The “bowlification” of fast casual dining is ruining the authenticity of cultural cuisines

Earlier this month, Emma Beddington wrote a biting opinion piece for The Guardian about her distaste of bowls. The “bowl,” in this case, isn’t just a mere dishware — it’s a specific style of meal, neatly composed of grains, protein, greens and some kind of sauce.

Beddington’s criticism was geared towards the bowl’s “joyless refueling” that’s akin to dorm-room foods, existing purely to provide sustenance and nothing more: “Let’s simplify and streamline it into an efficient nutrient delivery system, ensuring macros are checked off, and requisite kilocalories delivered to fuel eight more hours of programming or equations or whatever.”

The bowl, Beddington said, is devoid of pleasure. It simplifies the art of eating and reduces food to an overused formula. Remember the MyPlate plan from the United States Department of Agriculture? It’s essentially a visual reminder of the five food groups necessary for a balanced diet: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy. That’s what the bowl epitomizes. I say that not to discredit the importance of healthy eating, but to show how run-of-the-mill bowl eating is.

Four days after Beddington’s piece was published, readers responded with strong feelings about eating food by the bowl, now known in some pockets of the internet as “bowlification.” Some argued that bowled food is “affordable, delicious and filling,” while others claimed that such food represents just a sliver of the American restaurant scene. In the last decade, “bowlification” has become a growing — and persevering — trend within fast-casual dining. Chipotle unwrapped its burritos and reimagined them as burrito bowls. Sweetgreen, which writer Jia Tolentino described “feels less like a place to eat and more like a refueling station,” packaged an assortment of nutrient-dense, plant-forward foods into brown recycled paper bowls. And Cava handpicked Mediterranean ingredients to compile customizable salads and greens-and-grains bowls.

Bowls certainly have their benefits. They allow consumers to try a little bit of everything, as opposed to just one or two large dishes, explained food and travel writer Catherine Rickman for Food Republic. They allow consumers to be in charge of what they want to eat, which is great for those with dietary restrictions and picky eaters. They also allow chefs to introduce non-mainstream dishes to the public in a manner that’s more familiar and less daunting.

Much of bowl eating centers on international cuisines (think about it, when have you ever seen American fare be presented in bowl form?). Unfortunately, a major downside of the bowl is that it gentrifies such cuisines, stripping them of their authenticity in an attempt to make them more palatable for the majority white consumers. Bowl eating is a subset of fast casual meals, which are increasingly popular in the American work week diet. White-collared employees, in particular, are in search of cohesive meals that are 1) easy to eat while sitting in front of a computer, answering phone calls or participating in meetings and 2) satisfying, mainly for the belly.

“We’re notoriously known for work, work, work, work,” Leora Halpern Lanz, assistant dean of Boston University School of Hospitality Administration, told Boston.com. “I don’t know too many people that take a real lunch break. Usually it’s a working lunch, or it’s something quick at your desk.”

While bowl eating is efficient for consumers, it’s not at all authentic. Major franchises that claim to celebrate authentic flavors and spices in their meals are often doing so in an attempt to appease to a white consumership. The resulting concoction is often a hodgepodge of traditional dishes that are meant to be enjoyed on their own, not in tandem with each other.

A local example that comes to mind for me is RASA, a popular Indian fast-casual eatery with locations across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. RASA’s CEO’s, Sahil Rahman and Rahul Vinod, explained that growing up, many of their friends in the states “either hadn't tried Indian food or had misperceptions about it.” The duo often heard stuff like “I don't like curry!” and “Isn't it all spicy?” — common hesitations raised by those not too familiar with the cuisine, namely white folks.

Thanks to social media, the stereotype of “white people food” has become a joke, a meme and a running gag. “White people food” is bland, unseasoned, unappetizing and “so flavorless it could make you cry,” wrote Bon Appétit’s Jenny G. Zhang. The opposite of “white people food” is foods that are filled with seasonings, spices and a copious amount of rich flavors. On this spectrum, the middle ground is cultural foods that are seasoned just enough, so that it has flavor but not too much that it will deter white taste buds (or have folks reaching for their water glass every few seconds). I’d argue that this is still “white people food” but with added pizzazz. It’s “Americanized” renditions of international cuisines made for those who aren’t blatantly culturally insensitive, but aren’t keen on trying — or capable of handling) authentic, unfiltered traditional dishes.

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

When it comes to Indian dishes, popular non-traditional, “Americanized” foods include butter chicken, tandoori chicken, chicken tikka masala, palak paneer and samosas. No hate to these dishes, but they don’t accurately represent Indian cuisine, or even South Asian cuisine. But RASA’s menu is filled with these dishes — lemon turmeric rice and something called “sexygreens,” chicken tikka and tandoori paneer are protein options, and spiced chickpeas and roasted lentils are additional toppings. Not to mention that there’s also mango salsa, which isn’t even remotely South Asian.

“When dishes from other cultures and countries go mainstream in the U.S., they tend to go from deli to delicacy in a heartbeat, with rising prices often cutting off access to the people who popularized the dish in the first place,” wrote Rickman. “They can also decontextualize dishes, leading to a warped understanding in the public opinion of what exactly a dish is.”

Bowl eating isn’t going away anytime soon. As of 2023, the fast-casual market is expected to grow by 10% over the next five years, per LinkedIn.

Beddington said it best when it comes to summing up bowlification: “It’s perfectly edible, but spookily soulless, like eating with all the sensual pleasure, surprise and joy extracted. Which is exactly what it is: you leave full, but also empty.”