Talk:California cuisine

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[edit] Merril Shindler

Merril Shindler, a food critic in Southern California, actually addresses this article in his most recent article linked here: Shindler, Merril. "Dining: Cal Cuisine for the Masses", San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 2006-07-06. 

He expands on this idea and notes how some believe there is no such thing. The article also reviews a local restaurant that he believes pre-dates those mentioned who started the idea. MrMurph101 18:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

That sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, the article seems to have disappeared. --C S (Talk) 06:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
That's disappointing. Hopefully the article will come back, but if it does not, I'll try to find it somewhere else. He was somewhat critical of this article basically saying it was incomplete. He stated that California Cuisine would mainly be considered healthy foods focusing mainly on fish and avoiding red meat. He also said that a chef from New York said there is no such thing as California Cuisine. That's what I remember but will have to find the article to find out exactly what he said. MrMurph101 17:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposed with cuisine of California

This article shares most of its content with the larger cuisine of California article. The only unique part is the two lead paragraphs. I suggest merging these two paragraphs into the larger article as a sub-section. Unless someone objects and can expand this article beyond its current stub status, I will perform this merge in 5 days. -Orayzio 15:41, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose merge. Whether the article is a stub or not is irrelevant. People expect that this important style of cuisine will be its own article, not subsumed as part of some larger article about foods of California. Some discussion on this article has already started, and I would expect that it will grow as time progresses, just like many other newly created stubs. Perhaps you don't mean to make your merge proposal sound like an ultimatum, but you shouldn't make demands like "unless you do such and such, I will merge the article". --C S (Talk) 16:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I see absolutely no difference (and I'd hazard to say that very few other people would either) between the articles becide the inclusion of "Burgers and fast food" (something vague as most of those can be found outside California, and probably shouldn't be included on a "cusine" page as much as it should be on a companies of California page) and a more fleshed out explanation on the "of" page of the "fusion" foods of the area (in terms of "influences"), ingredient sections are word for word. I would suggest that if they are different that you should take up the task of better defining both, so they don't apper to be the exact same thing. At the moment I'm saying merge. Radagast83 06:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Do you understand that there is an article on cuisine of an area and and another article on a famous culinary cooking style? I would wager that in fact most people would understand this from the introductions of both articles. These are different topics (albeit related somewhat), so should have separate articles. As for the overlap of content, I'm surprised that the only difference you see is that one article talks about burgers and says a little more about influences. About 50% of the California cuisine article is separate from the other article. In fact, this is the most important part as it is the part that explains what California Cuisine is and its history. This difference from the other article shouldn't be considered negligible simply because both contain a common "ingredients" section. --C S (Talk) 06:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually the distinction between the two is pretty vague, at least to a layperson as myself. An expert probably would agree with you 100%, they'd see a distinction, but these articles are not supposed to be written for experts, they're supposed to be distinguishable for someone who would have no idea on the concepts within beforehand. In fact the first paragraphs on each say nearly the exact same things. One uses the word "fusion" (California Cuisine) while the other says that the food is a mixture of various cultures (i.e. a fusion of various cultures foods), the latter explains the fusion connection a lot more in depth further down the article and the former only later explains where the term originates (without any attribution I might add, perhaps thats the next thing to work on). I now agree they should be seperate, but they both need work to expand and need to be sourced. I'm removing the tags. Radagast83 22:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose - It was discussed a few months ago to split the articles. We should let the experiment play out for a while before combining the pages again. Gentgeen 06:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to raise the suggestion to merge once more. The cuisine of famous Californian chefs is a part of the Californian cuisine no matter how you look at it. Neither article is particularly long and the distinction is both vague and confusing. I see no need in keeping elite and common cuisine articles separated just for the Hell of it.

Peter Isotalo 17:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Peter, they should be merged into Californian cuisine which follows the pattern of all other state cuisines in the Cuisine of the United States.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 18:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification worthwhile?

