Tending California’s Golden Agriculture
October 22, 2021Soil and Health
November 11, 2021India Joze: Fusion Foodie!
Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio Show #1294
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GUEST: Jozseph Schultz Chef and Restaurateur India Joze Restaurant
Before it was inappropriate to appropriate the food of other cultures for one’s own purposes, there was India Joze restaurant in the tiny town of Santa Cruz, California.
India Joze was both a culinary and a cultural hotspot in which one could taste a fusion of the world’s foods and foment a revolt against the dominant paradigm. It was, and is, difficult to tell which of the two pursuits the restaurant’s namesake owner and chef, India Jozsepth Schultz, enjoyed most.
Here is a taste of his thinking, as found in a manuscript titled “Chutney,” in which Joze addresses his famous chutney bar:
“Cooks find their own answers, and being a good, inventive cook involves learning not only more answers, but also the questions they are answers to. Cooking does not exist independently of eating. The idea that there is an ideal of “good” cooking to which we all strive is an amusingly parochial concept. Almost nothing can be done in the name of cooking which isn’t done in some part of the world. The results seem “bizarre,” “weird,” “unappetizing” only out of the context of the specific questions they answer.
India Jozseph Shultz is closing the latest iteration of his India Joze restaurant due to urban renewal, but before he moves on to what’s next we just have to ask him:
How do you cook East for the West so the hungry return for more?
Leave Comment Below: How can California farmers and ranchers keep growing the gold?
Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain
#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.
#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.
#3 Cheap food isn’t! READ MORE