One of the vast reasons people travel to Italy is for its world-renowned cuisine – pizza. Who could blame them? Italy has become inextricably linked to this iconic dish, a recipe specially curated and perfected over generations. But whether it’s matcha in Japan, mango sticky rice in Thailand, or nasi padang in Indonesia, food is innately intertwined with a place’s culture and heritage, leaving many people desperate to taste them in its indigenous form. In this context, when people speak of authentic food, they usually mean something traditional: a dish prepared in culturally accurate ways rather than modified versions. Yet in this age of globalized cuisines, fusion dishes, and fast-food chains, culinary authenticity has been turned into a robust marketing tool. It is as much about image and branding as it is about recipes and ingredients.
People would hunt down an obscure Vietnamese place that serves pho “just like in Hanoi,” or a café that replicates the matcha they once had in Tokyo. Such pursuits are common in this era of culinary tourism, where social media circulates millions of food photos on the internet every second. But it makes you wonder if people would crave “authentic food” if it weren’t so heavily glorified.
This deep-seated fascination with authenticity is particularly evident when we look at the affluent urban citizens of Indonesia. The rich would rave about the meticulously marketed French restaurant located in Senopati that claims to serve dishes prepared in the traditional way, especially if it boasts a French chef on its roster. Others would flock to the newly opened tea house that just launched its first branch in PIK after arriving straight from China. But in truth, only a select few could distinguish between a genuinely traditional dish and its supposedly “inferior” replica.
In contemporary urban Indonesia, consuming authentic foreign cuisine has become a form of cultural capital, allowing the upper class to display themselves as well-traveled and cosmopolitan. People line up to pass their judgement on taste, quick to point out what is “right” and “wrong” about a dish. Meanwhile, a large chunk of the population lack the means to tour the world, so they sit in comfort with local copies alongside Indonesia’s own expansive culinary traditions. The upper crust, however, frowns upon this, dismissing such tastes as murahan (cheap). Beyond class, a lingering colonial mindset is undoubtedly evident from these habits, in which foreign cuisines are treated as more “elite” than local Indonesian food, consequently devaluing national dishes. The irony is thick, considering that Indonesia’s spices were the very reason for its 350 years of colonization. The same ingredients that once made the Indonesian archipelago a colonial target and the center of global trade are now sidelined in favor of imported culinary ideals.
The market has since learned to profit off this mindset. Authenticity has been commodified to the brim, justifying jacked-up prices and exclusivity. Instead of gaining access to specialized food, though, consumers are often buying into a curated image of authenticity. Dining in an upscale restaurant in South Jakarta, with food plated for Instagram rather than sheer taste, can never fully replicate the context of eating that dish in its country of origin. Authenticity in the modern world now functions as a subtle marketing device–a way to make a dish stand out from the crowd. Attaching a specific identity makes it more memorable, even if the actual difference is marginal. Thus, as much as we appreciate authentic food and associate it with higher quality, it often falls victim to capitalist forces.
It is worth remembering that many of our favorite, seemingly traditional dishes were born from change, their history far more labyrinthine than we tend to imagine. It is agreed upon that pasta is undeniably Italian, but as is the case with many other well-loved cuisines of the world, its origins are difficult to trace. Long before pasta was the star of Italy, the northern Chinese were already mastering the art of noodle making. Italians only began crafting their own versions in the 8th century, influenced by Arab traders who introduced durum wheat.
Over centuries, pasta evolved. It shifted as agriculture changed, as trade routes opened, and as new technologies entered kitchens. Its versatility and compatibility with local ingredients like olive oil, garlic, and cheese further allowed it to embed itself in Italian homes. But the pasta we know and love today varies considerably from its early forms, and despite that, people ferociously guard its authenticity. Grown men flare over whether pasta must be al dente or whether cream on carbonara borders blasphemy. Yet, evolution is exactly what gave it its prominent identity. So if even pasta is the child of cultural exchange and reinvention, then dynamism and constant negotiation should be welcomed.
Given authenticity is an ever-changing framework, it seems imprudent to treat it as an absolute truth. A single universal benchmark for a dish strips away its personal touch, ironing out the subjective reality of taste. What one person champions as a distinguished Neapolitan pizza, another might find depressingly bland. In Indonesia, we have the concept of kearifan lokal – local wisdom. It is the ability to absorb external influences and transform them into our own character. In food, this simply means engineering food to available ingredients and prevailing preferences. Our palates lean bold and fragrant, which may not always align with the restraint of European dishes. As a result, many restaurants tailor recipes for the Indonesian tongue – more chili here, more sugar there – until they feel familiar. Modification is frequently painted out to be the bad guy when it is usually the reason it continues to exist.
In the end, inauthenticity should not be villainized. It can be creative and adaptive, sometimes even surpassing its predecessors. Change does not inherently mean decline and so to frame authenticity in strict black-and-white terms feels too simple for something as perplexing as culinary history. When the core of authenticity becomes malleable, is preserving it an act of cultural protection or serving commercial interests?
