defend the indefensible: FOODIES

Um... issues.

"What's this stuff? Risotto? That's kinda FANCY, huh? Sun-dried tomatoes?? WOW, it's like GOURMET DINING."

Also, the term is annoying. I in fact refuse to type it.

settle the fuck down. its not sex.

it may be my moralistic streak, though -- i find it a bit obscene to bang on about the succulence of kobe steak or the subtle flavors of a certain sushi-joint when there are millions of people starving for stale bread.

Self-proclaimed "chowhounds" claim a difference but I have my doubts.

Not that I haven't been annoyed by some of the types being described here but I think you guys are singling out the perjorative ultra-far examples instead of your average foodie (or gourmet). I mean we could take this topic and change it to GAMERS and we could have a field day discussing people who are playing WoW 19 out of 24 hours a day and skipping work to do so and never doing laundry or leaving their house or even eating but those people aren't really the norm of people who would consider themselves "gamers."

xpost Dan you're thinking specifically of Bobby Flay.

I am, aren't I?

You mentioned Satan and I am sad.

there's nothing particularly special about caviar, but it's pleasantly salty/oily/fishy with the traditional accompaniments.

p.s.: duck is too greasy. ewwwwwwww. but i don't mind pate foie gras -- and don't really care how they got it!

(xpost: Amanda Hesser would be a "bitch".)

There's an episode of Iron Chef you need to see.

If you've got friends who're music bores, you can just avoid going to shows with them. Spend any time with a foodie and you'll find yourself being diverted twenty miles out of your way so you can be sure you're having only the most exquisite grilled cheese sandwich available in all of St. Louis, never mind that now you're late for the movie.

It's like hanging out with someone who refuses to urinate in anything but cut-glass goblets.

Ally, I desperately want to make fun of gamers like that! Also the ones who die because they don't ever want to go to sleep or eat because they might miss something.

Haha I think that's the thing, like I started this thread and I was like "Well I've never known a foodie who started stealing his roomie's boxers because he refused to do laundry for SIX MONTHS in case he missed some hot kobe beef action, but wtf w/Luk3."

xpost Amanda Hesser would just be a bitch. Supermarkets sell perfectly good cheese, though variety is obviously limited to the most popular types in most instances. Actually, several foodie reviews in DC have stated point blank, avoid cheese shop, just go to Whole Foods in DC cos it's BETTER. And you could go to museums AND restaurants??? I hope they shoved her into a canal in Venice.

OK well those are just intolerable people, regardless. Any foodie worth their salt will know the best place to eat, perhaps not a grilled cheese, near the movie theatre for crying out loud.

xpost oh noes this proves we're both teh same character from MASH!

Though that Amanda story comes close.

quite the opposite. i wouldn't eat cat either.

I'd get over it if someone offered me some for free.

Ally, you should have told me. We could have gone to another restaurant and had foie gras (though then you wouldn't have had the larb). I would strangle geese bare handed for that stuff.

There was an incident involving a paella recipie where everyone was assigned an ingredient to bring and we were assigned the most expensive one (lobster, wtf????) and the end result was one of the blandest, least flavorful meals I've ever had, but I largely blame myself for letting someone trick me into buying them a lobster.

The difference is significant, I think. For chowhounds, it's less about gourmet stuff and more about finding the hidden gems in the culinary world -- which could be anything from a delicious dessert that's not on the menu at a fancy restaurant (but they'll make for you anyway) to a particular hot-dog vendor who only works weekends on a certain corner in Queens but has the best buns in the city. So both types can certainly be pretentious, but foodies seem a bit more snobby. I'd classify Calvin Trillin as a chowhound, not a foodie.

i've never really 'gotten' paella, myself

I'm glad someone else hated this book, I was tired about hearing about how charming it is.

Dan, I would like to invite you over to my house. We're going to be making a lobster-stuffed duckling. Plz to bring ingredients? I'll cook. Thx!!

gabbneb paella is a difficult, difficult thing to cook and there are many, many so-so to downright bad versions of it out there.

(xpost to gabbneb: Yeah, it was a communal dinner party type thing where the focus was to make this absolutely AMAZING paella which apparently was so amazingly and subtlely flavored that my rough, uncultured palette could only vaguely tell the difference between eating that and eating Uncle Ben's rice plain. Admittedly I probably overseason everything but still, if you're going to make a recipe that serves 20 people, you probably want to use more than, say, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 pat of butter.)

on chowhounds, by jim leff, who as far as i know coined the term:

"We are not foodies. They are a separate breed, an avatar of that 1960's archetype, The Gourmet. Foodies eat where they're told; they eagerly follow trends and swallow the hype. Most of all, they fuss endlessly about ingredients, a fixation which strikes chowhounds as sheer culinary materialism. A brownie needn't contain imported French butter and Valhrona chocolate to earn chowhound esteem; it's gustatory gestalt we crave, and we comb doggedly through far-flung nabes where foodies never tread in quest for a deeper deliciousness. Our star chefs are Peruvian grandmas, renegade sushi guys, and elderly Brooklyn pizza makers who serenely slice mozzarella while the subway screams overhead. It's not about eating on-the-cheap; chowhounds can be spotted at Lespinasse insouciantly swirling their merlot. But, unlike foodies, we have not the slightest compunction about stopping for a really great slice on the way home."

Honestly it is hard for me to come up with someone who has so rubbed me the wrong way as Amanda Hesser. I despise her with such an intensity that I actually WENT TO SEE HER READ her stupid book to see if Amanda in person could possibly be as bad the Amanda in my head. Conclusion: both she and fucking Tad Friend can go eat a bag of dicks.

