Does looking down on tauhuay make you atas?

Given we've learnt that it wasn't the French/Canadian organizers who were looking down on Singaporean food, let's go back over the Tauhuay issue as Limpeh wants to help my readers understand the mindset of people like Clemen Chiang and Nicole Yee. To kick us off, allow me to quote the statement by DEBS on the Facebook page which I shall be talking about.

"We do not permit local food as the rules and the event are one of the same. Yes, it is formal but that is what makes it special! We bring a formal, elegant presence to a location that is beautiful and rarely appreciated as a dining location."

The elegance of laksa lies in its complex flavours.

Of course, this isn't the first time a Singaporean thinks that s/he is being more posh in looking down on his/her own Asian roots, but sadly that happens all too often in Singapore. It's nothing new and unfortunately, it seems all too familiar as I can remember countless episodes from my childhood in Singapore when my peers behaved in a very similar manner. 

Now I have nothing against Singaporeans who appreciate the finer aspects of French culture - I am one of them. I love France, I love French cuisine and I am very proud of the fact that I am fluent in French. I had always been fascinated by the French language but was discouraged from taking it in secondary school, mostly by my parents. Their justification was that my sister (who was a brilliant straight A student) struggled with it and gave it up before taking her O levels exams because she knew she couldn't get a good grade for it. I was then assured by my sister, "oh you have the rest of your life to study French if you should choose to." 

I started studying French in 1995, a few months into my national service because I missed the intellectual challenge of learning. After all, I had left the intellectual environment of VJC for the SAF, where I was doing menial tasks all day, bored out of my brains. I had purchased a self-study course and worked hard at it - it was a convenient distraction from the daily grind I was facing in the army. Towards the end of my national service, I began taking classes at l'Alliance Française at Newton Circus. Instead of starting at the beginner's level, I started halfway up the food chain with the intermediate class and when my teacher realized how good my French was, I was allowed to skip several grades. 

I started studying French during NS.

After I ORDed. I then spent a summer in France, at the l'Université de Bretagne Occidentale doing intensive French before backpacking my way across France before starting my life at university in England that autumn. When I turned up for my French class at university, I realized that all my peers there had all done A level French and had been studying French for at least 6 years (some have even done it for 12 years) - whilst I had crammed it all in less than 3 years. My teacher at first objected to me being in the class as she thought I had bitten off more than I could chew given that I had only done French for less than 3 years and most of that was self-taught! I then convinced her (in fluent French) to let me try and I proved her wrong by getting an A for French in my first year at university, out performing all my peers. 

I then went on to take part in the ERASMUS programme which allowed me to study at Paris-IV Sorbonne on exchange in my final year, where I had an incredible time living in Paris as a university student at one of France's top universities. In my working life, I went on to work for two French speaking bosses (one Mauritian and one French) and for 8 years, I was in a very French business environment where I was expected to function almost entirely in French without using any English. Okay, why did I tell you that story? Why couldn't I have just told you, "My French is very good"? Am I merely showing off? 

No, is the answer. There is a purpose to me sharing this story with you. Did I merely pick up the French language just like that? No, it was hours and hours of very, very hard work for me to attain fluency in French. Did I do it to be sophisticated, elegant and atas? Hell no. I only wanted to outdo my older sister - I'm sure some of you can appreciate how intense sibling rivalry can be. I felt I had a point to prove - to succeed where my sister failed, so that was my motivation to work so darn bloody hard to become fluent in French. Heck, if my sister has given up on German or Japanese instead, that would've been the language I would've chosen to study instead. 

I was motivated by sibling rivalry, not a desire to be atas!

Some Singaporeans think that by rejecting their local culture, they are expressing an affinity to more sophisticated French culture. That is a highly misguided way of looking at culture. You do not embrace a culture by rejecting another - oh no. You embrace a culture by, well - embracing it. There are no short cuts and whilst you may like the thought of embracing a culture associated with elegance, sophistication and good taste, I have news for you. Disrespecting Singaporean culture doesn't bring you any closer to French culture. Let me use an iPhone analogy to help you understand it better. 

Imagine if there was an iPhone app called 'le French switch' and this app would allow you to switch between English and French mid-sentence without missing a beat, like so: "If you think this is over, t'as tort, le dénouement n'est pas encore arrivé.  There are just too many people who want to see heads roll, n'est-ce pas?" Now the way to obtain this app is not by deleting your Chinese/Mandarin/Singlish app - how is that going to help you attain the linguistic abilities in French? 

