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Food Snobbery


stellabella

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Tony, your question is a fair one, and I think some of Stephen T's earlier comments relate to it. Taking a very strict view of Plotnickiism - probably stricter than that of the founder - a connoisseur who was fully equipped to judge which foods are "best" and which beverages accompany them "correctly", nevertheless does not choose to eat the "best meal" they can - given affordability and availability - at every meal-time.

We choose the way we eat for all different kinds of reasons, which vary with the fluctuations of our bodies and our moods, whether we're feeling extravagant or mean, how hungry we are, what we ate yesterday and - one which eGullet relentlessly overlooks - what we want to say about ourselves by our choice of repast.

A strict Plotnickiist "best of" diet would quickly becomes tedious and cloying. Example: even if one does believe that Robuchon's mash is the best potato preparation ever, who would choose to eat it to the exclusion of every other potato dish? Only someone quite manic.

This is why, while agreeing with Steve that there is a consensus within the community of gourmets about which wines to drink with which foods - and also that ill-informed opinions on such subjects may be worthless - I also agree that people can have perfectly good reasons for preferring a glass of milk to a fine Burgundy. This really isn't an either/or debate, in my view.

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What do you do when you have an argument that can't be settled and advocates who will never budge?

You agree to disagree, and you move on.

We've had this little debate a dozen times in eGullet history and it never seems to move anybody off his or her starting point. All it seems to accomplish is an increase in the animosity level and the potential alienation of anybody who happens to come to eGullet for the first time on a day when a topic like this is sucking off a big chunk of the board's traffic.

The best we're going to do here is have an impartial observer sum up each party's position so we have a record that can be referenced easily. How about somebody does that and we all go elsewhere?

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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You agree to disagree, and you move on.

No truer words were ever spoken. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who can't or refuse to grasp that concept.

Rich Schulhoff

Opinions are like friends, everyone has some but what matters is how you respect them!

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What do you do when you have an argument that can't be settled and advocates who will never budge?

You start your own Forum, apparently. :laugh:

We've had this little debate a dozen times in eGullet history and it never seems to move anybody off his or her starting point.

Hey, this isn't Congress. Let 'em rant. They're not hurting anybody. (Although I do think the "fuck you" references might be kept to a bare minimum.)

Seriously, having a forum and then complaining about the useless verbiage sounds suspiciously like . . . well, somebody else who does much the same thing for a hobby. Congrats on your dogged pursuit.

This "topic" will eventually run out of gas. The Indianapolis 500 doesn't go anywhere new in the end, either.

Let me see if I can add something new, then:

Perhaps the point can be stated in terms of social, not gastronomic, interaction. (Getting back to Lord Michael's original point.) It's not a gourmet phenomenon but a phenomenon that happens in ANY hobby. Those in ANY hobby have their own cant, used to keep the outsiders out. It's a dividing line between them and the uninitiated. (Sometimes literally, but we don't have a secret handshake or an initiation, unless you count baptism of fire.)

Some members of some groups take their membership and status very seriously. It's not enough to be on the inside; almost everyone else must also be kept OUT. Hence, snobbery. It's the uneasy feeling that you're on the wrong side of the thick glass wall. It's the idea that "we have to be better than you because we're different." It could be cities, sports teams, countries, grades in school, anything. You want to feel that the time you've invested in your hobby (profession, field of study) is justified, in spite of the nagging feeling that your time could've been spent better elsewhere. So you defend it--perhaps you OVERLY defend it: Those who are with us are right, and those who oppose us are wrong. We and we alone have seen the "correct" path. All else are lesser mortals.

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I empathize with the sense of deja vu, but the topic is re-sparked every time someone either says "I'm right about this particular dish/restauarnt, everyone who knows anything agrees with me, and if you disagree you have no palate," or "Everyone has their own preferences and everyone is an equally good judge of what tastes good, so anything goes."

Both positions seem to me to be inadequate, but I do weary of explaining why. Still, bet we come back to it.

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Stefanyb: Yes yes yes... I could go on Molly Bloom-style. Who cares? Cook and eat what you want, Who cares what other people say. Be happy. Be fat. Be weird. Just don't be a veggie or a raw food person.

