We are blessed to live at a day and age where technology is so advanced that many of us are able to experience new cultures, travel to different places. It’s not just travel that’s more accessible, it is also possible to experience new cultures and try different cuisines without leaving your hometown.
It is difficult to say whether this is due to the widespread use of the internet and the opportunities that it offers for the world to be more open and more diverse, or the fact that people travel a lot more than they used to, including permanent relocations to different countries, as well as tourism travels.
Fusion food – the latest craze
Up until halfway through the 20th century, food was mainly localised. Certain dishes were popular in certain parts of the world, with few exceptions, i.e. dishes that have been spread across a larger area. For instance, there were a range of foods popular throughout the Ottoman Empire, still eaten across modern day countries that now exist in what was formally known as the Ottoman Empire.
But, again, instances of this were pretty rare and uncommon. Italian cuisine was probably the first one that gained international acclaim, but its popularisation was stirred by the mass migration of, primarily, South Italians to America in the 1920s and 1930s. Pizza and pasta became an integral part of American and later world cuisine, and then came the inevitable hamburgers. Nowadays, you can eat a cheeseburger in Tokyo and a lot of people say that the best Japanese food is served in New York.
The globalisation of cuisine also gave birth to a new phenomenon called fusion. Burrito cheeseburger, doner pizza are just some of the most popular mashups, but you can literally combine dishes from all over the world and try out different things, as long there are no health risks involved.
Fusion cuisines allow the chef and the recipe creators to combine things as they wish and experiment at large. Why is fusion cuisine so popular lately? It is a complex question and the reasons are multiple. There are plenty of people who come from mixed backgrounds and would like to eat food that reflects all their roots, there are people who simply love to try out different things, there are elements of different cuisines that simply go well together, and lastly, fusion cuisine allows everyone to find their preferred taste, to find something that’s just right for their taste buds.
Something for everyone
And it is not just food, other elements of culture are often mixed and mashed up together. Take fashion for instance. In the past, different regions and countries featured their own distinct clothing styles and there wasn’t a lot of mixing. Later, an international urban style with fewer variances was accepted across multiple parts of the globe, if not everywhere. Nowadays we have a lot of designers that flirt with traditional clothing styles from the past, from different parts of the world. Embroidery is one curious way of implementing traditional elements into modern clothing.
Cinematography is another area where we can see different influences overlapping, although cinema has always been more international and global than localised. Even video games are an area where we witness a lot of mashups and intercultural mixing. Yes, video games are another area that has always been more international than global, but the video games played in the Far East have always different from the games that have been popular in Europe and the Western World in general.
Even online slots reflect this, and you will often find a variety of games that included cultural inferences, even games that are based on different historical civilisations, as well as slot games that depict dishes from different parts of the world. Take for instance, the popular game by Gamesys – Secrets of the Phoenix.
Another interesting thing about online slots is how they reflect culture in general. You have some games that are popular in certain countries and regions, whereas other slots are popular elsewhere.