I like good food and fine dining as much as the next guy, but Im getting a bit exhausted with the foodie scene. Please join me for the backlash.
The next time anyone says anything to me about heritage this drizzled with artisanal that, or calls green beans haricot verts, Im going smother them with a loaf of Wonder Bread. Or infuse them with it, if you prefer.
OK, that was a bit harsh. Deep breath. Here we go again.
Foodie culture has run amok over the past decade, and while the 24-hour Food Network isnt the sole cause of the outbreak, its certainly a vector. Consider the reality television series Chopped. Each week studio kitchens are turned into battlefields, with four new chefs vying for $10,000 in prize money. With a stop-watch running, the grill masters concoct an original dish that must incorporate several specified foodie ingredients. When the half-hour time limit is up, the four are presented to a panel of grim-faced judges, who delicately stab at the morsels while interrogating the cooks. Imagine an oral dissertation defence with bibs.
When a dish fails to tickle the Chopped judges taste buds, their pieholes tighten into drawstrings of disapproval, as if the cook responsible had just released a studio-emptying fart. The losers are shown the door, while the winner is showered with big bucks and acclaimed a potential saviour of his or her communitys standards and sophistication.
The Food Network also broadcasts Come Dine With Me Canada, a spin-off of the British original, in which diners are pitted each against one another in their own homes. Each takes a turn hosting a dinner, hoping to impress/intimidate the others with appetizers and entrees or at least damage their judgment with liberal amounts of alcohol. Much of the drama hinges on which inebriated competitor will embarrass themselves or the others the most. Its like a multi-vehicle pileup with arugula.
And lets get real about overblown celebrity chefs and their multiple spin-offs (TV series, restaurant chains, cookbooks, memoirs, knife sets). Nigella, Jamie, Gordon, Anthony, and company arent probing the mysteries of the universe at the Large Hadron Collider. They arent creating a new visual vocabulary through jaw-dropping art. They arent composing deathless prose, poetry or music that will echo down the halls of time. They are just chefs, with staff labouring over hot stoves. Whatever Epicurean marvels they whip up will be chewed up, digested, and eliminated.
Some historians claim to have found common patterns in the life cycle of empires. In their terminal phase, empires are marked by conspicuous consumption and general decadence. The star charioteers of Romes declining years were lavished with astronomical pay, just like our big athletes today. Strangely, there is another profession that is disproportionately hallowed as an empire declines. The Romans the Ottomans and the Spanish all made celebrities of their chefs, notes Russ Ashcroft in his documentary film Four Horsemen.
Today food snobbery has replaced artistic or literary snobbery as the supposed mark of cultural refinement. Hence the inflation of four-star chefs into Hollywood-level celebrities, and the constant stream of reality TV spectacles for food fetishists. Its bread and circuses in the literal sense. Along with a hint of garlic, theres a whiff of late-empire decadence in this gastronomical gladiatorialism.
Dining should ultimately be about socialization, but food porn has raised the expectations for home entertainment to unsupportable levels. I suspect one reason fewer and fewer middle class Vancouverites host dinner parties is because they feel obliged to stage budget-busting events rather than modest gatherings. Who ever gets invited over for just a plate of pasta, a glass of cheap wine, and a store-bought dessert? Unthinkable!
This phenomenon connects with our two-tiered grocery scene, with organic/free range for those who can afford it, and pesticide-laden/animal-Auschwitz for those who cant. Boobosie foodie culture fits in quite comfortably with a culture of increasing income disparities and decreasing civil liberties. For every well-dressed diner nibbling on some fussified fusion dish in a five-star restaurant, there are several kitchen wageslaves under the thumb of the in-house wunderkind, while out back street people poke through the aromatic trash.
Civilization has gone the foodie route before, and unfortunately its gone there again.
geoffolson.com
