quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

it's okay you just gotta cut or drink alcohol for the veins to show

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577150611736387598.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_2

Can a Foodie and Mr. Bland Be Happy?

When Kimberly Charles came back from a business trip to Italy last fall, she brought a five-ounce, $500 white truffle home with her. She showed it to her boyfriend, k*ll*an MacGeraghty, and described how she would make fettuccine with butter-and-Robiolo cheese sauce and carefully shave the truffle on top.

Mr. MacGeraghty didn't share her enthusiasm. "It smells like bat-wing dust," he told her. "I was a bit crestfallen," says Ms. Charles, 48, the owner of a marketing firm in San Francisco.

Sharing meals is one of the most enjoyable things couples do together, a regularly scheduled time to relax, have an intimate conversation and recharge the relationship. But when one person is an adventurous eater and the other has simpler tastes, meal times are often divisive.

Foodies can be exciting dinner partners, turning everyone around them on to new ingredients, wines and cuisines. But to people who don't share their passion, foodies also can seem intimidating, judgmental, even snobby. Meanwhile, non-foodies—folks who know what they like to eat and see no reason to venture further—can come across as timid, stubborn or, I hate to say it, boring.

...

am inclined to think that being a fussy eater should be in DSM-5 but otoh nothing is more disgusting, savage than this:

A former sommelier who judges wine competitions, Ms. Charles can question the chef for 20 minutes before ordering at a restaurant.

I mean at least she's a pro so it's sort of talking shop for her, like asking the guitarist about his rig or something.

A lot of this stuff sounds very princess-and-the-pea though.

Or prince, obv.

is there a way of being a "foodie" that doesn't involve paying obscene amounts of money for food, or is that just one of the requirements for being "exciting"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/electoral-politics-and-reality-tv.html

A dumbass horse race is the FUN way to pick the Leader of the Free World!

not sure if this guy is clemenza pretending to be American.

She has set some rules: No Indian food. No fish. No fajitas (she hates the way they smell). And she doesn't want to be nagged to try new things. "He needs to let me be my boring self," she says.

wow

Outside of the expensive truffle crap, that seems less like foodies vs. people with bland taste, but more like regular eating people vs. people who just sustain themselves on air.

is there a way of being a "foodie" that doesn't involve paying obscene amounts of money for food, or is that just one of the requirements for being "exciting"

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, January 10, 2012 6:47 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

There is! There's a whole subculture of it -- *foodies* who shun that sort of thing and only go to cheap but exotic out-of-the-way places (I think this was originally the concept behind Chowhound). Of course while this can have its own pretension, it's WAY less annoying than the $500 truffle brand of foodie-ism.

My father-in-law, when his family still lived in Jersey, used to insist on driving everyone an hour and a half to a tiny, not very well known Indian place in Jackson Heights -- it was really good but there was also this whole thing about how he had "discovered" it, like he had found a place that Robert Sietsema hadn't gotten to yet, wasn't in Zagat, wasn't even discussed on the message boards, and that was a big deal.

there's also the foodie-ism that's about home-making everything from scratch

Foodies can be exciting dinner partners, turning everyone around them on to new ingredients, wines and cuisines.

reading a weirdly defensive tone in this quote -- 'some people think foodies are snobs but they are all culturally-stunted, simple-minded boors, even if you happen to love one of them'

Outside of the expensive truffle crap, that seems less like foodies vs. people with bland taste, but more like regular eating people vs. people who just sustain themselves on air.

Yeh, it starts off with a couple examples of obnoxious foodie-ism, but mostly the "non-foodies" seem like simps, and proud of it. F U "I eat mostly pasta or chicken" lady. And Mr. I wash down wine with lite beer.

can't wait for the follow-up piece about fashion-forward phenoms exasperated by their 't-shirt & jeans' boyfriends

All these people should just get divorced.

I sometimes troll self-professed foodies. Actually, if they mention Michael Pollan during the course of a meal, I always troll them.

I will start talking about making ketchup and macaroni casseroles.

A former sommelier who judges wine competitions, Ms. Charles can question the chef for 20 minutes before ordering at a restaurant

LOL I would LOVE to have seen this woman come into my dad's old restaurants and try this on him. Growing up in the restaurant business and with a chef dad I appreciate good food and a nice dining experience. I also like food science and learning about different types etc. However, self-professed foodies (or at least the majority of the ones I've encountered) annoy the hell out of me and make me IA.

If you have to have a deep understanding of every menu item and dish/drink combination before ordering, then maybe you need to come back to the restaurant a few times. Or just figure out how to make a decision.

