Annabel Jackson's The Making of Macau's Fusion Cuisine proposes to understand the high fluidity of Macanese identity by looking at the making of its cuisine. First, it asks whether Macanese food can be defined as a “cuisine”—that is, a style or method of cooking, especially as a characteristic of a particular country, region, or establishment (p. 11). Jackson concludes that it is indeed a “cuisine” because it evolved from simple household provisions to become the representative and quintessential fare of Macanese restaurants. By exploring “the role of memory in food production, reproduction and consumption” (p. 7), the book reveals traits of Macanese identity at the intersection of European trade routes and empires, Asian customs, and trade-post cultures. Macau is described as a third space where the fusion of different culinary traditions, and not the hybridization of an existing cuisine, best describes Macanese foodways and Macanese identity, both of which are best represented in diasporic environments. The book is organized in five chapters, with the addition of interesting boxes in each chapter devoted to recipes, theoretical concepts, and historical background.
Based on a survey administered to about 2,000 Macanese, chapter 1 affirms that Macanese cuisine is perceived as the embodiment of Macanese identity, whereas identity is not linked to a bounded location but instead is reproduced, especially in the diaspora. To demonstrate this, Jackson describes Macanese food through a culinary journey around Southeast Asia, starting with the food of the Macanese community in Hong Kong; from there, she details British influences in specific Macanese dishes (i.e., Welsh rarebit). She concludes that people do not have to eat Macanese food daily to feel Macanese, because what makes food Macanese is who cooks it, with whom, and for what occasion it is eaten.
Chapter 2 inquires about the visibility of Macanese food. It argues that the history of Macau is reflected in its cuisine, which has responded creatively to geopolitical and temporal changes. It adds that Macanese, Malay, Goan, and Malaccan cuisines share many commonalities because of their past as port cities. However, after the handover, Macanese in the diaspora found particular pride and a distinct need to identify with specific dishes, minchi being the most common. Minchi is a combination of minced meats and many spices; the lack of one official recipe for it made minchi an easily reproducible staple and even a tourist attraction. Yet the absence of an original recipe also showed the lack of consensus in defining Macanese foodways, and therefore its inherent invisibility.
Chapter 3 elaborates on the idea that since Macanese cuisine is not particularly visible, it must exist in other forms, which are encapsulated in recipes handed down in the domesticity of a mom's kitchen. Accordingly, Macanese cuisine is identified with home, family, and homecoming. Participants in the research defined Macanese cuisine as disappearing or faraway, especially since Macau has been under Beijing's control. Therefore, memory becomes crucial, even if it is tinted with secrecy and compromise, as it encapsulates the hybridity and performativity of Macanese identity, which bear traces of past and present cultural exchanges, travel, trade, and new technologies (p. 55).
Chapter 4 describes dishes that underline connections. These are exemplified by food with Portuguese influences found all over Southeast Asia (e.g., balichao fish sauce found in Goa, Singapore, and Malacca). Connections are also enhanced by the reverberations of travel around the African coast (e.g., the Macanese dish African chicken, probably inspired by Mozambique cuisine). The most interesting contributions of this chapter are the linguistic references to neologisms and etymologies that clarify the cultural conversations that happened over centuries of encounters and are still in the making (i.e., the Japanese frying technique tempura is of Portuguese origin).
Chapter 5 uses African chicken and minchi to define Macau, the place, and its cuisine as a theater for the continuous process of identity in the making. This section could have helped readers contextualize the topic more clearly if it were positioned earlier in the book. The conclusion is that Macanese food is a fusion, performed and reproduced, and its nature “is adaptation” (p. 110)—very much like the identities of Macanese and of those in the diaspora who identify with Macau.
The book intervenes in the literature on food and memory and adds important “thick descriptions” of Macau. It follows an interesting “glocal” approach, where changes in time and place in Macau, and in the places (and people) in relation to it, are taken into consideration to explain the intrinsic flexibility of identities. While the methodology could be explained more clearly in the introduction, appendix 1 helps clarify it. The book offers insights into the life and history of Macau and will be of interest for interdisciplinary studies on migration, diaspora, identity, and foodways.
