

Fueling the drive for authentic cuisines and ingredients is ever-increasing immigration.

Here’s just one of many examples: In 1998, India supplied the third-largest number of legal immigrants into the United States, and during the period 1991-1996, U.S. consumer awareness of Indian cuisine jumped 74 percent. And these immigrants did not want curry powder mixed in the states, but the flavors they were used to. Asian and Indian markets and restaurants sprung up to meet the demand and are all their customers immigrants? Hardly. Take a trip to the Ta Lin Supermarket in Albuquerque and it looks like you’re at the United Nations. There’s food–and customers–with origins from all over the world.

Another example is the Caribbean region. The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba were all among the top eleven countries of origin for immigrants in 1998. Between 1995 and 1998, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics, nearly 400,000 Caribbean immigrants entered the country. Is it a coincidence that a restaurant chain like Bahama Breeze has sprung up to service not necessarily the immigrants, but also the consumers influence by their arrival? Rick Crossland, senior vice president of the chain, notes that his restaurants serve not only "contemporary Caribbean cuisines–truly authentic jerks and Creole–but in addition, mainstream proteins from the U.S. with a tropical twist."

Travel is also driving the new ethnic cuisine revolution. Nearly 60 million Americans travel out of the country each year, and most are exposed to some degree to the cuisines of the countries they visit. Sure, you can go to a KFC in Port of Spain, Trinidad, but the chicken at the Royal Castle chain there is marinated in a delicious blend of native herbs and the fiery Congo pepper. The fried chicken there was so excellent, I visited a Royal Castle every other day and still yearn for it. Increasingly, there are ethnic components to the food on cruise ships and in the restaurants of the chain hotels in various countries.

Americans and Canadians, by way of travel, cookbooks, and restaurants, are becoming more adventurous in their eating habits. During the "Focus on Flavor" seminar at Morningstar Farms in 2000, participants listed their estimation of the top spices likely to influence American meals. The top five were red pepper, dill, cumin, cinnamon, and ginger. Su-Mei Yu, author of Cracking the Coconut and chef at Houston’s Sur La Table restaurant, comments: "American chefs are discovering exotic ingredients, such as chiles, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, fresh turmeric, and galangal (Thai ginger). I think this is going to change the way we cook and eat in this country, especially as more people start to use these ingredients and add a punch to their food." She added: "Foods with intriguing, strange names no longer scare them. They’ll eat anything you put out, and they want things hot, very hot. We’ve sold more chile peppers (in 2000) than we’ve sold in the past couple of years. Our order for chile peppers went up 200 percent."

Kraft Foods invested in Ethnicgrocer.com, so you know that even more ethnic cuisines will go mainstream. Remember that Campbell Soup owns Pace Picante Sauce, Pillsbury has Old El Paso, Seagram’s owns Cholula Hot Sauce and Hormel has Patak’s line of Indian products.

And all this diversity is happening in a time when fast food chains are dominating the restaurant industry, bland pre-packaged meals are advertised everywhere, and the media has focused on the high-fat horrors of all of this. But what I see is interesting, ethnic, and spicy foods rising to the top of the food chain because most discerning people are bored with the rest of it.

Sidebar: European Crossover Cuisine

by Harald Zoschke

We see the same ethnic food variety evolving in Germany. The city of Kiel (15 miles from where we live) is a rather boring place, yet it has its usual share of Chinese restaurants, as well as a New Mexican (which is great), TexMex, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Turkish, (ex-)Yugoslavian and more.

The biggest influence on German food used to be "Curry Wurst und Pommes Frites"--bratwursts cut up and smothered with curry and tomato ketchup, with French fries on the side. Now it's Turkish "Döner"--officially! A typical Döner is a piece of Turkish flat bread, cut open and filled with carved meat (sort of gyros kebab), salad, other stuff, and if you like, spicy red sauce.

This ethnic diversity is not just a North American phenomenon. Not only on the Internet is the world quickly becoming a global village: Immigration and migration, fueled by changing job markets, as well as business and leisure traveling are probably the main factors that lead to this increasingly interesting culinary variety. With all the ethnic cuisines around today, we see a very interesting, rather new trend developing here, which is called "Crossover Cuisine".

The fusion of ethnic cuisines like Mexican, Italian, and Asian. One of Germany's most popular gourmet chefs, Eckhardt Witzigmann, even published a book titled Crossover Küche. This often leads to intriguing and unusual combinations. In fact, I saw an interesting crossover recipe in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine recently: Mexican ingredients wrapped in a pasta sheet. In my opinion, crossover is the most exciting trend these days - in the U.S., and "across the pond".