Likewise, if there was an iPhone app called 'All about French cuisine' and this app would give you an encyclopaedic knowledge of French wines, cheese and everything wonderful about French cuisine - how is deleting your Singaporean/Asian/Chinese cuisine app going to bring you any closer to French cuisine? 

I love both French and Singaporean cuisine. 

There is so much to learn about French cuisine - it is absolutely fascinating and I adore French cuisine. I have lived in France and have eaten my way around the various regional cuisines of France. Most of all, I have been into many French kitchens and have cooked with many French mothers and grandmothers - learning their recipes from them in the traditional way. I have visited a vineyard at harvest time and witnessed the pressing of the grapes. I have even stayed at a farm where they cultivated their own mushrooms in the farmhouse and made their own mushroom Pâté flavoured with herbs grown in their front garden. I have chatted with a sausage maker in his 70s who had been making delicious and inexpensive sausage for his town folk all his life. I love good food and I get along well with others who love making good food. 

Don't forget - this is a country that suffered a lot during WW2 under Nazi occupation. Food rationing was continued for a few years even after the war ended - during which time, French people had to make do with the bare minimum and it was under those challenging conditions that many wonderful dishes were created in French kitchens - with French mothers looking at what little they had and thinking, "right, now how am I supposed to make a tasty meals from these basic ingredients?"

Whilst most of those recipes are no longer today, that spirit of making the best of simple ingredients still persists today in French cooking with dishes like ratatouille which turns inexpensive vegetables into a main course. Whilst the Disney movie irked me (how can the main character have an American accent?), it does capture the very spirit of French cuisine when the rat opts to make ratatouille as his signature dish for the food critic rather than something a lot more fancy.

There is also pot-au-feu which is essentially way to turn cheap, tough cuts of meats into a delicious stew; you may think that pot-au-feu is only done a la maison by housewives, but it is a dish that can still be found in many fine restaurants in Paris. Oh and let's not forget Andouillete - sausage made from pigs, cows and sometimes horses' intestines - a very French dish indeed. The French parliamentarian Edouard Herriot once said; "Politics is like an andouillette – it should smell a little like shit, but not too much."

Take something like escargots for example, French snails - an instantly recognizable icon on French cuisine. Yes it is now an expensive item on the menus of French restaurants, but did you know it was popular in medieval times because snails were a ready source of protein for the peasants who couldn't afford more expensive meat? The rich could afford better kinds of meats: chicken, pork, beef, lamb etc but these were often too expensive for the peasants. These peasants resorted to eating what was readily available - the snails in the gardens.

Do you know why it is served with this really strong tasting salty garlic butter? It is to mask the smell of the snails - which may put some people off if they are not used to it. Let's just say it is an acquired taste! But today, as meat is affordable even to the poorest of the poor in France, escargots have been elevated to haute cuisine, mostly because of the novelty factor (rather than the taste). So the next time you see a snail in the garden, think about rich French people in Paris enjoying them with garlic butter. 

Les escargots - an acquired taste. 

French cuisine is not xenophobic - you have to look at the history of how French cuisine developed. You have France in the heart of Europe, with Spain and Portugal to the south-west, Italy to the south-east. To the East you have Switzerland and Germany and to the north-east you have Belgium and the Netherlands. To the north-west, you have Great Britain and Ireland. To the south, across the Mediterranean there is North Africa and France traded with all of her neighbours, enjoying their cuisines. There are former French colonies all over the world from Vietnam to Madagascar to the Seychelles to Senegal to Mali to New Caledonia - traders brought back spices and exotic ingredients from these far away lands which became integrated into French cuisine. Migrants from these former colonies also settlement in France, introducing their cuisines to the French. What French people eat today is a result of all those influences from all over Europe and all over the world, blending and mixing over centuries to create the French cuisine we know today.

If you were to take a walk through any French supermarket in France today - you will see an amazing  selection of international foods: from fresh sushi to Vietnamese nems (chả giò) to Maghrebian delights like couscous royale to exotic fruits like lychees and dragon fruit. Having lived in both London and Paris - I can tell you that the French are far more exotic in their tastes than the boring Brits. (Groan. And I live in London today, not Paris.) The French are anything but xenophobic or snobbish when it comes to enjoying foreign food.

The French love Vietnamese snacks!