As I think the above debate demonstrates, the subject matter in this article is confusing to many. I would recommend that the introduction should make clear that "California cuisine" is somewhat of a whimsical name invented for something that is separate from the traditional cuisines of California (albeit not being totally independent). The redirect line at the top I think was intended to indicate that but I think a lot of readers would miss the point. --Mcorazao 20:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. It is worthwhile to make this point on a lot of topics related to California since, in my experience, there are many people who have lived in California for quite a while and yet still have little understanding of the local culture (e.g. it's easy to live in Silicon Valley and rarely interact with a native Californian). --Mcorazao 20:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It's good to clarify this, because you say, even Californians may be confused. Nonetheless "whimsical" is simply a bad choice, as in fact there's nothing whimsical about it. --C S (Talk) 23:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Neutrality

You make claims that "Californians tend to have cultural diversity, tend to be more traveled, and have culinary sophistication and openness to new eating experiences, fusion cuisine is accepted and popular in California." It reads in a way which implies that the residents of other states do not have these qualities.

WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY is what you wrote in the article sounds too egocentric. It is written in a way that suggests that Californians are superior to residents of other states (or countries for that matter). If generally everyone enjoys the things you describe then why would it even need mention? This is the reason I added the [citation needed]. They were subsequently removed and I re-added them. And I will continue to do so. Be glad I am not deleting your statements. I'm not saying you are the one that removed the [citation needed]s but you did add the text in question.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.238.172.212 (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2008 (ET)

  • I would tend to disagree. --evrik (talk) 14:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Rightfully so. You were the one who added the text, of course you agree with it 64.238.172.212 (talk) 22:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I have nominated the article to be checked for neutrality. You still have yet to provide verifiable sources for "Californians ... tend to be more traveled" & "Californians ... have culinary sophistication" Your last message also indicates a bias on the matter. If those statements are true, why can't you provide a verifiable source? Statistically Americans, as a whole, are less traveled than the rest of the world [1] [2] so already your travel argument is shot down because it's very vague.... "Californians ... tend to be more traveled" than whom? 64.238.172.212 (talk) 02:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Why don't you register as a user? This anon ip stuff gets old. If you don't like the sentence, why don't you propose an alternate? --evrik (talk) 13:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm think its a very well written sentence. I just disagree with the content unless you can provide verifiable sources... it sounds very biased and unsubstantiated. What does my choice not to create an account have anything to do with it? My IP will be the same for a long time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.238.172.212 (talk) 22:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

There is a vandal on this page 1) trying to pass bias statements as neutral 2) adding invalid sources to try to further their goals of 1).

Please be aware:

Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable.
All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles, and of all article editors. For guidance on how to make an article conform to the neutral point of view, see the NPOV tutorial; for examples and explanations that illustrate key aspects of this policy, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ.

Note that these bias statements without verifiable sources simply should not be there. I am allowing them to remain but readers must be alerted to their bias nature.

--64.238.172.212 (talk) 01:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Anon, just to let you know, a source that does not have a link, does not automatically invalidate it. The source I restored came from a newspaper that I once read in actual print. I fixed the wording to note that it's the view of the food critic and not necessarily "common knowledge." It would be nice if newspapers kept all their articles available online indefinately but unfortunately that's not the case. I'm sure you could contact the newspaper and obtain a copy of the article if you really wanted to. MrMurph101 (talk) 02:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)



The source in question did have a link but the link does not work. This automatically makes the source unverifiable. I even tried the archive search in the newspaper article and did not come accross the article. I have moved the article from "nominated to be checked for its neutrality" to "The neutrality of this article is disputed." because:
1) there are unverifiable, or no, sources used for statements which make this article sound very California bias. Even if your statements are true, they MUST BE VERIFIABLE
2) I have placed POV-check tags and a vandal continues to remove them and a vandal continues to remove also [citation needed] tags. Per Wikipedia polcity "Any material that is challenged, and for which no source is provided within a reasonable time (or immediately if it's about a living person), may be removed by any editor." Instead of REMOVING the content I am GIVING YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, but you must retain the [citation needed] tag. A link to a site that gives a 404 error is not a verifiable source.
3) I have used Template:POV because there is what I consider to be an ongoing dispute because someone removed the previous tags basically by un-doing my edits. This is not the correct way to resolve a dispute on Wikiepedia.
Please do not remove the POV tags nor the [citation needed] tags... your efforts will be a waste because they will re-appear. You can find verifiable sources for your statements and replace the [citation needed] tags with proper citations. Once the bias and non-citated statements are corrected then I will remove the POV tag. I am not out to bite anyone nor out to spread my own point of view on things I am just working to make Wikipedia more neutral.

64.238.172.212 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)