Lord Michael Lewis

Life is too short and there are too many restaurants to pay 200 GBP a head to Gordon Ramsay so he can take the piss. For this money you could spend the weekend in Madrid.

Nice to have you back Andy. I am staying at the Clarence Hotel next week, so will be giving the Tea Room a try, along with a visit to the excellent Thorntons (my regular haunt).

You may not think this has anything to with social taste but I would wager that anyone who opens a thread entitled, 'Food Snobbery' would disagree. Regarding 'what should one drink with steak frites?' the answer, as Tony Finch has already pointed out, tells us about 'social taste'. Not only did you answer wine, but you re-wrote the question in your own image. The fact that you make assumptions like this would imply that you consider, milk, or Gatorade or anything other than wine to be a wrong answer. The belief that anything that differs from one's own taste is wrong, is the definition of a snob by my maxim that 'snobbery stems from the belief that there are answers to questions of taste'.

Well to me that comes down to saying that heirloom tomatoes are better then pale and mealy, have no taste tomatoes, and burgers as good I can make with meat from Lobel's are better then burgers from McDonald's. But people can't express that by saying their taste in food is better then yours. Bullshit. For people who can't recognize good quality food, I don't like it and I don't understand the way it tastes are statements about one's self. Not about the food they are eating. People who can't recognize great food are like people who can't recognize good music, art, film etc. Their opinions have no validity outside the scope of their own person. They are expressing preference, not valid opinion. Last night I had dinner with Macrosan and he was telling us a story about beautiful looking peaches his wife bought from the grocer. But when biting into them he found that the area around the stone was brown and pappy (I'm learning all my British terms .) Macrosan, tough bargainer that he is, is bringing the peaches back for a refund. But I guarantee you there are people out there who will not only keep those peaches, but will like them. Call me a snob. In fact call me anything you want. But people who accept brown and pappy peaches do not know anything about peaches. It's not a matter of opinion. And not only are there people who know better then they (or have better taste as Jason refuses to admit) but this notion that they are entitled to their opinion is what allows food producers to ship brown and pappy peaches in the first place. Plotinki, as you clearly don't read any of the posts I will post this again for your exclusive benefit. " QUOTE (Steve Plotnicki @ Sep 22 2002, 06:57 PM) Good tomatoes taste better than bad tomatoes. There really isn't anything else to say about it. Plotinki, you confuse (deliberately) 'sensory taste' with 'social taste'; the discernment of what is socially right. Comparing like with like; tomato A vs. tomato B. is a non sequitur. If you like tomatoes and have gustatory perception a flavoursome tomato will taste better than a bad one. On the other hand, if you don't like tomatoes you either won't like either, or you'll like the good tomato less because it tastes more tomato-like. A better test would be; what should one drink with steak frites? " This thread is about social taste, not sensory taste, if you can't discuss on this level I will have to ask you politely to fuck off.

Words fail me. No they don't... This is why snobbery is a bad thing.

Words fail me.

No, I wouldn't. I haven't seen Titanic, but if that's what someone thinks that's fine, as long as that person can accept that there are as many best films of all time as there are filmgoers.

Plotinki, you confuse (deliberately) 'sensory taste' with 'social taste'; the discernment of what is socially right. Comparing like with like; tomato A vs. tomato B. is a non sequitur. If you like tomatoes and have gustatory perception a flavoursome tomato will taste better than a bad one. On the other hand, if you don't like tomatoes you either won't like either, or you'll like the good tomato less because it tastes more tomato-like. A better test would be; what should one drink with steak frites?

This is why you're a snob. Instead of just enjoying something because it pleases you, you seek to affirm what you see as its superiority and use it as a benchmark by which to judge others.

Plotinki, please control the urge to put your words into my mouth. I haven't once said that there is a "right way to eat", rather I have suggested that this is the illusion of the snob. An illusion, because the snob subordinates his own taste by subscribing to the value system of a third party. And yes, the issue is whether or not we should be supercilious towards others' eating habits. For this reason I question the posture of supeciliary. If you're interested in my position, I suggest you read my posts.

There isn't a negative connotation to eating fresh over frozen etc. And people who eat this way aren't necessarily snobs. The snobs are those who claim to know what "*the right way*" is.

Firstly, in a debate on snobbery, 'lumpen' is probably not the most sympathetic terminology one could choose. Going to a restaurant on the basis of good reviews seems to be pretty sensible. Liking the meal on the basis of good reviews, less so. However, you certainly make an important point on not visiting a restaurant that has been badly reviewed. In this case the decision not to go could, perhaps, be pragmatic.

It all depends upon who the third party is. Someone with widespread exposure to and education (not necessarily schooling) in a particular area may very well be more readily relied upon to exhibit superior taste than someone else without those characteristics. And, moreover, accepting their opinion is, many times but not always, a valid practice. For me taste is about likes and dislikes. How one can say that one likes or doesn't like something based on the opinion of a third party is beyond me.

Taste, like sexuality, is personal thing. Snobbery is thinking that a third party can be privy to the knowledge that one taste is superior to another and accepting that opinion.

Thats because, in many instances, there are. Then you must, by my definition, be a snob.

To my mind, snobbery stems from the belief that there are answers to questions of taste.

No, merely pretentious.

Opium, or its derivatives.

A basic catering qualification is sufficient to land you 15,000 GBP a year, about 5,000 GBP more than Wetherspoons pay.

It is for someone on the minimum wage.

In the above lines, I think you answered your own question. When a pub's business begins to focus on meals it becomes, by definition a restaurant located in a pub. A pub, on the other hand, has its business selling beer and sundries. I would imagine that the Eagle/Fox/Sutton Arms etc etc, all employ chefs who earn wages similar to a publisher. Is this surprising? No chef to pay, no food waste, no loss. What would be alarming is if restaurants were to follow suit.

So they should be entitled to decent food then which is the crux of the thread I believe. Are suggesting that people who choose to enjoy a meal in a pub aren't capable of deciding what decent food is? I don't like hamburger chains, so I don't frequent them, neither do I like the kind of food that Simon describes in his post, so I don't eat it. However I draw the line at suggesting what others should or shouldn't like, which is the crux of my post I believe.

For a lot of people it is a treat. So what? Simon should have known better.

I saw Carpaccio of Chicken on the menu in a restaurant in, I think, Frankfurt. I didn't fancy it.

Sounds like an excellent idea.