Listen, the thing is, no one here is going to convince me even the most intolerable foodie is truly the worst thing ever until someone tells me a story about a foodie who was so gluttonous eating, I dunno, cheese and caviar, for months at a time that he started stealing his roommate's underwear to make do and not have to stop the eating of cheese and caviar for more than 2 minutes at a time.

since we now have things like seamlessweb.com, i reckon that it's only a matter of time before we start hearing similar stories about foodie shut-ins!

http://upsaid.com/eurotrash/index.php?action=viewcom&id=243

Do they? Do they really Amanda? Do my chopsticks make their way to the mango, Amanda? Of their own accord, Amanda? Or do my hands make them go there? I shall ponder this. You are thought-provoking.

McGurk's in Soulard has the best grilled cheese I've ever had--sharp cheddar, goat cheese, and onions caramelized in Guinness. Not that you were asking, but y'know.

http://www.billmon.org/archives/creosote.gif

just for making explicit what i have been thinking all along!

By the end of the piece I wanted to grab her and make her wear clothes from Old Navy and eat Big Macs for the rest of her life.

WORD!

"I imagine you are probably working on a novel, Amanda. Everyone else in New York is. One word of advice. Stop. You make my teeth want to vomit." (emphasis MINE).

xpost

http://www.leitesculinaria.com/interviews/hesser/images/hesser_aisle.jpg

I like some of her recipes, but damn is her overpronunciation almost as bad as Alex Trebek's.

xpost oh don't get me started on Giada DiLaurentiis. As Nicole (I think) said, "I wish my dad produced a lot of terrible 80s flix so I can cook poorly on tv too."

"We are not foodies. They are a separate breed, an avatar of that 1960's archetype, The Gourmet. Foodies eat where they're told; they eagerly follow trends and swallow the hype. Most of all, they fuss endlessly about ingredients, a fixation which strikes chowhounds as sheer culinary materialism. A brownie needn't contain imported French butter and Valhrona chocolate to earn chowhound esteem; it's gustatory gestalt we crave, and we comb doggedly through far-flung nabes where foodies never tread in quest for a deeper deliciousness. Our star chefs are Peruvian grandmas, renegade sushi guys, and elderly Brooklyn pizza makers who serenely slice mozzarella while the subway screams overhead. It's not about eating on-the-cheap; chowhounds can be spotted at Lespinasse insouciantly swirling their merlot. But, unlike foodies, we have not the slightest compunction about stopping for a really great slice on the way home."

-- bijoux (bijoux1...), April 12th, 2006 12:09 PM.

i knew it!

xpost I MADE them change to Sauv Blanc, they wanted to serve Chardonnay and Merlot. I was like oh hell no you don't even front like that.

Make sure you do it in that order.

We had a wonderful '93 Australian chardonnay for dinner the other night and I don't care what you think.

I wish you had told me that was the liquor store that was involved in the begging for just ONE bottle of something besides Chardonnay! I would've petitioned on your behalf while there.

* Please note I like sweeter and/or spicier wines in general, woody and/or drier varietals tend to be just "ok" to me.

Only some champagne. Blanc du noir is pinot noir and/or pinot meunier.

xpost quincie which maker?

Fortunately the red was Just Right. :)

Chardonnay & Merlot is hellish, aint it?

The one whose greenish bottle is on the bottom shelf in the French section at Burka's. I suck with names, especially French wines. But I'm in that place all the time so the wine lady knows me and I just have to go "yeah can I have a bottle of that cheap French chardonnay that I like?" and she knows exactly what I am talking about! I will pick up an extra next time I am there.

Sauv Blanc is my favorite grape for whites, and I love those ridiculously over-the-top New Zealand sauv blancs, the one my husband thinks taste like grass marinated in cat piss.

http://www.liffordwineagency.com/wineries/france/bourgogne/louisjadot/images/beaujolais_villages.jpg

not that Beajoulais Villages and Chardonnay are remotely the same thing but hey same label.

I mean, how is "oh, this butter is imported from the French alps" any different from "this is an ultra rare Japanese import with five previously unheard bonus tracks"?

well... a lot of my friends are foodies, and i'm kind of one by profession... it can be a really rewarding and amazing and enriching thing to be!

of course pretentious people who are into anything are annoying, i mean... who needs to be even told that

le bernardin prix fixe lunch = $51

i guess not!

um, "all"? i think it was just one person who said that. i for one love kobe beef and fine sushi.

also i think it would be pretty cool if like that NY Restaurant Week with the $20/specials, restaurants like le bernadin and masa should do a week where they accept WIC and foodstamps.

and bagels.

Mmmm.

Ally, what did you think of the Sancerre we had with dinner?

xpost I liked it a lot! Tom liked it quite a bit too. I was actually planning to look for it at the wine shop next time I go for my weekly case.

classic: food snobs (who aren't twats about it) that enjoy cooking and let you be their guinea pig.

Whoa, exactly how much wine do you drink a week, then?

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0000D9N3S.01-A1M96NKOK0T3I7._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I've said it a million times but it bears repetition:

http://www.igourmet.com/images/products/agour.jpg

Ossau-Iraty

xp

http://www.avantinatural.com/

V. good wine and cheeses both.

my aforementioned party is due to my housemate getting a $100 gift certificate for Murray's. we are really looking fwd to this.

