Katie Couric Media: You’re Missing Out: What Your Grocery Store’s Ethnic Food Aisle Gets Wrong About the World

By Maya Feller
August 28, 2023

We need to rethink the term “ethnic foods” and how we discuss global cuisines.

Growing up in Cambridge, MA, in the 90s, the ethnic foods aisle of our local Bread & Circus grocery store was the place you shopped when you were looking for spices other than salt and pepper. The aisle you perused when you craved a departure from classic Americana meals like tomato soup and grilled cheese, the aisle that held fragrant flavors like turmeric, geera, cloves, nutmeg, and chili peppers. It was a familiar place for a child like me, one who regularly traveled outside of the U.S. and enjoyed food.

My mother and father are from the English and Creole-speaking Caribbean. Growing up, my mother’s home was often filled with radical academic feminist women from all over the world sharing political conversation over a meal, and my dad’s house was the place that Haitian doctors, lawyers, and academics gathered to eat. When my parents shopped, they were looking for flavors that could provide comfort to their guests.

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