One of the most notable currents in independent restaurants is Third Culture cooking, or what we like to call “Remixed Roots.” It’s about chefs blending their own heritage with lived experience or another culture they fell in love with to create another, “third” culture. The deeply personal nature of the blend makes it more than just “fusion” cuisine redone, and it’s something we’re now seeing all the time in successful restaurants.
San Francisco Chefs and Aussie Beef & Lamb Ambassadors Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz do this effortlessly at their Dalida and Maria Isabel restaurants. [more on Maria Isabel here] Take the menu at Dalida. It’s an imagined, borderless cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, or as they put it - “It's a little Turkish, a little Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Arabic and Persian.” Add a layer of local and seasonal produce from the best California has to offer, and you get a third culture…one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but is seriously delicious.
Chicago Chef Joe Flamm’s Rose Mary is classic example – blending his wife’s Croatian culture with the Italian cuisine he grew up with and loves. According to chef - “Rose Mary is the culmination of my personal journey thus far—a marriage of who I am, what I’ve learned, and the person I’ve built a life and a family with.” We can attest that the Aussie lamb on his menu is amazing!
In Boston, Chef Saba Wahid Duffy’s newly opened Kush Modern Mediterranean puts it this way: “Our original creations feature mediterranean inspired dishes with global influences, including our South Asian heritage.” That’s third culture in effect! We’ll have the famous spicy mac and cheese with lamb merguez crumble, please.
Aussie Beef Mate Roy Villacrusis is a master at this, a constant traveler always looking for flavor inspiration from cuisines and cultures including and outside his native Philippines. Drawing on sushi culture in Japan and ingredients and flavors from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, his creations honor their authentic sources while bringing them into a modern interpretation. Get to know him here.