Culinary Historians of Southern California

Free program! In the Mark Taper Auditorium at Central Library!

What are the new and distinctive hyperlocal cuisines that have appeared at fine dining establishments located in global cities along the Pacific Rim in this century? New culinary hyperlocalism builds on the nouvelle cuisine’s critique of the cuisine classique and the path blazed by the regional cuisines in the United States and René Redzipi’s New Nordic Cuisine. But the new hyperlocalism draws on both indigenous foodways and well-established culinary traditions in Asia that have always prized locavorism. It has assumed several different forms, appearing as cuisines that are clearly experimental and exploratory, cuisines that transmit the values and practices of centuries-old traditions, cuisines that celebrate exile and nostalgia, and cuisines committed to recovering lost foodways. Chefs practicing the new culinary hyperlocalism have created dishes made with ingredients, condiments and culinary techniques that were not a part of the continental and modernist cuisines they learned in culinary school or at the restaurants where they worked early in their careers. Many of the new ingredients, condiments, and culinary techniques these chefs use and the dishes they make are from non-Western culinary traditions and thus, the new hyperlocal cuisines are products of an important post-colonial moment as well.

Samuel H. Yamashita is the Henry E. Sheffield Professor at Pomona College, where he has taught since 1983. He was a specialist on early modern Japanese Confucianism before turning in the 1990s he to the Asia Pacific War. Since 2009 he has been doing research on food and published “Hawai’i Regional Cuisine: The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawai’i Eat in 2019.” He recently compiled “Chefs Don’t Talk and Other Kaiseki Writings,” the first English-language anthology of the writings of kaiseki chefs, and is currently finishing a book-length study of the hyperlocal cuisines that appeared in global cities along the Pacific Rim in this century.