As I said....

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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I wonder why Wilfrid's brilliant post about the topic, where he parsed the issue into objective standards versus subjective preferences, anyone needed to say anthing else including Fat Guy's bit about agreeing to disagree. Because I wonder where the disagreement is here? Taking the steak frittes example, you can probably find a few thousand books about food that pair steak frittes with wine. And I doubt you will find nary a one that says milk is appropriate. But yet Tony says there is no right way.

Why Tony is so stingy in allowing the people who do it the right way the use of that word has me befuddled. Because in a different context, he could easily be saying that people in the U.K. who eat that deep-fried slop from bad oil have got it all wrong. He is fickle when applying ths standard. He will apply it to a bad Fish & Chips, but it's not okay to apply it to the beverages you drink with steak frittes. Huh?

So the entire dispute comes down to his not willing to budge on allowing me the use of the word "right" because he wants to be able to say that whatever he chooses to drink with steak frittes is "right." And I don't see why he can't see the difference between *right for him* and *right when held up against the standard.* And I think to a person, everyone on this board who holds an opinion similar to mine, would say that we use the word "right" exclusively in regards to the standard.

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Look, let me try just once more,then I'll take FG's advice.

I agree with the tomato analogy,the peach analogy,the fish and chip analogy. That is because it is possible to arrive at a near univeral consensus as to what constitutes a good tomato, peach, fish and chips etc. The criteria for deciding is not hard to define. As LML said, anyone who prefers the mealy flavourless tomato to the delicious red flavoursome one is someone who doesn't like tomatoes. So they would be "wrong".

The issue of what "should" one drink with steak frites is not the same because there is no possibility of arriving at a near universal set of criteria that would allow such a consensus to be reached. To argue that the "right" answer is "wine" is to exclude millions of people who might really enjoy steak frittes, but who don't drink alcohol, or who don't like wine. Why on earth would they say "Wine is the right answer even though it is the wrong answer for me". That is absurd.

If one drinks wine then one might be able to arrive at a general consensus as to which is the "right" wine to drink with steak frites. (though I doubt it- what might be the "right" wine to drink at a 3 star retaurant might not be the same as the one to drink in a casual back street bistro, where a carafe of rough local rouge might confer just as much pleasure-but presumably those who believe in "the Standard" are disdainful of that kind of contextual relativism). But one would still have to establish wine as the consensus drink.

With your tomato/peach criteria non-existent you cannot talk about what is "right" to drink with steak frites outside of that which you "prefer" to drink. To argue otherwise is meaningless at best and culinarily fascistic at worst.

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There is a consensus amongst sophisticated diners as to what sort of wine to drink with one's food, but it is quite different from what was the consensus amongst discerning diners in the nineteenth century. A century ago sweet German wines were more highly valued that the dryer French classics which are now so dominant in the most expensive restaurants. A wine, they thought back then, should be of approximately the same sweetness as the sauce which it accompanied. Who is right? And why?

John Whiting, London

Whitings Writings

Top Google/MSN hit for Paris Bistros

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"A wine, they thought back then, should be of approximately the same sweetness as the sauce which it accompanied. Who is right? And why?"

different standard taste, meaning that most diners then would want a unified experience, whereas we today want a more dialectical experience. inside these sligtly different traditions (slightly, when compared to other cultures), a meal could be better or worse, and the wines more or less well chosen depending on which role they are to play.

but perhaps this is putting it in the wrong way, because even today you find elite diners who will want the unified taste. it is like with pipe tobacco mixtures: some are very like a hedgehog with taste impressions in every direction and yet pleasant, other are more closed in taste but equally fine.

of course, that was not the original question...so:

should those who fight for a better quality of the food available to the common man be seen as snobs? are you a snob for baking your own bread so as to get something very much better than what is generally sold in supermarkets? or for trying to make a sauce that is not made of flour, salt an soy colouring? is passing by the canned stuff snobbish?

the answer is no. it is a matter of having a sense of quality, (in some cases bringing it into politics) and of prioritizing so as to have the time to live thereby as much as you can. which can be done to some extent on even a quite small budget as ours. on the "dinner" thread, you can see jinmyo - and others - doing it in the most exquisite way. (and here i would like to add an "envy-smilie")

christianh@geol.ku.dk. just in case.

