Another food blog

Potstickers with puerco pibil with pineapple salsa


This time I veered away from comparing things, and decided to look into how different food cultures combine and intermingle to create something new and unique. My story features how  the food of China town in Mexicali, the capital of Mexico's Baja California, inspired one of Los Angeles hottest new restaurants. The chef John Sedlar was inspired by the amazing food he found, and decided to shift his restaurants focus to this specific cuisine. Sedlar decided to change his ingriedients, and his cooking methods so he and his team could transform traditional Mexican dishes with Chinese ingredients and techniques. The result is what many call fusion, but Sedlar seems to take offense to that notion, instead insisting he is recreating an established tradition in Mexicali. There is a long history of Chinese influence in Mexico that started around 450 years ago, when Spanish traders aboard the "Manila Galleons", brought eastern goods in exchange for silver. Hundreds of years later, Chinese immigrants arrived in Mexico as low cost labor for projects including railroads. Like any immigration story culinary osmosis happened, as evidenced by Chinese ingredients like soy sauce becoming regular members in some Mexican diets. Sedlar has added his own take on this tradition with unique dishes like wok-seared scallops, with lettuce cup "tortillas" or potstickers with puerco pibil (a pit-roasted pork dish) dressed with pineapple salsa. All things I will now dream of until my next trip to LA.

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