A good relationship is built on compromise. So, it appears, is a good menu. Hannah Rashbass dips into the new traditions cooked up through intercultural relationships.
When my mum went on her first date with her boyfriend four years ago, she told him she was a pescatarian while they sat at a little wine bar in north London. He joked that this fact had “slipped through the net” on her dating profile because to him, a pescatarian should be eating fish with most meals and she only likes it occasionally. He says semi-seriously that she was really just a secret vegetarian.
Four years on, Julian Saakwa-Mante, who is still my mum’s boyfriend, admits he probably wouldn’t have taken her on a date had he known, but as they sit together on the sofa, he laughs and says: “I’m glad we managed to work through that little problem.” Growing up in Ghana, and then enjoying a Mediterranean diet after moving to the UK aged 18, meat and fish had been central to his meals. So building a life with an English woman who had given up the stuff in her mid-teens seemed a world away.
Luckily, he was smitten enough to overlook it and since their first date, mum has become a proper pescetarian in his eyes – they now eat fish most days. But his preference to be with someone who shared his tastes made me consider the centrality of food in intercultural relationships.
The meals we eat reveal more than just our taste preferences. They’re like little windows into our family stories and cultural backgrounds. But what happens when these are shared with a partner from a different country? Can new traditions evolve out of the foods we eat together?
The intense sensory nature of food means that eating together is a nostalgic experience. My mum finds that Saakwa-Mante always wants them to order dishes they both like at restaurants so they can share. “It’s my heritage,” he explains, “in Ghana, you eat communally and it’s a bonding process when you do that. There would never be a meal when people would be eating different things and sometimes, if you know the person really well, you might even eat off the same plate.”
Sharing meals allows a piece of cultural history to be passed to a partner which they can then experience in a new setting. Gian Arrigoni is Italian-Chinese and his Greek-Zimbabwean girlfriend, Andy Mutzuris, chat to me late on a Monday evening. They sit close, Arrigoni with floppy dark hair while Mutzuris’ hair is longer, tumbling round her shoulders, as they tell me about the ways they eat as a couple. She explains that cooking together has “shown me who Gian is. Growing up in Zimbabwe, I knew nothing of Asian cuisine”.
The couple met at university in St Andrews, a small town on Scotland’s east coast, hardly bursting with Asian ingredients. When Arrigoni had a craving for Cha Siu bao – little sticky dumplings filled with sweet barbeque pork – the two took a trip to the Chinese supermarket in Dundee to find the sesame oil and oyster sauce needed in the dish. Mutzuris explains that “experiencing new things with Gian and learning about his food preferences was an insight into how he grew up”.
It isn’t just about the past though, sometimes watching how another person approaches the kitchen can create new traditions. Peter Corboy and Hugo Saporiti met on a Tinder date in London but grew up in Ireland and Portugal respectively. Corboy outlines that he has learnt a lot from Saporiti’s approach to food: “I think Hugo has a slightly different perspective on food because he comes from a culture that has a much deeper relationship with specific dishes than I do. We would spend time talking about the different dishes like bitoque – steak with a fried egg on top of chips – that they have and the contexts in which you eat them.”
Often Saporiti would spend a whole day making a really elaborate dish. Corboy would say: “‘Oh my god, this is so cool. How did you do this?’ and Hugo would just reply, ‘I literally just follow the recipe. They write out the steps in the book.’” Since they have become a couple, Corboy has become much less intimidated by complicated recipes. “Now I just roll up my sleeves and try it. I’ve learned to enjoy the process more.”
It hasn’t just been a one-way exchange either. Saporiti explains that when he first met Corboy he was shocked to see him eat tomato ketchup with everything. “I found that very weird.” But since the two have moved in together in east London, Saporiti admits that he “is very much into ketchup now”.This process of sharing, whether large elaborate recipes or sweet tomato sauces, has a knock-on effect and has impacts beyond the couple. I spent this Christmas with my mum, her boyfriend, and my brother. In the morning, my brother cooked fried eggs on toast in the previous night’s Palaver sauce – a Ghanaian spinach stew Saakwa-Mante had cooked for us on Christmas Eve. The combination was surprisingly delicious and seemed to be a new breakfast tradition borne out of my mum’s relationship.