Upside Of Globalization
By Mitch Berg
Traditional Minnesota office potluck: Lots of cold cuts, hot dish, chips and jello.
Office potluck in an IT department that is about 35% South, Southeast and East Asian: A wonderland of gustatory adventures; paneer, Vietnamese egg rolls, H’mong spring rolls, endless varieties of masala, funky spicy cornmeal dumplings of indeterminate ethnicity but verified deliciosity, and things whose names I don’t know but whose flavors will haunt me forever…
…not to mention haunting my co-workers through the next two hours of meetings.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Stay away from the blood pork & balut. Unless you know what you are doing.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
This post belongs on the Kool Aid Report, I think. Burp/boop.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Yeah I used to work with a group of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean IT folks (great folks to work with, wonderful work ethic) and every couple weeks we’d go out to lunch and chow down on the usual asian delights, including beef lung, and chicken or duck feet. In return I introduced them to ham hocks, hominy grits, chitlings and tripe soup.
The only culturally insurmountable barrier turned out to be lutefisk, no one was happy with that outing.
November 21st, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Funny! The most “ethnic” it gets in our office potlucks is “chili” and even then it has kidney beans (which is sooo Minnesota). I used to work alongside Lao immigrants…they had lots of good (and somewhat “interesting”) stuff to eat but most of it would literally sear the skin off the inside of your mouth…and they’d eat that kind of stuff for breakfast. Vegetables and meat and…the hottest thing was “papaya”. What they did to a fruit to make it that hot I don’t know.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:39 pm
What, no Boshintang?
November 21st, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Mmmm sounds good….Altoid?
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’ve long thought that one of the simplest demonstrations of the virtues of lots of immigration (legal , natch) is the local food.