Chef Erling Wu-Bower, son of a Chinese mother and a Creole father, grew up in Chicago. Chris Jung, executive chef at Wu-Bower’s new Chicago restaurant, was born in Korea and raised in New York and D.C. To build their menu, they didn’t pinpoint a single cuisine from their pasts, instead the leaned into eclecticism.
Until recently, celebrated restaurants had adhered to a prevailing ethos of authenticity. That could manifest itself as a restaurant being the outgrowth of the place it was rooted in, like Noma or Faviken. Or it was a restaurant working to faithfully recreate dishes from a distinct culture like Sean Brock’s exploration of Southern food. But the label “authentic” also carried a moral weight—it was a signal that the cuisine on offer hadn’t been dumbed down, diluted, or thoughtlessly appropriated.
But as this trend went on, we ran headlong into its limitations. One is that some restaurants concerned themselves more with marketing than delivering the real thing and diners got jaded along the way. Yes, Noma sourced ingredients from a short radius around the Nordic, but one of its disciples claimed to do the same on a remote island in Washington State only to be caught buying roast chickens from Costco.