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Posts from the ‘foodie pseudery’ Category

Oct 28

Foodie Pseudery (8)

Last week, I referred to BR Myers’s great article about foodie-ism. He quotes this gem from John Thorne’s self-published (oh, I wonder why) Rather Special and Strangely Popular: A Milk Toast Exemplary:

The things involved must be few, so that their meaning is not diffused, and they must somehow assume a perceptible weight. They attain this partly from the reassurance that comes of being ‘just so,’ and partly by already possessing the solidity of the absolutely familiar.

Thorne is writing about toast. Yup.

Oct 21

Foodie Pseudery (7)

The food pseuds of the next few weeks come courtesy of BR Myers’s excellent essay for the Atlantic, ‘The Moral Crusade against Foodies‘, which Ella McSweeney forwarded to me recently. (Thank you! And all contributions and suggestions are always welcome.) Today’s post provides some context for the gems of food pseudery I’ve been featuring: it tries to answer the question why so many otherwise intelligent writers describe food and eating so incredibly badly.

I think Myers comes pretty close to an answer. He’s particularly good at showing how the High Moral Seriousness of ‘foodie-ism’ is a cover for foodies’ elitism:

Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing. References to cooks as ‘gods,’ to restaurants as ‘temples,’ to biting into ‘heaven,’ etc., used to be meant as jokes, even if the compulsive recourse to religious language always betrayed a certain guilt about the stomach-driven life. Now the equation of eating with worship is often made with a straight face.

Oct 14

Foodie Pseudery (6)

By Ruth Reichl – with Alice Waters!

She fed us all. And she’s still doing it. When the feasts – all of them – had ended, we gathered in the street in front of the restaurant, reluctant to let the party end.  At some point Alice came over and put a grape into my mouth.  “Taste this,” she said.

Sweet, intense, slightly perfumed, the flavor resonated in my mouth for a good hour. It was just a grape.  It was one of the best things I have ever eaten.  Even after a week of extraordinary food, Alice Waters can offer you one single bite that blows you right away.

Oct 7

7 Comments

Foodie Pseudery (5)

I wish I could say that this is a hoax, but it isn’t. Behold: possibly the most pretentious restaurant review ever written:

The perfumed neck by my side gives off that familiar lemony scent, and suggestions of sandalwood climb past the Scandinavian landscapes that have already come alive against the white-washed walls. I want steak, and a large portion of it – recommended medium-rare with the incredibly smooth Malbec Catena Zapata perhaps? ‘It will blow-your-mind’ Vincenzo says, a curiosity he picks out from Co-owner Xavier Rousset’s almost endless international wine list. He leaves us (or her) with a winning smile, and two shots of cold watercress soup and diced apple puree (offered as a pre-starter).

Table-stalking as I always am, I noticed a Sorority-type girl lean across the table and give her man – a gentle man, I should say, and one of great elegance and remarkable seriousness – a considered kiss. The kiss simmers, and the lights dim and I hear the high notes of Tchaikovsky move in from the Champagne bar (a worthy destination in its own right). The girl draws back mysteriously, provocatively even, and her mouth opens again as she pushes something towards the gentleman, his eyes ablaze now with that half-bottle of Riesling Auslese 2001. ‘It must be the Varlhona white chocoloate mousse with ice cream, dill and cucumber’ I think, and smile at my starter of well-tamed pinkish beetroots, oats, Mizuna and powdered goat’s cheese.

Sep 30

1 Comment

Foodie Pseudery (4)

Alice Waters, inevitably:

But it’s about the pursuit of perfection. You have to find the right farmer: the one who planted the right seed in the right land at the right time. They have to be right person to care for it, and harvest it at the right moment. It’s a subtle kind of farming. It’s our job to find them, purchase the fruit at the right time and serve it at the perfect moment, perfectly. That’s all it is. We cook simply.

‘We cook simply.’ And I am a three-toed sloth.