I'm not really sure what a foodie is unless, like someone noted, they are a twat. And those twats are usually twats to begin with...being a foodie just seems to be a manifestation of their twatiness. I like dining with non-twat foodies...they fucking relish their food, they tell you what they love about it, they are passionate and they make for good conversation.

many xposts

3. The Foie Gras Big Mac
For those that don't know, foie gras is pate made from the engorged livers of ducks and geese that have been forced fed with giant hose machines at PETA-enraging, mass animal torture farms in France - where this product is considered a national pride. Many people are, of course, familiar with McDonald's Big Macs and the weirdly similar American pride associated with this "hamburger sandwich."
These two national pride-foods are at ultimate odds with each other on every level imaginable! But together - they are the very essence of ying and yang, the ultimate odd couple!
Make sure the Big Mac is fresh and hot, and pre-chill the foie gras in your fridge beforehand (this warm and cold contrast, you'll find, is key). Also: when buying foie gras, it's important not to gamble with poor or even average quality product - only use the best foie gras will do! Gob the foie gras very thickly between the top layer of meat and top bun on the Big Mac. Foie gras is off-putting the first time you try it, but after you eat it you instantly start craving more because your nervous system and brain instantly connect to it's very, very high fat content. This is key! The instant gratification of the fatty Big Mac taste compliments the oddly bitter, but ecstatically fatty (and mostly mental) after-taste of the foie gras. It's like a high/low-brow, one-two punch! I don't know why they don't serve this brilliant, class-defying, food combination at the McDonald's in Paris! If they started to, you know the headlines in the french papers the next day would read: "Today, We Are All Americans."
Oh and of course: do not eat a foie gras Big Mac with fries and a Coke! I suggest a fine wine perhaps.

http://www.markallencam.com/toptendec2005.html

It's pretty easy on the open seas, when the butter ships come a'callin'.

I bloody love food, yes, I talk about it a lot, I eat plenty and I'll eat pretty much anything. Also I work in the food industry so have to talk anbd think about it an awful lot (it's why I took the job). I'll still call rubbish food rubbish food though - that 85quid sandwich at Selfridges? It's just going to be a waste of a good steak innit?

Fois gras is great too, and traceyHand's way of eating it is pretty spot on :) Sometimes though, maybe bloc is better than actual lobes.

I'll happily snarf down a hot dog just the same though.

did you wear a trucker hat, too?!?

Alas, I know very little about wine due to my love of cuisines that aren't normally associated with wines. And fuck a bunch of the word "foodie".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/images/400/poshnosh_2.jpg

As to food I like to source ingredients; there is only a finite amount that can be eaten by me so I have chosen to emphasise quality over quantity. I will go out of my way in London for "ethnic" stuff I don't know how to make myself (yet) and will go an extra mile for good Vietnamese or Indian - at the same time I like restaurants like St John which are expensive. But the experience of eating there doesn't have to be - you can have a lovely starter and glass of wine in most places for about £10, or go and tax the dessert menu after a cheap meal elsewhere.

Sorry erm. Back to the thread.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

'foam' - until a couple of weeks ago i too would have scoffed (?) at anything called foam but then i had a totally delicious meal involving a wide variety of them - and they were all delicious. I think it's just the words that are silly.

Personally I can't read Ngl Slter these days 'cos he can't describe anything without sounding like those very very annoying M & S adverts..."this isn't custard it's fresh jersey cream with madagascan vanilla..."

YOU STOLE MY FUCKING CLOUDSONG

my life philosophy!

people who photograph food and display the pictures online

weiw Javier Garcia

Even if I wanted to do this, I would feel like too much of a weirdo. That said, I do appreciate that their are lots of weirdos out there doing this so I can get a better sense of whether or not I want to try a particular place or dish.

"Now it’s ubiquitous and just shows that we are in a spastic food era"

I do this btw. Not all the time by any means but if there's some amazing looking grub in front of me and I have my camera, I'm happy to whip it out.

Eek?

It makes for a fascinating tableau.

DUde ledge if you start a photoblog consisting of POV shots of your penis in front of every meal you eat I think you will have an internet sensation on your hands.

This one is one of my all-time faves ILX posts btw, sorry to interrupt penis talk:

The key difference between food bores and other art bores is that their field of snobbery is a regularly repeated biological necessity, so it's much more likely to infringe on normal everyday life.

If you've got friends who're music bores, you can just avoid going to shows with them. Spend any time with a foodie and you'll find yourself being diverted twenty miles out of your way so you can be sure you're having only the most exquisite grilled cheese sandwich available in all of St. Louis, never mind that now you're late for the movie.

It's like hanging out with someone who refuses to urinate in anything but cut-glass goblets.

― Stephen X (Stephen X), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 11:43 AM

^^^ I would hang out with this person if I didn't have to go broke doing it. Sounds like fun.

just fyi, people who view eating as merely a biological necessity can be every bit as annoying to those who don't as foodies are to some people

They're called "Britishers."

"buildings are just a place to avoid the cold and rain, ugh these people who 'appreciate' their design *makes jerkoff motion*"

I have taken one (1) picture of food, which was when my meal came with the brightest, most unnatural red sauce I've ever seen. The photo did not do justice to it, though, so I just looked like some weirdo who'd taken a picture of a pretty boring plate of rice and sauce.

(But 99% of what I eat would make foodies cry, so maybe if I ate better I'd feel more moved to take photos. I still love eating though - lol fattey - so people who are all "I wish I didn't have to eat, so boring having to ingest nutrients just to stay alive" are ??? to me. Possibly because I wish I could think like that, then eating nothing but Ryvita and lettuce every day to lose weight would be much easier.)

