Food for thought
Fuchsia Dunlop's 'Invitation to a Banquet' serves up a Chinese multicourse history
By RON GLUCKMAN
Nikkei
Fuchsia Dunlop has been called the Julia Child of Chinese cuisine. The British food writer who has become the Western world's authority on spicy Sichuanese cooking is now back with "Invitation to a Banquet," her most expansive look at the vast depth and diversity of Chinese cooking.
Much more than a cookbook or a guide to Chinese cuisine, "Invitation to a Banquet" is an elaborate and multicourse read. Using 30 dishes, Dunlop sets an imaginary table to showcase various cooking styles, then dives deep into fermentation, flavors and technique.
The book is partly a history of perhaps the world's most diverse cuisine, and partly a memoir from one of the most influential Western writers on Chinese cooking, covering not only her decades as a chef and journalist, eating and writing in China, but also her childhood exposure to a foreign food that fueled her remarkable career, captivating readers and eaters around the globe.
It is timely, too, with a scope extending far beyond the table, addressing many current and pandemic issues, including global tensions and the treatment of China by foreigners.
"I didn't mean for it to be that" said Dunlop, in an interview from her home in London just before setting off for China to lead a food tour in Yunnan Province. Until China locked down after COVID-19 surfaced there in 2020, she typically did a few tours a year; this was her first trip since the pandemic. She spent years removed from her main focus and feeding grounds, stewing like one of the intricate Chinese soups she details in the book. And just like a blowout meal, "Invitation to a Banquet" is a feast filled with intriguing dishes and plotlines.
Dunlop said the book was not meant to be a response to the pandemic, when China found itself in the crosshairs of global scrutiny over the origins of COVID-19, which appeared first in Wuhan, possibly from a local wet market. Cut off from China, her reflections naturally absorbed much of the Western criticism of the country and its response.
Yet, she said the book was already underway. She described it not only as a logical next book in an acclaimed career that has produced four James Beard awards -- among the most prized in culinary writing -- but also a successor to her most personal work, "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China," published in 2008.
"With a cookbook, there's a limit to how deep you can go into discussions," she said. "The book is centered around recipes, and the cultural and historical writing. It gives context to the recipes, but it's about cooking.
"I just felt that it's a fascinating subject, which I've been thinking about for 30 years. And I wanted to explore in a way that I couldn't do in a cookbook," she said. "I started doing that with 'Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper.'?But now I have 15 more years' experience. And I guess I wanted to do something that reflected that."
Dunlop has always written from a personal point of view that is curious, generous and comprehensive, revered not only by readers, but also by established China hands such as the British author Paul French, who specializes in books about China.
"The great underlying strength of Fuchsia's writing is her respect for Chinese cuisine," French said. "From the overlapping traditions of the myriad of regional specializations to the simple functional aesthetic of the humble cleaver, 'Invitation to a Banquet' both broadens and deepens our understanding of China's cuisine, its vaunted place in Chinese society, its eternalness and also its constant change and adaptation.
"So when we return to the recipes, the restaurant, or the family table, we arrive with a significantly deeper appreciation than before."
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Dunlop has become a bestseller in the formerly niche cooking segment, and a consultant to restaurants around the globe. But it is important to emphasize what a trailblazer Dunlop has been throughout a career with few comparisons. Raised in Oxford and educated at Cambridge, she worked as an editor at the BBC, taking evening courses in Chinese.
Awarded a scholarship to study in China in 1994, she bypassed the popular bases of Beijing and Shanghai, instead choosing Sichuan province, becoming a rare early Western resident in the capital, Chengdu. Afterward, she managed an even rarer admission to the renowned Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and was one of the few women and the first-ever Westerner in attendance.
Her illuminating experiences and wonderfully detailed on-the-ground reporting filled her first book, "Land of Plenty" (published in the U.K. as "Sichuan Cookery"), which came out in 2001 and was a revelation. This reporter was then based in Beijing and took his first-ever food assignment two decades ago -- a magazine piece on Sichuan.
China's spiciest cuisine had yet to achieve national, let alone global, acclaim?and Dunlop's book was my travel bible. I ate my way through Sichuan, pointing to pictures of exotic dishes, devouring them all. My story was a food-themed travel tale about one of my favorite parts of China, but Dunlop guided me through the almost-mystical flavors. (My report for DestinAsian Magazine won Asian Food Story of the Year at the World Gourmet Summit in 2003, but most of the credit was due to Dunlop.)
Over the years, she has taken readers on similar journeys, immersing herself ever more deeply and widely in a rich cookery she believes to be one of the world's most accomplished, flavor-filled and innovative. "If cooking was key to the evolution of humans in general," she writes in the first pages, "only the Chinese have placed it at the very core of their identity." Dunlop then details what she reveals to be the country's unrivaled cooking history, filled with footnotes and surprising revelations.
"If cooking was key to the evolution of humans in general, only the Chinese have placed it at the very core of their identity"
Fuchsia Dunlop, "Invitation to a Banquet"
Take current trends in global gastronomy, from the emphasis on regional origins to the farm-to-table movement. Dunlop makes compelling and exquisitely researched cases for China being ahead of the rest of the world in both, with the world's first restaurants and an early focus on regional cuisines. Even futuristic food movements like the current "beyond meat" craze can be traced to China centuries ago. Meat substitutes made from tofu and vegetables have long been offered at Chinese temples.
Besides writing, Dunlop continues cooking, works as a food consultant, and guides select groups on China food tours for WildChina, a high-end travel company. Founder Mei Zhang, from Yunnan province, admitted to having doubts about a foreign food expert when they began collaborating a decade ago, but was quickly won over by Dunlop's expansive knowledge and infectious passion.
"She had to taste everything! And she had to talk to whoever the chef was," she recalled. "She would just walk into the kitchen and ask questions. And her Chinese is so good, everyone would tell her stories. She can charm anybody." Dunlop's food tours are among WildChina's most praised and heavily booked, Mei said.
Dunlop is widely revered among chefs and food experts like cookbook author Kevin Pang, who noted: "She introduced me to the vibrant, expansive, magical world of Chinese gastronomy beyond the four walls of my Cantonese home. Next to my parents, there's no person I've learned more from about the cooking of my people than Fuchsia Dunlop. 'Invitation to a Banquet' just might be her magnum opus: the richest English-language accounting of China's culinary history I've ever read."
Dunlop sidesteps such accolades, humbly noting that she has had the privilege to spend much of her life doing what she loves -- exploring and eating Chinese cookery. She does take special pride in how her books have been translated into Chinese, and in connecting with Chinese fans, but she deflects all attention to the dishes and delights that fill her books.
"This is about Chinese food, what is it and how should we understand it. How should we appreciate it? How should we eat it? What can we learn from it?" she said. "Chinese food is such a gift for a writer like me. It's this amazing cuisine and there is very little in-depth material about it in English, relative to its complexity. I really love it and find it very fascinating, and I think I always will."
"Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food," by Fuchsia Dunlop (Norton, 2023).
This Story was published by Nikkei on January 2, 2024