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

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.

cosigned

"It smells like bat-wing dust," he told her.

lol

hints of unripe bat-wing dust

"smells like bat-wing dust" kind of gives less a foodie vibe and more of a warlock vibe

It's like the difference between having a hobby you're enthusiastic about and being able to convey that enthusiasm to others in a way that they find your simplified talk about the subject to be interesting, and trying to talk shop regardless of location and time.

I like having friends who are technical in ways I'm not when they're able to tell interesting stories that relate things in a non-technical manner, or when they are able to transparently use that expertise. A friend who is able to glance over a wine or dinner menu, ask a few specific questions of the server, and then quickly come to a decision is much more impressive, imo.

I love eating and cooking new and interesting things but I'm not a dick about it. I also tend to trust people at restaurants to bring me what they think is good which has led to some of the best dining experiences.

^^^^^

I'm also equally cool with eating at subway or a Michelin starred place. Both have their time and place imo.

Subway was just the first place I thought of but you know what I mean.

'pickiness' in anything is like my least favorite quality.

we need to have a poll about eating out w/ friends: is it about the FOOD or is it about the COMPANY? (can't be both because we need to make hard choices on ILX)

food should be appreciated when it is great and suffered with grace when it is not

To be honest, it's worst when both are mediocre

Jesse otm

a bro of mine went through a "wine phase" and i benefited greatly, both in learning and in free wine at tastings. geeking out about stuff is fun. i'm a little surprised that ilx, which has literally hundreds of thousands of words spilled over myopic mutual masturbation, is getting het up about ppl that like food more than other people.

ffs we have had epic blowouts about HOT DOGS v. TACOS

Tacos

hot dogs

Such strife here.

I had hot dogs at lunch and wished they were tacos.

i'm a little surprised that ilx, which has literally hundreds of thousands of words spilled over myopic mutual masturbation, is getting het up about ppl that like food more than other people.

The original article was really obnoxious though!

whatever else, this represents a quiddity of the ruling class (noting the author):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/dining/a-vegetarians-struggle-for-sustenance-in-the-midwest.html?_r=1

slight agony

midwestern folk, clinging to their meat and iceberg lettuce

http://www.vegkansascity.com/restaurants.html

a bold report coming back from one of our boys, in the field and suffering through local backwardness

haha

i am not a vegetarian, but one time i was in a tiny town in SE IA and i ordered a "vegetable burger" at the one restaurant in town. the waitress was nice enough to tell me, "you know that's just a regular burger with lettuce and tomato, right?"

i didn't know that, so i was glad she told me.

I don't know who Sulzberger is but he could learn to freaking cook. Otherwise he is otm, I'm afraid.

omg LL, a "vegetable" burger!!

he's the son of the nytimes publisher. long line of sulzbergers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ochs_Sulzberger,_Jr.

xp

http://www.city-data.com/ia-restaurants/DEANO-S-PLACE.html#ixzz1jAeMSOvA

deano's

sulzberger got no meat in it

In Nebraska, a place where cattle outnumber people, vegetarians are sometimes accused of undermining the state economy. The owner of what was billed as the lone vegetarian restaurant in Omaha said it had several pounds of ground beef thrown at its doors shortly after opening. After a short run, it closed last year.

this is kinda tragic tbh

“Being a vegetarian in Nebraska is like being a Republican in Brooklyn — less of an outcast than a novelty,” said David Rosen, who became a vegetarian as a teenager in Omaha and is now a writer in Brooklyn. “Except that you don’t have to prepare special meals for Republicans.”

brooklyn has two gop congresspeople but they probably mean 'brooklyn'

i've been vegetarian in a non-veggie-friendly city (richmond va) and yeah it kinda sucks but it's not really worth writing a newspaper article about, let alone for the NYT. like my problem with this article isn't that it's wrong but that the point is so obvious that the article is unnecessary.

Actually the author of that piece is A.O. Sulzberger Jr.'s son Arthur GREGG Sulzberger, 28:
http://www.observer.com/2009/media/2009-ag-arthur-gregg-sulzberger-era-begins

but that the point is so obvious that the article is unnecessary.
agree
high school journalism assignment

The beef throwing incident is ridiculous but other than that this dude is whiney and annoying. I've been a vegetarian for nearly (over?) half my life and while this can be a sort of shitty situation at times, I have rarely found this to be a huge issue. Even steakhouses have awesome veg sides for Christ's sake. Did this man really think this article needed to be written. He should probably just take Laurel's advice and learn to cook.

lol x-post - NA otm

To be fair, if you're in the middle of nowhere in NY you're probably going to have trouble eating vegetarian, too. But the "oh no I'm in KC and I can't get vegetarian food everywhere and people look at me funny" is more of a diversity issue, imo, than it is a locale issue.

tbf walking into Arthur Bryant’s if you're a vegetarian is probably a cardinal sin. I think I inhaled enough animal products just standing in there to count as a violation

the whole situation of sending out a sulzberger to a post stories from kansas city, just to write about difficulty finding veggie cuisine, is weird. It doesn't really need an ethnographic piece.

i am not a vegetarian, but one time i was in a tiny town in SE IA and i ordered a "vegetable burger" at the one restaurant in town. the waitress was nice enough to tell me, "you know that's just a regular burger with lettuce and tomato, right?"

this is hilarious

which town btw?

One of the best meals I've ever had out was an enormous platter of vegetables and sides at Spark's steakhouse in NYC. Sure the waiter sort of giggled when I told him I was vegetarian but I'm used to that. They were then more than happy to prepare something for me. In the rare even that I've found myself at a restaurant with absolutely nothing to eat on the menu I just ask if they can make something off the menu. I don't think I've ever been somewhere where the request was refused.

like this should be a letter to his dad, not an article
xpost