This is the dark side of the second tier of what's left of the literary movement - articles which begin with a long section of blithering about the author's background, family, or cats. At least on blogs, one has the option of skipping the "About" page.
The New Yorker would not have published this in its heyday.
Basically. "I was a foodie before it was cool, and I'm going to keep on being one just to show all of these dorks like Guy Fieri that they can't ruin my love of pasta bolognese." ;)
This was sort of a "say nothing" article in sum to me, because he explored some different subjects and how he felt like foodies couldn't really survive in the long term with population expansion without compromising their reasons for being foodies in the first place, but then concludes by saying he's going to continue to be a foodie anyways.
My eye moves on to another article. It's particularly frustrating on this site where informative titles for the links are considered editorial and get swapped back to the typical link-bait title.
So, in a nutshell the author thinks that the 'foodie' movement can't feed the world.
Perhaps, but I'm not so sure. At its heart, the foodie movement is the complex jumble of things the author mentions. Politics, art, identity, history, etc. But it's also highly supported by people with excess income. So some of this critique seems to warrant further investigation. On the other hand, many of these movements actually are dipping into techniques from a previous era and different social strata. For instance pickling, home preserves, raising your own chickens, etc. Many of these things are actually able to co-exist with urban density, and many more can be if urban planning was adjusted in certain respects.
Additionally, I think many who focus on the quality of food would argue the world can't afford to feed the future 11 billion-peopled world using current agricultural practices. Economically, cheap transportation costs prop up various agricultural bread baskets, and will likely see future disruption as oil availability fluctuates. Other places, like California, require more water than is actually locally available. Some would also question the environmental cost of modern ag processes. From pesticide use to deforestation, agricultural use is often at the core of human's environmental impact in an area.
The foodie/locavore/in-season movement all have various things to offer to this debate. Throwing such a focus out seems silly, possibly at least as silly as those who think GMO products have no part of the future equation to feeding the world.
"from an environmental point of view, density is good." The author is confident enough to gloss over this which makes me skeptical of his conclusions about any large scale impact of the 'foodie' movement.
Food is now politics and ethics as much as it is sustenance ... it’s a form of surrogate politics. To some, it’s not even surrogate politics; it’s the real deal, politics at its most urgent and consequential. [...]
I’m thrilled by this notion, and yet I find that I can’t submit to it. [...] If shopping and cooking really are the most consequential, most political acts in my life, perhaps what that means is that our sense of the political has shrunk too far [...] Imagine that you die and go to Heaven and stand in front of a jury made up of Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Your task would be to compose yourself, look them in the eye, and say, “I was all about fresh, local, and seasonal.”
*
Food choices matter, but it's important to understand that a politics limited to consumer choices (like food, or boycotts) is very limited and unlikely to make much difference. There are exceptions (like South Africa), but the record is not very strong.
This article gets it hugely wrong. Food is one of the highest forms of art; one that's vital and human and social all at once.
You don't have to like it, but you do have to eat, and it's such a large part of life and culture that yes, it does matter.
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
-- John Adams
The seemingly trivial becomes the pinnacle of importance when it stands on a solid foundation.
While food is important, I am highly allergic to the whole bullshit and pretentiousness that surrounds it in the higher ends (same for wine, brandy and scotch).
I think, like many movements, the "foodie" movement is a reaction to the kind of mass-consumer food that became prevalent over the last few decades. The kind of ho-hum average and entirely consistent food that you could get any season, with different stores staffed by different people thousands of miles away from each other. You can get practically the exact same meal in Winter in Boston as you can in Summer in Nevada. Want sushi from your local Mr. Tuna in Colorado? No problem!
It's interesting to revisit the chains that were popular when I was growing up, the ones that haven't really changed their decor or menus. The food tastes exactly like I remember it, and it's honestly terrible. But growing up I didn't know it was bad, all food everywhere basically tasted like this. It was either this or local mom & pop homestyle stuff...nothing special.
Looking back, I think I grew up at an intersection of two events: people were becoming affluent enough to eat something other than food cooked at home, and we had become so enamored with our ability to provide any season, hyper-consistent food that we never stopped to ask if it was a good idea.
Think about how many Chotchkie's-style casual dining restaurants there are, all virtually interchangeable from each other. Once you start to hit a number of locations in the hundreds, it's just inevitable.
I think foodie-ism is looking at this ossifying industry and finding it relatively easy to disrupt. It can get pretentious at times, with lists of all the locally sourced ingredients in the homemade ketchup, but it also means you can get good food for a change. It means that if you have 20 restaurants, you have 20 actual choices of places to eat and not groups of interchangeable taste-alikes.
Even in traditionally very manufactured food places, the burger joint, newer franchises like In-n-Out or Shake Shack, which actually artificially limit their expansion to ensure the kinds of ultra-high quality ingredients they use are available.
Honestly, if you like food at all, it's an awesome time to be alive, I have no idea how we made it through the 70's, 80's and 90's.
> Want sushi from your local Mr. Tuna in Colorado? No problem!
