I learned a lesson more than once on my travels. An experience that has stayed with me for many years happened in Hong Kong in 1983, still the colonies!
As a chef and for the first time in an exotic country and having eaten Cantonese food for years in London I was naively believing it would be wildly different more authentic, more real in its cultural home.
On my first day I wandered for hours looking for the holy grail, or a close as I could come to real Cantonese food.
I seemed to be unconvinced by the hundreds of restaurants offering what should be local indigenous good authentic food.
Finally hunger got the better of me and down one of the many side streets I found a small place, neon over the door and an English menu in part (surely local then)
I browsed the menu and then launched myself into the doorway and found a table.
Ordering from the menu was easy I started with spare rib, which was very good and the second dish I had picked out, intrigued me Fried sole with Chicken I thought perhaps a little lost in translation but went for it anyway. In no time I was made aware of a grave mistake, which still makes me laugh even today.
The waiter appeared with an oval plate featuring a fish shape formed out of instant potato with a well scooped out from the body, generously filled with Cambells cream of condensed Chicken soup and with two fillets of bread crumbed sole suck in at a jaunty angle. Not forgetting the single frozen pea for an eye.
It took all my willpower not to show distaste for the madcap dish brought before me, I gently poked it around awhile, and when a suitable time had passed summoned the waiter over and requested the bill, he asked “was everything ok” yes I’m rather full that's all.
I paid swiftly and stared to leave.
As I exited the restaurant.
I looked back to see the waiter approaching the dish on a side table with a spoon and fork and dismembering it as if searching for something.
I recall the Fawlty towers episode when Basil after many attempts to correct an outsourced dish which should be duck a la orange rolls the gueridon trolley into the restaurant and proclaims voilà while removing the cloche, Only to find a bomb Alaska, He lunges in with his bare hands searching for the duck that is not there.
This scenario seemed perfectly matched with what was happening right now in a side street restaurant in Hong Kong.
This was a perfect example that authentic it what it is this was a local thing nothing more, lobster dumplings at dim sum places have salad cream served with them, foods get absorbed into the culture and are really a part of it, even if You don't think they fit.
My lesson learned nothing is ever dismissed and I don't look for the authentic it all is.