The world is borrowing from Cantonese cuisine – but is it a threat to authenticity?
- As chefs from Japan to Turkey take Cantonese cuisine to a global audience, questions are being raised about whether authenticity can be retained
In Fiesole, Italy, in contemporary Tuscan restaurant La Loggia, chef Alessandro Cozzolino cooks Prato vermouth-brushed pigeon based on the technique for roast duck that he learned in Hong Kong.
Further east, in Turkey, chef Fatih Tutak serves black-skinned dumplings of blue crab alongside his take on siu mai, which are stuffed with adana kebab (ground lamb), at The Peninsula Istanbul’s Gallada, which spectacularly overlooks the Bosphorus.
In 2023, chef Ángel León, at three-Michelin-star Aponiente, in southern Spain, developed a dessert called “moray eel”, a deconstructed mochi with miso ice cream studded with fish scales that have been boiled in syrup, dried and fried – a technique inspired by Cantonese kitchens.
A growing number of chefs around the world are borrowing techniques, recipes and ingredients from Cantonese cuisine, and using them subtly or overtly in dishes as diverse as Italian, Turkish, German and Japanese.
Chefs taking inspiration from other cultures is, of course, nothing new, but other cuisines have dominated global gastronomy, from French and Spanish to New Nordic and Japanese.
Chinese cooking approaches have largely remained cloistered, staying within Chinese kitchens. Few Western chefs have trained in kitchens cooking Cantonese or other regional Chinese cuisines, or integrated their influences into their cooking. But this is now changing.
