Calvin Eng, the owner of New York-based Cantonese-American restaurant Bonnie’s, isn’t shy about his love for monosodium glutamate. Case in point – he has the letters MSG tattooed on his arm, and his restaurant’s menu includes a signature drink called the MSG Martini. Things just taste better with MSG, whether it’s Western food or Cantonese food, the chef tells CNN. We use it in drinks. We use it in desserts. We use it in savory food. It’s in almost everything. Salt, sugar and MSG – I always joke that they’re the Chinese Trinity of seasonings. Openly admitting to using MSG – once a surefire way to keep your restaurant empty – certainly hasn’t undermined Bonnie’s success. It’s become one of the hottest tables in New York since opening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in late 2021, winning numerous Best New Restaurant awards from multiple media outlets. Eng himself was named one of the best new chefs of 2022 by Food and Wine Magazine and was included on the 2023 Forbes 30 under 30 list, just to name a few of his recent achievements.
What is in MSG?
Many didn’t know that MSG is plant-derived, says Tia Rains, a Chicago-based nutrition scientist and Ajinomoto’s vice president of customer engagement and strategic development. Our process [of making MSG] is by fermentation, which is very similar to how beer is brewed or how yogurt is made. First, plants with sugar – like sugarcanes or corn – are fermented with microbes to create glutamate, an amino acid found in food that’s also produced in our body and acts as a neurotransmitter. Then, sodium is added and the glutamate is crystalized to become the salt-like MSG we see in supermarkets and kitchens now. I’m a scientist by training. I think how MSG works is one of the coolest scientific things, says Rains. We have different receptors on our tongue for different tastes. Our receptor for umami looks almost like a Venus Flytrap under a microscope, she adds, mimicking a C with her hand.
Sounds complicated? You’ve probably been playing with glutamate, inosinate and guanylate in your own cooking without even realizing it. Carrots and onions (high in glutamate), for example, boost the umami-ness in beef (high in inosinate). Bonito fish (inosinate) and seaweed kombu (glutamate) also combine to create a powerful umami flavor. Foods like tomatoes and cheese even have natural glutamate in them. When people tell me that they ate at a Chinese food restaurant and they had trouble breathing and tightness in their chest, I get worried – and I’d say, ‘you need to follow up on that because MSG is not an allergen. It’s not going to cause an allergic response. Our bodies make glutamate, so it would not be possible to have an allergy to glutamate’,” says Rains. Despite continued claims of negative reactions to MSG from diners, decades of scientific trials have failed to prove the existence of MSG sensitivity. Government organizations around the world have listed MSG as safe to eat. This includes the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which lists MSG as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS).
