Local chefs reminisce on the cultural foods they find comfort in: Andrew Coppolino

Comfort food is often thought to be simple fare, but it's is much more complex when you consider its universal meaning.

The term has been around since the 1970s when credit for coining the phrase is sometimes given to the actress Liza Minelli. She apparently said hamburgers and baked potatoes were her comfort food favourites.

Canadian comfort foods — and that would have to include poutine — made their way onto many upscale-casual restaurant menus in Canada: think meatloaf with gravy and that macaroni and cheese. A few years ago, there was a noticeable grilled cheese revival, the gooey sandwich accompanied by a bowl of tomato soup.

Comfort foods are ultimately very personal, they may be decadent and indulgent; they are often nostalgic and re-create memories of a grandmother's home cooking

But as a food genre, they aren't only North American, even if the phrase itself isn't used in other countries and cultures.

It's all in the cooking

Referring to it as "comida casera," Mynor Garcia, owner of Kitchener's America Latina Eatery and Grocery, said he grew up in Guatemala and comfort food isn't just what you are eating but who has cooked it.

"If you work downtown, you will eat your lunch in a place that serves comida casera. That means it's like grandma's recipes, home-made. More than where you get the food is the feeling of who is serving that dish and how warm that makes you feel," said Garcia.

That might be a pupusa or a sopa de res that makes it seem you are eating in your grandmother's kitchen, he adds.

"That's the feeling."

If you head to Vietnam, you won't find pho as a go-to comfort food, though it's popular here, according to Thompson Tran of Wooden Boat Food Company in Kitchener. Rather the foods that his mother and grandmother made are his — and others' — comfort foods.

"For me, that would be fish sauce caramel in a coconut broth with stewed pork belly, eggs and pickled mustard greens —thit kho. That's a staple dish that you cannot find in restaurants, but you can find in every single household," said Tran.

Growing up in British Columbia, Tran recalls working in the berry fields and the soothing, delicious Thermos-packed lunches of thit kho with steamed rice that he ate. They were nutritious but also a respite from the hard work.

"The food never tasted better, and I never got tired of that earned meal," he said. "I'd always finish the last tablespoon of rice in my bowl with a bit of the broth. I still do this now."

Tran points out that dishes in Vietnam carry with them meaningful names; for instance, he translates the name of a bitter melon comfort food soup, canh kho qua, as "all sorrows will pass."

Food connected to memories

Comfort food isn't just a warming meal on cold days — all the cooks I spoke to hail from hot countries. Jamaica is a warm country, but soup is a food eaten regularly, according to chef Teneile Warren.

Warren tells a tale of their father sharing a photo of beef-pumpkin soup he made. It evoked memories and Warren made a batch and shared that photo with a friend.

"So there were three different people eating beef-pumpkin soup in three different countries," said Warren.

However, comfort food can also come from a culture outside one's own, Warren points out.

"Comfort food is sentimental. It's nostalgic and emotional. It's food that we connect with particular moments, or a person. When I'm not feeling well, I crave very specifically Cantonese chow mein, something I'm familiar with from Jamaica."
 
The aspect of nostalgia extends to culinary techniques, according to local chef Arielle Neils. She said that food she calls comforting just seems to taste better when an older generation, using traditional techniques, is cooking it. It's a sense that coconut ground by hand, rather than in a blender, tastes better.

"This is Trini soul food or this is country food," Neils said of how comfort food might be described. "It's traditional, old-school methods of cooking. And the food just tastes different. We like to say, 'It tastes sweeter. It tastes like sweet food,'" she said.

As the fall rolls in and with it the end of summer, kids are back in school and routines return to their usual pattern as winter approaches. I think comfort food can often prompt a melancholy that goes beyond nostalgia.

It's a feeling the Portuguese call "soudade," a word that can't be translated into English but which imitates a feeling of "loss" or a "sweet sadness" for what has passed at the same time you feel contented, according to Maria de Sousa who operates A Portuguesa Bakery at St. Jacobs Market.

"Comfort food means the feeling of being cared for, the feeling of being home, and the feeling that brings you memories," de Sousa said.

"Soudade is the times that you really have been happy."