Culinary pop-up events count on unauthentic Chinese
Print Edition
NATHANIEL Alexander creates his own version of Chinese food under his “Yang Jing Bang” brand (inauthentic Chinese food).
“Inauthentic,” is exactly what makes the whole thing interesting. The concept started in 2014 when Alexander developed a concept for a Chinese restaurant for the UK market.
“In the process of doing that I was talking to some Chinese restaurant groups and conceived a series of pop-up events where I did my version of Chinese food to show how I might adjust traditional dishes and flavors for another market and culture who are not familiar with them and, in the case of the UK, have very fixed (and wrong) ideas of what ‘Chinese food’ is,” he said.
Originally from Bath, Alexander is not a trained chef but definitely a gifted one with a creative mind.
Since starting Yang Jing Bang, Alexander has been trying to incorporate methods and flavors he has experienced through eating and cooking Chinese food with other cuisines.
“It has been interesting to see how things I did many years ago have been coming in handy for Yang Jing Bang,” he said. When Alexander lived in London, he noticed how different the cuts available in butchers were to those he had seen in Italy. He approached his local butcher and worked there on Saturdays so that he could learn more about British butchery.
Based on his insights and knowledge about food, Alexander was aware that he can’t and doesn’t want to do “authentic” Chinese food. Nevertheless, he was confident that it would still be delicious.
“Shanghai has the tradition of Haipai cuisine, where Western dishes were adjusted for local tastes, ingredients and local methods, so why not go the other way and play with Chinese dishes?”
The nature of Yangjingbang English (when locals pronounce homophone, sound-alike English or apply Chinese grammar to English) and how Yangjingbang has come to mean an unauthentic, incorrect way of doing things seemed like the perfect way to describe the food Alexander wanted to cook.
“Sometimes I might apply Chinese techniques to Western ingredients and other times I might apply Western techniques to Chinese ingredients. Sometimes a dish might have elements of both and sometimes I might do a Western dish and a Chinese dish side-by-side to explore how two different cultures arrived at similar dishes,” he said.
Alexander wants each of his pop-up events to be different — different dishes, different locations, different ideas — but all linked by the common thread of exchanging of food culture.
He’s been using WeChat as his primary form of communication — it allows him to speak directly to people who are interested in what he is doing and they can share it with their friends.
“Our signature is the pork we are using — I grew up eating pork from small local farms and so when planning Yang Jing Bang I set out to find local old heritage breeds,” he said. He is working with a producer who rears two of China’s four famous pork breeds. The recent pop-up event was a collaboration with chef Ling Huang from Pirata, who cooks some of the best food in town, according to Alexander. He has been working on a version of the famous Italian roast pork dish, Porchetta, but with Hunan type flavors rather than the fennel seed and garlic normally used.
The next pop-up will be in the first half of April at the Grumpy Pig. This menu will be a set comparing two very different versions of meatballs, which are found in one form or another in most cultures. One version will be Yangzhou’s lion’s head, the other the lesser known faggot, a British pork belly meatball.
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