I did this yesterday but I had an ulterior purpose in mind

PHILOSOPHICALLY THIS PHENOMENON IS INTERESTING BECAUSE WHAT IS PHOTOGRAPHED IS ULTIMATELY DESTROYED

WHAT MEANING FOR MAN, THIS

hahah

Since Alinea is mentioned briefly in this NYT article, here's a recent blog post by Grant Achatz about the phenomenon of cameras in the restaurant:
http://alineamosaic.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=919

I mean, to each their own, but my wife were in a little dive diner a few months ago and this lady made a big production about photographing her fucking pancakes and exclaiming to all within earshot that shes "SUCH A FOODIE" that I kind of really hate anybody that does this now.

Ha, where was that?

Hollywood Grill on North and Ashland. Which isn't really a horrible dive, but so not the place to photograph your "dining experience".

not really a foodie thing, but today i took the bus past the now-famous "voyeur" club in west hollywood and there was a sign out front proclaiming "no cameras." lol.

anyway, my two cents on this foodie/anti-foodie issue. i get so annoyed with people on the internets who are all "GOD I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR FOOD SHUT UP GAAAAAH" cuz why does it not bother them that i post about music, film, art, architecture, etc just as much? food is something i'm interested in! and i share my interest because i know SOMEONE out there will find those posts useful and not boring.

most people i know are pretty into food...but i don't necessarily consider them foodies. i'll have a chat about food with a friend or a good restaurant or a nice market or whatever but "foodies" to me implies a v specific type of person. my personal foodie ire is risen when i read a recipe that would cost about 40 pounds to assemble and it's written as "treat the family" or some shit.

Hollywood Grill on North and Ashland. Which isn't really a horrible dive, but so not the place to photograph your "dining experience".

For real.

idk about doing this in restaurants, but i appreciate when people do it for tastespotting because then i can try to make it myself.

I think I am becoming a foodie :-/

pls provide examples

I haven't eaten a burger since last Wednesday!!

A Hamburger Today is my favorite foodie burger blog

http://aht.seriouseats.com/

From the blogpost linked by jaymc:

Not to mention the time that is added to the experience. Three extra minutes to take a photo is not much, but if you are eating 30 courses, you just added an hour and a half to your dinner.

30 courses what?

maybe my picture of a cat-glutton WASN'T really out of place ... 30 courses?!?

I think my brother is turning into a foodie, and I don't know how to tell him that I just don't fucking care about what he had at what new restaurant this weekend.

As a non foodie, I'll take my preferred routine of living off chocolate bars and spending the money on records thank you very much.

i only eat spastic food pictures

forbidden food in a paper mill styleetron.

There are only ("only") 23 courses on the tour menu at Alinea, so I'm not sure where Achatz is getting 30 from; needless to say, these are all small plates. Some are probably the equivalent of amuse bouches.

yeah a lot of those courses are like
http://www.bestofthebestdiningchicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/alinea-chicago.jpg

i avg 41.6 courses/meal tbh

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2358/4510251807_5abc100e35.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4034/4224698617_67fe2268ba.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4019/4510260649_ea9b104715.jpg

I'm not quite a foodie, but I do love cooking and eating, and I do photograph what I cook quite often. I'd never photograph what I eat at other people's houses or in restaurants though.

so I'm not sure where Achatz is getting 30 from;

dual-prep (quad?) tasting menus. his prev employer is quite famous for. watch the Bourdain (then known as Tony) show called A Cook's Tour, the episode when they go to The French Laundry with Eric Ripert (as a brunette!) and others for quad prep chef's tasting menu. pretty sure achatz shows his face, my bro who achatz worked for is in the episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1YUbH2P3Io

Also not sure where his "three extra minutes to take a photo" figure comes from.

i only take pictures of food that I MAKE and then i use it like a little visual menu to figure it out what i want to make in the future
it's more utilitarian than anything else, and i don't share it indiscriminately or publicize it anything

although when i get the inevitable "give me some good recipes" i just direct people to my food set on flickr and ask them to tell me what looks good

it's actually pretty useful
ps i am not a foodie

i'm willing to give a pass to taking photos of homemade stuff. it's a personal creation that will be no more and there's no other photos of it at large. but i also don't get people who take snapshots of, like, mount rushmore or old faithful or whatever. just the famous site, no loved one in it, no unique perspective. there's 1000 better photos of it online already!

i also don't take duplicates of things i've already photographed. it's like my low-profile home cooking resume.

Also not sure where his "three extra minutes to take a photo" figure comes from.

Well, he tells this long story about a guy who orders some dish that's supposed to be eaten immediately so it doesn't lose its temperature, but the guy spends all this time setting up a tripod and moving the plate around on the table and stuff.

tastespotting is my new favourite website

a hamburger today is good too but got to baulk at so many calories displayed on one page

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9910/prawncocktail.jpg

I'll take a photo if I get something beautiful. Here's the prawn cocktail I ate on Saturday.

Is that...shrimp foam?

Meantime, a restaurant for not-foodies, it seems:

http://events.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/reviews/14rest.html

wow that's a disgrace

hahaha that reminds me so much of the high end dining scene here in hk

places to be seen & not fed

that's a great article.

the description reminds me of David Burke + Donatella, which in winter months used to hire a white limousine to wait outside with its engine on for anyone who felt like smoking but didn't want to stand in the cold. the difference is that the food there - especially the desserts - was pretty phenomenal.

sam sifton's been pretty great imo

yeah, this is great for instance - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/magazine/21food-t-000.html

never even considered clarified butter

i think sam sifton is the answer to this thread question tbh!!

He is very good. Main thing with home fries or hash browns is parboiling the potatoes (or in the case of home fries, using leftover chips). Also I generally add a bit of olive oil to my butter so it doesn't burn, as I haven't bought GHEE since I started using only organic butter and milk.

It's pretty easy to make yr own clarified butter, fwiw.

