why is it that our grandmothers are cooks but white men are chefs

Issue No. 6: Food, Nutrition, and Access in Our Communities
Words - Mari Santa Cruz

‘peruvian food’ has been erected as a unified concept 
all of its edges smoothed out for easier consumption 
the packaging of various lineages and histories from around the territory
boiled down into a monolithic menu 
functional to the idea of the post-racial nation-state 
nourishment turned into a profitable cultural export served at boutique restaurants
reproducing an exotified fantasy where white men reign supreme 
they build culinary empires from the plundering of previously devalued knowledge 
and turn what once was muscle memory into recipe books 

they have stolen from those who worked the land
who were enslaved, 
who were pushed by poverty into the kitchen of a white family, 
who cooked in the streets, in the markets, in the privacy of their kitchens
erasing the genealogy of racialized feminine hands that shaped these familiar flavors

but even when they have stolen all the glories and laurels and michelin stars
a hot plate of grandma’s food still manages to taste better