Contrary to the impression that DEBSOC are trying to create, not all French cuisine is all haute cuisine or nouvelle cuisine. Of course, there are plenty of expensive restaurants in Paris where you can spend €500 on a meal and have that kind of fine dining experience, but that really doesn't represent what real French cuisine is about. How many French people would spend that kind of money to go to a restaurant like that and indulge in haute cuisine or nouvelle cuisine anyway? Even when they dine modestly, French people still manage to enjoy great food without snobbery or pretension - which is the point that DEBSOC are missing if they were truly trying to capture that French spirit. Heck, but what would a swa-koo like Clemen Chiang know about French culture or cuisine. I bet he doesn't even speak French.  Ha! 

I am guessing that even if some of the members of DEBSOC have visited France, none of them know all that much about French cuisine apart from what they have experienced in some expensive French restaurants. But such is the difference - yes you can pay for a very expensive French meal in a fancy restaurant, but no, that does not buy you any real knowledge about French cuisine. This would explain why they are focussing on the superficial elements of trying to create a posh event, rather than delving into the spirit of French cuisine which is all about creating something delicious for your diners, rather than trying to use expensive food and wine to boast about how rich and posh you are. After all, for people like Clemen Chiang and Nicole Yee who don't speak French or even know much about France at all, their very limited access to French culture is to pay for it by visiting nice French restaurants for example - so that's what they equate with experience French culture: spending a lot of money. 

Money can buy you expensive food in a fancy restaurant - but it cannot buy you culture. 

I have shared with you my story about learning French and a small part of my knowledge of French cuisine - all this knowledge is acquired through hard work and spending a lot of time in France. There are no short cuts - certainly, distancing yourself from Singaporean culture makes you no nearer to French culture nor would spending a lot of money on expensive French restaurant give you that same depth of knowledge. If people at DEBSOC are seriously interested in French cuisine, then they should spend some time in France learning about French cuisine. Oh and if you seriously wanna learn about French cuisine in France, you should learn French too. There's no substitute for that to gain that kind of knowledge first hand - and no, looking down on Singaporean cuisine is will not bring you any closer to the heart of French cuisine.

So there you go - I think it's pathetic of Clemen Chiang and Nicole Yee to have to resort to diss Singaporean cuisine in this desperate attempt to appear to be atas. Hey Clemen, how can I explain to you just how stupid you look right now? Hmmm. Allow me to use another topical analogy to demonstrate how bloody stupid Clemen Chiang looks right now. Time for some Gangnam Style. I love this song. Are you ready?

I'm sure you've all seen the amazing music video "Gangnam Style" by Psy. If you haven't, then goodness me, where have you been in the last 5 weeks?! After this K-pop song went viral and charted in countries like Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US - not to mention spending 5 weeks at no. 1 in South Korea - Psy was interviewed to explain the song to those of us who don't speak Korean. He said,

'Gangnam means, it's like the Beverly Hills of Korea," Psy told ABC News. "[However,] the dance doesn't look like Beverly Hills, the lyrics don't [sound] like Beverly Hills and the music and all the situations [in the video] doesn't look like Beverly Hills. But, he keeps saying, 'I'm Beverly Hills Style,' so that's the point. It's sort of a twist."

So, you get the joke? Of course, the entire music video is a stunningly well choreographed, witty piece of musical satire on the trendy Gangnam hipsters in Seoul which Psy clearly is not a part of.  Now in the DEBS episode, we have Clemen Chiang who goes on and on and on about elegance and French when really, the hosts Clemen and wife are neither elegant nor French. They're just another ordinary Singaporean couple really - and the more they go on an on about being elegant and classy, the more desperate they seem. Duh. With 'Gangnam Style', Psy has successfully used satire to pull off one of the most amazing success stories in K-pop history. 

But as for lemen Chiang and Nicole Yee - I'm afraid the jokes on them. Call me evil, but I can't wait for the kind of humiliation they'll receive when pictures of them in some ridiculous all white outfit will emerge on social media only for Singaporeans to hurl cruel insults at them for looking anything but elegant. Clemen, Nicole - let me give you a tip. Elegance is not something you can buy, nor is it something you claim - it is a quality bestowed on you by others.

PS. When I saw the translation of the spoof event "Super White" as 超级白- it did a double take and then I nearly fell off my chair with laughter. To the organizers of 超级白- I salute you. Would've loved to have joined you if I was in Singapore.

Let me know what you guys think! Mian pai sei, you can always leave a comment below. Merci, kum siah, kumsa-hamnida!