Ha, as the article explains. I'm illiterateQ!

a buddy of mine gave me a big jar of homemade ghee for Xmas. weirdest gift I got this year!

today my coworker and i were talking about food and she was like, i'm so glad to be able to hang out with foodies at work

and i was like ... i am not a foodie

true story

embrace the ism

foodies are amoral pigs according to critic-at-large BR Myers.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-moral-crusade-against-foodies/8370/

yah i just read that — p.savage but i think he has a point, esp. about ppl who turn it into some kind of weirdo sport

like the one dude admitting he would eat tortured cat if it were considered a delicacy in some other culture — if you really wonder what it tastes like then just TORTURE ONE YOURSELF you stupid fuck, you don't need anybody's permission to be a jagoff

That is seriously one of the worst articles I have ever read. It reads like a 6,000 word takedown of "hipsters" or something.

Pollan writes about going with a friend to watch a goat get killed. “Mike says the experience made him want to honor our goat by wasting as little of it as possible.”

Ha! Ha ha! Who could say such a thing! Ha ha ha!

Bourdain is an easy target but I thought Myers was OTM on Michael Pollan.

Myers is a bit humorless himself but this bit where he skewers the NY Times made me LOL

'With their swinging scabbards, muscled forearms and constant proximity to flesh, butchers have the raw, emotional appeal of an indie band … “Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”'

That’s Severson again, by the way, and she records no word of dissent in regard to the cheese vendor’s ravings. We are to believe this is a real national trend here. In fact the public perception of butchers has not changed in the slightest, as can easily be confirmed by telling someone that he or she looks like one.

this article rules

I mean, writing an article about these mainly ridiculous people in such a way as to make me take their side is a pretty unlikely feat, but this writer has done it. I just have to wonder: is there a way of enjoying food and/or its preparation on a sensual level that B.R. Myers would approve of? Or is everything the other side of canned tamales just bourgeois decadence?

some questions answer themselves in the asking

where would u draw the line between 'canned tamales' and 'lifestyle centered around the consumption of exotic animals' tracer

he took a bunch of food writers to task for the fact that they wrote books about food.

it's a pretty disgusting subculture in a lot of ways but really now.

are there 'foodies' out there who get excited about stuff like that new fast food burger filled with cheese and jalapenos? because that kinda thing sounds at least as 'exotic'/'novel'/'probably disgusting' 2 me as tempura ambergris or w/e

Seriously. It's like every anti-metrosexual column from 1998 with the names of styling products swapped out for menu items.

'lifestyle centered around the consumption of exotic animals'

Yeah, this is such a pressing problem! I can barely walk down the street without being oppressed by these people who eat only bats.

i can barely read a thread without being oppressed by these tracer hands

That is a more legitimate grievance imo

tracer you did pick up on the substantial undercurrent of righteous veg fury right?

apart from that, i think dude's main 'beef' with these writers is that they present eating as some kind of morally (or even religiously!) charged action in which alienated modern ppl can 'reconnect' with an authentic experience of life; and also that somehow their avant-garde weirdness has become the greatly over-represented public progressive face (eat local! buy organic!) of some very real and pressing food and public health issues

I'm not a foodie, I just eat a lot.

they present eating as some kind of morally (or even religiously!) charged action in which alienated modern ppl can 'reconnect' with an authentic experience of life

Is this some kind of horrible development?

their avant-garde weirdness has become the greatly over-represented public progressive face (eat local! buy organic!) of some very real and pressing food and public health issues

Well, that I don't know. I guess we live in different worlds, me and B.R. Myers. If B.R. Myers cares so much about these pressing food and public health issues perhaps B.R. Myers should have written about those instead.

I'm not a foodie, I just eat a lot.

― i love you but i have chosen snarkness (Steve Shasta)

i don't wanna be a foodie no more

kind of surprised anyone would think this article was good

yeah markers, i don't eat all that crap you do that grady was making fun of you about.

thread bringing the lols

My dad just called me and recommended I read this article.

i eat snax so you don't have to shasta!!!

I don't know why you get picked on by Grady but nobody ever picks on Ian. I guess you have to just embrace it. Ef the haters. Or SB them I guess.

I would distinguish between someone who cares about buying good cheese and a disgusting cock-ass like Guy Fieri placing a seared ox tongue between two burger patties.

i dont really understand what your objection to the article is, tracer

looks like he's written this article before? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/09/hard-to-swallow/6123/

dude really hates "foodies"

We have all dined with him in restaurants: the host who insists on calling his special friend out of the kitchen for some awkward small talk.

lost me already!

To put aside these books after a few chapters is to feel a sense of liberation; it’s like stepping from a crowded, fetid restaurant into silence and fresh air. But only when writing such things for their own kind do so-called foodies truly let down their guard, which makes for some engrossing passages here and there. For insight too. The deeper an outsider ventures into this stuff, the clearer a unique community comes into view. In values, sense of humor, even childhood experience, its members are as similar to each other as they are different from everyone else.

I stopped reading, and felt a sense of liberation; it's like stepping from a crowded message board into silence and fresh air.

B.R. Myers is also, iirc, the guy who took down Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, et al. for writing pretentious sentences.

yeah myers is terrible

xpost that doesnt surprise me

"A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose "

this commenter OTM:

Dear B. R. Myers,

I am not a foodie and think most of them are just plain silly, but after reading your article above, I can't figure out what your main point is. Gluttony with high quality food is still gluttony? Anybody can clearly see that. Is this suppose to be another link to the obesity problem in America? Is it causing some other moral or economic problem in the United States or the World?

