Batgung

I’m always on the search for new restaurants with good food. That’s why it was with a minor infusion of joy that I noticed a new restaurant opening just down the road from my church. Look, a new lunch place – and it had the air of a place that might be kind of bistro-like, yet cheap! Perfect.

But then I had a closer look. It was not a bistro. It was not a coffee shop, or a fast-food joint, at least not quite. It was a salad place.

Now, years ago, that would have been just fine with me. A good salad with lots of nice ingredients would have been just the thing for a quick lunch. But for some reason, I found myself experiencing a sense of clear disappointment as I worked my way down the posted menu.

Why?

Well, I had to acknowledge that, deep down, the thought of a salad for lunch no longer seemed quite right to me – there was just something not-completely-formed, something vaguely inadequate in the concept itself . . . .

And I realized at that moment that I’ve been through palate drift, and come out on the other side.

What’s palate drift? I’ll define it as a change in one’s tastes brought about by long exposure to an initially unfamiliar cuisine that ultimately overcomes one’s original preferences.

Hong Kong is a perfect place to experience palate drift. It’s got great food, headlined by one of the world's preeminent cuisines, so it’s no surprise that a American who’s accustomed to his home country’s food may find himself losing his taste for old favorites, and replacing them with new ones.

But just finding new favorite foods doesn’t quite do justice to the sense of palate drift I have in mind. To explore this, it’s better to get down to fundamentals.

For example, my dissatisfaction with the notion of a salad lunch is not based on the taste of any given salad. Rather, it’s a bedrock assumption about what constitutes a proper meal. And although salad lunches are common in my homeland, they’re widely derided in Chinese culture as not lunch at all: for many local people, a real meal must focus on cooked food, so salad is not going to make the grade. Obviously, I’ve been subconsciously converted to this view as my palate has drifted.

I’ve also noticed this phenomenon kick in when I’m back in the USA on long holidays. At first, eating typical American food is no problem (I’m not a food snob – although there’s lots of bad food in the USA, there’s also plenty that’s good). But after some days an impatience with menus (not to mention my saintly Mother’s cooking) nags at me; I miss certain tastes and textures that I’m accustomed to in Chinese food here in Hong Kong. My food seems bland and un-pungent. I find myself subconsciously reaching to pick up my rice bowl.

And usually upon returning to HK I find myself doing the rounds of favorite places and dishes to feel like I’m really back home again.

Another aspect of palate drift, of course, is one’s ability not just to tolerate, but to enjoy – and even crave – very different tastes. The word that came to me just now was ‘pungent’, and that’s a good example. When I first came to Hong Kong, I found things like shrimp paste, fermented bean curd, and (top of the list) stinky bean curd not just unappetizing but almost disgusting. That has changed, to say the least; I now love all three.

On the other hand, my palate hasn’t drifted all the way over to the Eastern shore. One point of evidence is sandwiches. I recall on my first visit to Hong Kong being bemused by seeing a new Chinese friend powering down a ham-and-cheese sandwich for breakfast, but then refusing to entertain the possibility of having sandwiches at any other meal. I still eat sandwiches for lunch on many days, but we’ll see if that too must pass as time goes by . . . .

Readers, do you have any examples of palate drift in your own tastes?