Mission impossible: the ratatouille fallout

What is the cheapest food in the world?

Is it American or is it Chinese or is it Middle eastern or is it Pakistani or is it Indian?

Could it be Mexican?

Yes, it is all of the above — But here is the catch — They are all both the most expensive and the least. Price is not an indicator of the recipe here, just the parking, ambience and how politely the waiter might address you. The level of hygiene may aLso play SOme RoLe. AlthouGh To Be HoneSt, The dIRTier the kItChen The tAStier The MEat.

These places are found around the world in every major city and some common sentences in various languages are a testimony to that:

Honey, lets go to this new Chinese place?

Aaj raat sushi ho jaye? (How about sushi tonight?) — It could also mean lets have sex with the intention to have a baby — Hindi/Urdu is just weird.

牛扒？ 我知道镇上最好的地方！(Steak? i know the best place in town!)

The above kind of food comes with ready made choices (chicken something) and potatoes (in some form or fashion) and rice and noodles and lots of spices and sauces. We know the drill.

But will anyone looking for some finesse and formality go for any of those? Hey honey, check out this place, they have the best breast pieces sautéed in Malaysian vinegar ching pao. That sentence has enough words that she would not ask what it is. Also, no one would actually do that.

The eventual go to place for such once in a lifetime affair is French or Italian.

Now there are plenty of those around, but again they are either exorbitantly priced or they are a Chinese knockoff — pun intended.

Here, we come to the next logical question: Why is there no around-the-block European food joint? What is European food? What is French food or for that matter Italian food?

Lets do the easy one: Italian: Is it pizza napolitana? is it carbonara? is it the antipasti bruschetta or the dolce canoli.

It becomes clearer once you have it in any place in Italy as long as it is away from termini (the central train station in Rome). You instantly find out that the famous bruschetta is a toasted piece of bread with olive oil, tomatoes and some herbs and it tastes like nothing you have ever tasted anywhere else in the world. Same goes for the others — about 3 to 4 ingredients and magic. So, why is it so exquisite and not easy to replicate?

To quote, Tom Cruise,

Rear Admiral: Yet, here you are, captain. Why is that?

Maverick: It’s one of life’s mysteries, sir.

The magic disappears elsewhere because it is not the recipe or the cook with a random Italian name (Alfredo and Romano are the usual culprits).

It is the ingredients.

European food is literally about the oil, tomato and the dough. It is even about the exact metal used in cutting the pasta in a particular shape and when was that metal last changed.

It is not about the recipe or the cook but about the very elements that make it up and those elements are only freshly available in Europe, hence it cannot be replicated or reproduced elsewhere in the world.

Now one might argue about Italian coffee being the same all around.

Sorry to disappoint but Italy does not produce any kind of coffee beans, however yes, the ‘Italian styled’ coffee is found everywhere so it is eventually a recipe — and we in the rest of the world get it wrong anyway. Drinking a litre or half of that in paper cups with a green headed princess is not drinking coffee. It is trying to act as seen on TV. Also, adding milk to that after 12 PM is an abomination.