You spent most of the article trying to sound smart and going after a certain few celebrity foodies that have pissed you off, but never actually spent a good amount of time addressing the problem and laying out solutions to the problems you see. Frankly, you just sound like an elitist that is upset with other elitists. Next time you get up on your soapbox about something, please make sure your argument has a beginning, middle and end.

i believe the correct word for myers is "hater"

maybe thats why i like it... hating things is kewl

Hating people who like good food is not.

Look at that paragraph I pasted. The guy comes off like the creep in high school loathing yet envying the cheerleaders. Get a haircut and talk to girls, you fuck.

don't know why you get picked on by Grady but nobody ever picks on Ian. I guess you have to just embrace it. Ef the haters. Or SB them I guess.

― i love you but i have chosen snarkness (Steve Shasta)

hah. gr8080's nice to me, actually

needless to say, i am far from a foodie. my lunch today is a whole container of lemon sorbet

r u... one of them, alf

placing a seared ox tongue between two burger patties.

Is this a moral or an aesthetic failure?

I think there's a germ of insight in this article: that there's something disingenuous if not entirely hypocritical about the moral posturing of certain foodies. But Myers clearly has a bigger axe to grind, which renders his argument sloppy.

I'm the pussy in the illustration eating the expensive sardines.

jamyc otm

*jaymc

this article is badly incoherent (at least to begin with) but i do think there's a basis of a good argument in there. it's unfortunate however that the writer's own excesses of contempt ("Seven pages on sardines. Eight pages on marshmallow fluff!" - so?) seem to mirror the foodie's excesses of consumption after a while.

no one should be allowed to write social criticism articles ever again

Isn't that a form of social criticism?

It has always been crucial to the gourmet’s pleasure that he eat in ways the mainstream cannot afford.

In fact the Catholic Church’s criticism has always been directed against an inordinate preoccupation with food—against foodie-ism, in other words—which we encounter as often among thin people as among fat ones.

What a bizarre sentence.

Restaurant reviews are notorious for touting $100 lunches as great value for money.

this guy's argument is a small piece of his worldview and the problem w/it is i don't think there's anything his targets could do, save the exception of condemning meat-eating and the wearing of leather, that would give him any reason to agree with anything they said.

"notorious"

The taste of these bizarre meals—as researchers of oral fixation will not be surprised to learn—is neither here nor there.

I know that's grammatically correct but wow is that awkward

After a month among the bat eaters and milk-toast priests, I opened Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries (2008) and encountered a refreshingly sane-seeming young man, self-critical and with a dazzlingly wide range of interests.

ok this is probably right on

He writes English like he learned Polish first.

what a weird dude

hes basically a literate andy rooney

don't think there are "researchers of oral fixation"

I think it's a fair criticism that a lot of localism, organicism, moralism etc. among self-described foodies is just hedonism with a vaguely moral gloss. I didn't read the first Myers article linked, but the second one makes a pretty fair point -- Pollan takes Singer's pretty much irrefutable ethical argument in favor of vegetarianism or veganism and just kind of shrugs it off. Pollan can't answer it because he likes meat too much, and yet veganism is probably 10x better for the planet than a "local" "organic" diet with lots of meat and dairy. So pleasure tips the scale pretty firmly away from ethics. Ok, that seems human, but it IS annoying when privileged people claim moral superiority for doing whatever feels good, and my neighborhood is pretty much the epicenter of that culture.

don't think there are "researchers of oral fixation"

here's one right here

good thing i looked at that url!

BR Myers schtick is heavy-handed slapdowns - he's like the Jim Der0gatis of literary criticism

foodies are ok but i know all these girls who tell everyone theyre 'undiagnosed' coeliacs & make a huge deal out of it everytime they go out for dinner & its like ugh stfu if you want ppl to pay attention to you & feel special & important just start putting out more

the only thing worse than that are ppl who have strong opinions on 'customer service' & who never seem to manage to get 'good service' any place they go.

otm

I will take someone who can't stfu about food versus someone who can't stfu about service any day.

are we still talking about fellatio?

"He writes English like he learned Polish first."

the articles I've read by this guy all have a kind of "alien peering in at the human zoo" quality. I suspect North Koreans might have the same complaints as foodies or MFA depts, but I think it's a perspective worth having, like in that Louie CK bit about the visiting friend from Canada who had never seen homeless people before which throws his indifference into a contrast worth examining.

valuable thread for that precise topic, lamp:

ts: bad service at restaurants vs people who often complain about bad service at restaurants

Isn't that a form of social criticism?

Maybe, but it's not an article.

i think one good thing about the foodie phenomena and adventure eating porn writing and television is that it at least attempts to make good food and good cooking more approachable and understandable to people who would be too intimidated to go to a fancy french restaurant but who still want to learn about good food and try new things. getting people excited about local produce is no crime. i mean fine dining used to be WAY more snobby and elitist than it is now. you can go to casual inexpensive restaurants and get awesome food now and this wasn't the case 20 or 30 years ago.

That's exactly right. At Walt Disney World this weekend, after feasting on butternut squash polenta with crumbled pork belly, my cousin and I remarked that twenty years ago it would've been unheard of to expect decent cooking at a so-called tourist trap.

Scott is so OTM.

Eating food and making food is like fucking or sleeping or any other core human pleasures; might as well do it better and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're paying immense amounts of money or buying into one dominant aesthetic or class structure.

fucking

Sorry, I meant internet message board polemics

I kind of like his grumpiness and I don't see why writing a pop piece about the most despicable or annoying people in a subculture is out of bounds, as if he has to write something universal and enduring. The Atlantic is fullof soft lifestyle crap like this, anyway, and although he is highly selective in his research so he can more easily justify his irrational hatred, it's still several notches above that of those nyt articles where the writer has plopped a few quotes into a prewritten story about a fake Brooklyn trend. I read Myers book/essay about the style of (circa 1997) contemporary literature and the business and practice of its criticism, and while it wasn't always fair, it made a lot of good points and functioned effectively as a takedown.