I can't remember the last time I saw a grocery store without a sushi "counter". And they're all the same, west or east or middle, tiny store or huge. One or two bored asian people boxed into a middle-of-aisle four-sided counter, one side of which is a sad-looking case filled with the same boxed bland mushy hours old rolls. It's hard to imagine that it's that profitable, but clearly it is.
I've noticed two interesting anomalies in yelp ratings that might account for this: Sushi places usually get high ratings, Vegetarian/Vegan restaurants also.
I think this is for different reasons, but most Americans don't fundamentally seem to know what good fresh fish tastes like, Sushi is no exception.
As a vegan, sometimes it's nice to eat at a restaurant and not have to go through the whole 20 questions with the server about whether food has animal products. So I may weigh other factors (like service or presentation or how "nice" a place is) as less important than when going to a restaurant with only one or two vegan options.
I've noticed Vegan and Vegetarian restaurants get high ratings, I think it's because the potential audience is so happy with the fact the place even exists (and gives them an alternative to cooking yet another meal or fighting with yet another menu) that the default is a high rating. Even very mediocre places around where I live have 4+ stars.
In supermarkets it's not even the fish - there's little to no nigiri in the case, and the rolls mostly contain little or even no fish. They're mostly rice, slathered-on sauce, vegetables, and then maybe some fish (like breaded shrimp). You could theoretically order "fresh" (for whatever value of fresh the fish behind the counter is), but I'm not sure I've ever seen someone order instead of grabbing from the case.
Perhaps "Americans don't know what good sushi tastes like" though.
As "someone who doesn't eat sushi and avoids ordering tuna", how do you even have a dog in this fight? What does it matter to you if other people enjoy sushi (or even supermarket "sushi")?
I willingly choose to not eat it because I don't agree with the aggressive fishing natures. Tuna and other fisheries are rapidly declining. America, and the worlds, obsession with sushi is not helping matters. So that's my "dog in this fight."
Ah, I didn't realize you were coming from an environmental/sustainability angle. Fair enough. Though if that's your concern I wonder if it's more practical to get people to shift their consumption to more sustainable species rather than getting them to give it up altogether.
In and out limits expansion because hey want to operate out of a single factory. They have no quality ingredients. Those aren't locally grown heirloom potato French fries.
In-n-Out is neither new nor franchised. It started in 1948, and all 290 locations are company-owned. All of their locations are within one day's drive of one of their regional distribution centers.
I find Chipotle really interesting as a company, because they are sort of the most mass market expression of these foodie ideas. Watching them struggle with ingredient quality as they've gone to massive scale is really interesting. They still retain their most important characteristics and their ability to train thousands of people to properly cook food the way they do is amazing. As an entrepreneur I'm just consistently impressed.
As a "foodie" (god I hate that word tho), I very often make it my lunch.
Very ironic given that McDonalds was an early investor. I find them similar to Starbucks - not the best out there, but they've driven a lot of mediocrity out of the market. And I used to eat there more than weekly when it was walking distance.
can you expand on that at all? the last time i've eaten anything at mcdonalds it looked at tasted as though it had been sitting in a warmer for hours and i felt terrible after eating it and the customer service was indifferent at best. the only thing i've noticed them executing well is trying to at least stay somewhat modern and trendy with the store designs.
You have to look at their overall performance, not a single visit. In general, the experience is pretty consistent, and they perform well financially.
One of the things I don't like is that the food is designed to taste good when it is very fresh (I remember documentaries of their food scientists working on the perfect french fry, but they didn't show them waiting 8 minutes to taste them or whatever). But it's always the same. That's a remarkable accomplishment at their scale.
I also don't think the food actually tastes all that good, or that it is all that satisfying, and too much soda. But I can see that they are very intentional and successful in making it that way.
I used to buy into the "It's all about execution" and "We can make consistent food with a high school work force" story but the very few times I have been in there lately have been bad experiences.
I'm not sure if the experience has gotten worse, or my tastes have changed. (I used to have no problem eating there many times a week)
I honestly don't get Chipotle. The food there is bland and tasteless to me -- not even Taco Bell quality, much less what you'd get in a good Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant.
Maybe it's a local artifact. Quite a few other chains in this area seem to be afraid of using any actual spices in their food.
Taco Bell is edible if you use their "Fire" sauce (which is still pretty bland). Chipotle's sauce, at least in this area, might as well be Gerber's baby food.
But then I'm an El Yucateco green kind of guy. YMMV.
Yeah, Chipotle is interesting from a scale perspective. The ingredients are really good, the price is reasonable...
However, I've noticed some Chipotle's are better than others. There is a degree of variability depending on the local staff, more so than you'd find with a McDonald's. I have a handful around where I live and there's one that just isn't right.
Food in the US is getting better. There's tons of stuff you can find in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon that you could not find at whatever price 20 years ago.
There is also "Brunch Is for Jerks" [1], and "I am not a coffee drinker" [2] from the Times. What's up with the petty food articles these days from award-winning print media? Aren't there real issues to talk about? These seem less like interesting cultural takes and more like whining.
This is the dark side of the second tier of what's left of the literary movement - articles which begin with a long section of blithering about the author's background, family, or cats. At least on blogs, one has the option of skipping the "About" page.
The New Yorker would not have published this in its heyday.
By the same author: "How to Spend Money".
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