Sep 23

Foodie Pseudery (3)

The original inspiration for this series was Ruth Reichl’s gloriously pretentious and self-congratulatory Twitter feed. I’m not entirely sure what annoys me more: the swooning adoration which ‘foodies’ heap on her and her observations, or the overwhelming smugness and High Moral Seriousness of her tweets.

But, wonderfully, someone writing under the pseudonym Ruth Bourdain produces a daily mash-up of Ruth Reichl’s daily wisdom with the sensibility of Anthony Bourdain. Seriously, this could only end well.

So, this from Ruth Reichl:

‘Fire blazing. Bread baking. Bolognese burbling on the stove. Stella purring. Blues playing. Happy to be home.’

Becomes:

‘Bong blazing. Tangerine zest burning. Bolognese burbling. Stella purring. Me: hallucinating. Happy to be stoned with this motherfucking cat.’

And this:

‘By the pool at Bartolotta, happy to be alive. Deep red shrimp, almost impossibly intense. Octopus. Langoustines. Rouget. Pasta. Memorable.’

Is transformed into this:

‘By the pool at Bartolotta. Red shrimp. Langoustines. An octopus doing the backstroke. This is some pool. Or maybe it’s just the drugs.’

Happy Friday.

Sep 15

Foodie Pseudery (2)

Public service announcement: The House of Assembly is due to vote on the Secrecy Bill on Tuesday. Join Right2Know as we march to Parliament on Saturday. We begin at 10:30 at the corner of Tennant and and Keizersgracht Streets (outside CPUT), and aim to be at Parliament for a rally by midday. Come! Wear red and black, bring a poster, and show our MPs how many of us oppose this oppressive piece of legislation.

This is both a gem of foodie pseudery as well as a fine example of monumental self-importance. Calling themselves the G9, a group of the world’s top chefs, including René Redzepi and Ferran Adriá, gathered in Peru recently and issued an Open Letter to the Chefs of Tomorrow in which they take on the unenviable task of saving the world. I quote from the Guardian‘s report on the meeting:

They…encourage future chefs to take up a profession that “can be a beautiful form of self-expression”, adding: “It is important to carry out our quests and fulfil our dreams with authenticity, humility, and, above all, passion. Ultimately we are each guided by our own ethics and values.”

Now I don’t have anything against chefs wanting to share their knowledge, encourage their customers to eat well, and to use ethically-farmed produce. But this magnificent display pomposity from a group of men who charge the word’s wealthy obscene amounts of money to eat at their restaurants, is ridiculous. Jay Rayner writes beautifully about this ‘grand act of self-delusion’ here.

Thanks muchly to Jane-Anne Hobbs for sending this along. All submissions are more than welcome (sarahemilyduff [at] gmail [dot] com).

Sep 9

Foodie Pseudery (1)

This is a new occasional post devoted to gems of foodie pseudery. It’s partly a homage to the Pseuds’ Corner column in the satirical magazine Private Eye, which lists the best (worst?) examples of pretentious writing in the British press. Here, though, I’m focussing of the reams of bad copy produced by foodies, in blogs and – less forgivably – in the established media.

Why? Well, it’s endlessly amusing. And also out of an objection to food snobbery – foodie-ism – which mystifies and rarefies food, cooking, and eating. It seeks to render good food the preserve of those who believe that they possess the knowledge, sensitivity, and good connections fully to appreciate it.

All contributions welcome (sarahemilyduff [at] gmail [dot] com).

And we begin with this review of Roberta’s in the New York Times:

These are extremely beautiful plates of food, artfully designed. The cuttlefish, in particular, would not look out of place on a starched tablecloth at Per Se. They are delicate of flavor, free of excess fats or salts, as pure an expression of new American cuisine as you are likely to find anywhere. It is shocking, and wonderful, to eat them in this cinder-block garage space six stops into Brooklyn on the L, a ratty old ski lodge built for bums interested in food rather than powder.

There are no cloth napkins or tablecloths at Roberta’s, no comfortable seats. Christmas lights provide mood lighting, and urban detritus and flea-market finds the art on the walls. … Roberta’s may appear an unlikely cathedral to such culinary excellence. It is no less a cathedral for that.

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