I get annoyed really really easily by obnoxious foodies which probably has at least something to do with the fact that my dad is a chef/former restaurant owner so I've grown up around these people/industry and find it pretty boring. I have a friend on FB who refers to himself as a foodie and about 90% of his posts annoy the crap out of me. That said, I still enjoy nice food and think that what Scott just said is OTM.

This also OTM

fi know all these girls who tell everyone theyre 'undiagnosed' coeliacs & make a huge deal out of it everytime they go out for dinner & its like ugh stfu if you want ppl to pay attention to you & feel special & important just start putting out more

A girl I work with a made a huge stink a couple weeks back about getting gluten free crackers for our work party. I'd be willing to bet money on the fact that she's not actually a celiac and that this is some sort of a fad/attention getting thing for her.

TAKEDOWN!!!

i enjoyed this article, not as an "argument" but more as a rhetorical attack on "pleasure"--somewhere in the middle (of course) is where I'd hope to live my life, but i thought this was kind of refreshing. I have a major ascetic component to my personality tho.

people who take pictures of their meals and put them on fb - dud

ryan,

n.

An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from the senses. A. Bierce

ppl who obsessively food tourist and take photos kind of scare me. It's one thing if it's food you've made yourself (or resto food that you intend to replicate) but ppl who do it all the time are terrible dining companions

totally agree but if i'm going to a new place it can be helpful to see some good photos of some dishes y'know? guess the solution is for the restaurant itself to take and post photos online.

before industrial agriculture, gluttony was a sin because there were clear malthusian limits on how much food was around. if you ate more than your "share", it represented someone else not eating enough. now it looks like those limits have been broken, but it also looks like whole societies have become gluttonous, fat and sick -- not that they're stealing food from hungry people elsewhere but burning through resources (stealing from the future?). what else did we expect to happen? people eat

"fuck yeah bacon!" hedonism and "we must honor the pig" moralism, imo, are both reactions to this, maybe not fully considered, i dunno. they're worth taking apart but this guy doesn't really do it, you can't really tell what his problem is.

ppl who obsessively food tourist and take photos kind of scare me. It's one thing if it's food you've made yourself (or resto food that you intend to replicate) but ppl who do it all the time are terrible dining companions

― Le mépris vient de la tête, la haine vient du cœur (Michael White), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 2:31 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah there's a whole larger point in here abt ppl who are more into documenting their experiences than actually experiencing which drives me frggin nuts.

i dunno, people going to the grand canyon are gonna want to take a picture.

on balance, I would prefer it if ppl took the Grand Canyon's picture rather than trying to eat it

Grant Achatz (chef of Alinea in Chicago) weighed in on documenting about a year ago:
http://alineamosaic.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=919

Grand Canyon less filling and overpriced compared to Burger Canyon, or Canyon-N-Out.

his problem, as i see it: foodies are gluttons who perpetuate the very culture that led to the monstrosity of a food industry that we now have, despite the self-righteous belief that they are challenging it.

also people are disgusting filthy slobs and should control themselves (this was part i most liked, quoting Aquinas and the like)

people who take pictures of their meals and put them on fb - dud

― iatee, Wednesday, February 9, 2011 2:28 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

i know this chick who's always doing this w/her hipstamatic app and it drives me crazy - i dont really have anything against hmatic or with people posting pics of their meals, but the two shouldnt be combined, there's really no way to make food look less appetizing than photographing it in that particular way

i see the picture thing as just a tech thing. people have digital cameras now. people can upload pictures now. voila. more picture-taking in general now. which is another argument, i guess.

lol @ "Warm Potato-Warm Potato"

Grant Achatz (chef of Alinea in Chicago) weighed in on documenting about a year ago:
http://alineamosaic.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=919

― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 2:54 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

Girl I know who lives in Chicago just went to Alinea and made a really obnoxious fb post about it. I'd never even heard of it and had to look it up and she was all O_O at my ignorance. lol.

ILX's own "omar little" once drove to Chicago from L.A. just to eat there, IIRC.

!!!

I hear jaymc saying in that in the voice of Johnny Cash from "Folsom Prison Blues"

i dunno, people going to the grand canyon are gonna want to take a picture.

experiencing a vacation in large part through a view finder (or display screen, whatev) bugs me, too. taking pics of food is somewhat more understandable to me cause with, say, the Grand Canyon or Mount Fucking Rushmore there's already been a bazillion photos of it, most better than what you're gonna take (obv this doesn't apply to vacation photos where your travel mates are in the photo, too). "look, here's 20 photos of the Grand Canyon I took" oh so THAT'S what it looks like!!!

so taking a photo of a famous dish you're about to eat that has 1000 GIS results already seems equally moronic.

I would prefer it if ppl did not take pictures of their friends falling into the Grand Canyon

This all just gave me an idea for a conceptual vacation photo album made up of other people's pictures of things that I saw

xpost -- Their enemies, a different matter.

now it looks like those limits have been broken

Don't look at grain prices right now then...

When I was a kid (in Yosemite where he was a ranger) my father always reminded the ppl on his walks to remember to take mental postcards, too. I think it was his way of encouraging them to have an experince of place in the moment as opposed to just a good photo op.

ha i should have said "looks like" in scare quotes.

there's a finite wall somewhere out there, whether we've hit it or not, i guess we'll all find out huh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/dining/09bars.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

btw, xpost, our consumption habits do in fact deprive people of food, in that when we demand more, we increase prices. C.f. China's increased demand for meat leading to increased meat and grain prices.