He says he feels a little frustrated on those rare evenings when she gets a bit tipsy and goes to bed early

yeah she sounds like a real connoisseur

I am willing to pander to this newly-identified dating problem with my new self-help ebooks, "dating a yelper: a survival guide" and "how to love someone who doesn't love food"

Hard ain't it hard ain't it hard

true story: once, my GF went to a Seattle restaurant (Tilth, I think?) where she had a terrible, terrible, dish. The chef, Maria Hines, – newly laureled by James Beard – heard her say it wasn't tasty, and came out and yelled at her for having a bad palatte.

eh, my dad is a big oenophile and a lot of the time hell talk to the sommelier for 10 or so minutes before ordering and it doesnt really seem annoying or whatever? like just a couple guys talking about something they care about. sounds almost like dudes talking about football or whatever

I guess it's not always that bad but I think that quizzing a chef (especially if he's working and presumably busy?) for 20 mins. is a little ridiculous. Sometimes people need to get over themselves and just trust.

sounds like he's justifying the sommelier's existence

Unless the person is from Zagat's or something and there's a review involved. Then they can ask away as long as they like.

yeah i feel like that sentence is not being entirely clear about the situation, hard to think of an actual chef who would answer a twenty minute quiz from some random diner in the middle of dinner hours

Maybe they're the sort of chefs who attach their names to restaurants but aren't actually in the kitchen? It is a weird one, no doubt.

it must have happened once in some little restaurant or something and she told it as an anecdote and the writer slipped it in--it just says "can question" not "often questions" or whatever

yeah ENBB head chefs of fancy places are often in the restaurant just to impress the customers but describing the convo as a "quizzing" makes it sound unbearably irritating

Yeah, exactly.

imagine his hot-faced embarrassment as she questions the chef
imagine her barely-contained contempt for his pasta dish
imagine real people, with real problems

foodieism more quidditish than lapping up horserace politics, apparently

true story: once, my GF went to a Seattle restaurant (Tilth, I think?) where she had a terrible, terrible, dish. The chef, Maria Hines, – newly laureled by James Beard – heard her say it wasn't tasty, and came out and yelled at her for having a bad palatte.

This is just straight up jerk behavior.

There's a fine line, and sometimes even an overlap, between behavior that just suggests being really passionate about something and behavior that says "look how much more special and refined I am than all of you" or "nothing is good enough for me."

^^^^^^^^^^

A very fine line.

I think if you're going to spend that much time questioning the waiter and/or chef about how your meal is going to be prepared, you should have stayed home and cooked for yourself.

My father-in-law also vetoes his own daughter's orders if they're not "the right thing to order here," and he won't let anyone at his table order a standard salad at almost any restaurant even if they really just want a salad.

foodfascism

The foodies I know are the ones who are most likely just to pick a few things and order, it's the really picky eaters who tend to have an elaborate series of questions for the servers.

That's true. I think true foodies would just be like "Give it to me" whereas the picky people are like "Could you substitute this instead of that, and hold this other thing, and make sure it's really well-done, and, etc., etc."

A former sommelier who judges wine competitions, Ms. Charles can question the chef for 20 minutes before ordering at a restaurant

I understand this impulse though - you've invested all this time and effort acquiring this obscure and esoteric body of knowledge, and have nobody to talk shop with during normal people time. so you meet someone who you think 'shares' your passion and all you wanna do is talk bullshit. I get this all the time from photography & coffee nerds.

still, all of these people should be shot

what is a 'true foodie?'
is it like, a 'food hipster?'

also lol at the idea that 'true foodies' aren't by definition picky eaters

depends how you define picky. Picky about quality of food or ingredients? "True foodies" tend to order food and want it as it's supposed to be served. "Thai spicy" "chef's choice" etc.

foodies tend to be a lot pickier about the places they eat than what they eat when they get there.

also instead of "true foodies" can we use the term "authentic foodies" for maximum eye rolling

OTM. xp

A "foodie" who is excited and curious about food and eager to share with others how awesome some food or drink is, is one of the greatest people you can know. And maybe they learn stuff about tastes that others might not pick up on, but there is a difference between having a developed palate and being the princess and the pea.

Snobs ruin good things. It's like how the language we use about wine ("nose of cherry, coffee on the finish") were developed to make wine accessible to the masses b/c the things they described were quantifiable and tangible. Previously, wine was described in abstract, personality-like terms that made appreciation of wine seem mysterious. But then jackassery entered the terminology and you have people describing wine as having "hints of unripe hackberry" or "Welsh book leather" some obscure, absurd shit. At a wine class at the restaurant I worked at, a vendor was describing flavors using Latin words for ordinary fruits. It's that kind of malarky, you know?

are you a 'foodie'

Jesse OTM.