Flavors of empire
Subtitle: food and the making of Thai America
By: Mark Padoongpatt
Series: American crossroads -- 45; American crossroads -- 45.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
ISBN-13: 9780520293731; 9780520293748
Subjects: Social conditions; Social life and customs; Thais; Thai Cooking
Description: "With a uniquely balanced combination of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors, Thai food burst onto Los Angeles's culinary scene in the 1980s. Flavors of Empire examines the rise of Thai food and the way it shaped the racial and ethnic contours of Thai American identity and community. Full of vivid oral histories, this book explores the factors that made foodways central to the Thai American experience. Starting with American Cold War intervention in Thailand, Mark Padoongpatt traces how informal empire allowed U.S. citizens to discover Thai cuisine abroad and introduce it inside the United States. When Thais arrived in Los Angeles, they reinvented and repackaged Thai food in various ways to meet the rising popularity of the cuisine in urban and suburban spaces. Padoongpatt opens up the history, politics, and tastes of Thai food for the first time, all while demonstrating how race emerges in seemingly mundane and unexpected places"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-238) and index.
Table of contents: title: "One night in Bangkok" : food and the everyday life of empire; title: "Chasing the yum" : food procurement and early Thai Los Angeles; title: Too hot to handle? restaurants and Thai American identity; title: "More than a place of worship" : food festivals and Thai American suburban culture; title: Thailand's "77th province" : culinary tourism in Thai Town.