Girl I know who lives in Chicago just went to Alinea and made a really obnoxious fb post about it. I'd never even heard of it and had to look it up and she was all O_O at my ignorance. lol.

― ENBB, Wednesday, February 9, 2011 12:11 PM (57 minutes ago)

ILX's own "omar little" once drove to Chicago from L.A. just to eat there, IIRC.

― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 12:18 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

this was all due to a snowstorm canceling our flight and us being unable to get a flight to chicago until days later. one of the more absurd and fun road trips of my life, 40 hrs from l.a. to chicago in the dead of winter w/a midpoint stop for dinner the night before at the 72 oz steakhouse in amarillo tx.

did you beat bobby hill's record

take it to your navel-gazing food blog, omar!!

x-post nice. Sounds awesome tbh.

bobby did it in 37 minutes. i did it in 33. http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2889/emotcolbert.gif

lol - almost!

oh wait - I reversed that in my head - wtg!

everyone's subculture looks odd -- maybe even obnoxious -- to outsiders. so this article made me yawn (and i'm someone who does get annoyed by foodies).

lol @ yr display name

I'm more miffed at social media suddenly convincing subscribers that they too can take photos.

I'm more miffed at social media suddenly convincing subscribers that they too can take photos.

Well yeah:

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/01/grits-whats-for-breakfast/33565/

(check the small photo credit right below the first photo...)

i would eat all these raggett shrimps.

Can't claim credit for the shrimp and grits themselves, just the photo. Taken in Charleston, South Carolina at Water's Edge.

Looking at the Water's Edge menu, something I've never seen before: " You must be 18 years of age to order a burger other than well done." Come ON!

It's its own strange world down on Shem Creek.

wtf, is the creek full of gators and lawyers?

No, jetskis and beer from what I can tell.

After a day of drinking and jet-skiing, what 15-year-old doesn't want a medium rare burger?

" You must be 18 years of age to order a burger other than well done."

I've seen that before - protecting the minors from e-coli (their own sub-par meat supplier).

He writes English like he learned Polish first.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 10, 2011 2:32 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

so you're saying this dude is as good as conrad? high praise coming from you alfred

experiencing a vacation in large part through a view finder (or display screen, whatev) bugs me, too. taking pics of food is somewhat more understandable to me cause with, say, the Grand Canyon or Mount Fucking Rushmore there's already been a bazillion photos of it, most better than what you're gonna take (obv this doesn't apply to vacation photos where your travel mates are in the photo, too). "look, here's 20 photos of the Grand Canyon I took" oh so THAT'S what it looks like!!!

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Thursday, February 10, 2011 4:39 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

one of my favorite things to see on the street is the tourist walking with a video camera held in front of him, and he is literally vacationing by watching his vacation on a 2" screen

that is so perfect

so this article was okay, I liked the livy quote about the glorification of chefs being a signal of a declining culture

but imagining all the foodies I know getting into a sputtering apoplectic rage while reading this, ruining their bacon popsicles

that's a great mental postcard

really hate all those fb/foodie blog posts about "I have this CRAVING for [cultural delicacy that signifies a refined palate" I just don't know WHAT TO DO, where can I GET THIS in [major metropolitan area]"

poor you

I've read an inordinate amount of material about East Coasters pining for In-N-Out if that's what you mean.

this one's pretty good: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/07/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-an-in-n-out-double-double-animal-style.html

his dog is named dumpling - bet it would be pretty good made into DUMPLINGS!

junk/comfort/street food foodies are slightly more tolerable imo

when i was horribly sick last week it was somehow comforting to watch anthony bourdain travel show and bizarre food show on netflix. it was really good escapism from sad sick house with coughing children. plus, its just kind of cool that fermented banana paste is comfort food for some people. it does make me think about food! and want to be healthier. and garden or something. and i hate gardening! and it makes me complain about food less when i see people from all over with really limited food supplies. complaining about food - like about some dud lunch i ate - seems really wrong right after i do it. i think worshipping food makes sense! making it holy. it IS such a gift. and the fact that i can afford so much of it is unbelievable! i don't worship cooks though. i'm appreciative of people who really like doing it though and who are good at it. i don't always feel like cooking.

all the foodies I know getting into a sputtering apoplectic rage while reading this, ruining their bacon popsicles

haha "bacon popsicles" is a more damning indictment than that entire article. I mean. I like bacon AND popsicles, but...

I love to eat and cook probably six out of seven dinners a week but there is something absurdly OTT about this foodie thing

so you're saying this dude is as good as conrad? high praise coming from you alfred

He writes English like he's John Paul II.

knew I could never get a zing in on alfred :[

All good, bro -- I've been zinged many times.

in-n-out IS pretty good ... they don't have 'em in NJ or NY.

they had a fat burger joint in jersey city, but it was overpriced and it closed a few years ago.

This is a great rant against a terrible event.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2012/05/the_great_googamooga_and_elitism_what_brooklyn_s_food_festival_says_about_foodies_.html

Because, in concept and execution, it was fetishization rather than convenience that motivated GoogaMooga. So much of the festival seemed designed to congratulate those self-satisfied consumers who act like they deserve a Congressional Medal of Honor for spending $10 on a bratwurst. It was an amalgamation of everything hate-worthy about ingredient nerds: misallocated priorities and a misplaced faith in the transcendence of food prepared by semi-famous people.

god, even the packaging on my shitty gas station sandwich is all foodified and greenzoed

not very well though e.g. 'herb-mayo sauce'