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many of the people who dissent know diddles about food, and as such do not have a valid opinion. You can recognize them because those are the people pushing the "everything is relative" or LML type arguments.

i see myself in here somewhere. :hmmm:

this summer while in london i had supper at the home of a distinguished faculty member from the London School of Economics. he and his wife both think circles around my husband, who is truly a very intellectual dude. they served us the most bizarre meal: poached salmon, soggy baked vegetables, and a dessert tart with a digestive biscuit and margarine crust, reduced fat cream cheese filling, piled with mounds of fresh fat juicy gooseberries, blackberries and raspberries. i sort of choked it down, but at the same time my heart nearly burst at the mere beauty of it.

i am afraid, steve p, that everything is relative, at least when it comes to food. and i have no intention of debating you about it. not because i'm a coward--and i like you & respect you a lot. but i love egullet too much to follow this conversation down the rabbit hole. once in a blue moon i eat canned chicken. i am who i am.

steven shaw, did that do it? now i have to bind my hands so i won't be tempted to post again.

i love you all! i really do!:wub:

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I wonder why Wilfrid's brilliant post about the topic, where he parsed the issue into objective standards versus subjective preferences, anyone needed to say anthing else including Fat Guy's bit about agreeing to disagree.

So may we assume you'll be taking your own sage advice?

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Well, I dunno, this is actually an interesting conversation, so here I go again:

I don't think a great deal separates Steve from Tony now they have explained their positions a little more. It's a sliding scale, I think. Tony would agree that on some questions of taste there is little room for disagreement, such as judging quality among tomatoes. Steve would like to extend this rigor to eating/drinking experiences which I think they would both agree are more complex, such as pairing beverages with food - plainly more complex, because you've already got at least two different items involved.

I think the apparent disagreement stems from Steve's perception that Tony will not recognize rigorous standards of judgment in any circumstances, and Tony's perception that Steve will expect rigorous standards to apply in a simplistic way however complex and fuzzy the situation ("extreme Plotnickiism"). Whereas neither of them, I believe, is going quite that far. Not to put words in your mouths, guys, that's just my reading.

Personally, I am inclined to err more than Steve on the side of caution when applying standards, but I think both positions are respectable, and not ultimately incompatible.

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Taking the steak frittes example, you can probably find a few thousand books about food that pair steak frittes with wine. And I doubt you will find nary a one that says milk is appropriate. But yet Tony says there is no right way.

"Right" is not the same as "appropriate." They are not interchangeable and more than anything else, you debase the language in making these arguments.

Why Tony is so stingy in allowing the people who do it the right way the use of that word has me befuddled. Because in a different context, he could easily be saying that people in the U.K. who eat that deep-fried slop from bad oil have got it all wrong. He is fickle when applying ths standard. He will apply it to a bad Fish & Chips, but it's not okay to apply it to the beverages you drink with steak frittes. Huh?

Perhaps Tony is making a distinction between "bad" and "wrong," and, in fact, this might make it difficult, rather than easy, for him to say the words you care to put in his mouth. Of greater importance is that the standards for what is good wine and even more so for what it good milk are far more easily established than the standards of what is "good" to drink with any particular food. "Appropriate" is a better word perhaps because, at least to me, it establishes the necessity of a context.

So the entire dispute comes down to his not willing to budge on allowing me the use of the word "right" because he wants to be able to say that whatever he chooses to drink with steak frittes is "right." And I don't see why he can't see the difference between *right for him* and *right when held up against the standard.* And I think to a person, everyone on this board who holds an opinion similar to mine, would say that we use the word "right" exclusively in regards to the standard.

Huh? I think to a person, everyone on this board who holds an opinion similar to mine, would say that it's incorrect to use the word "right" exclusively in that way. :biggrin:

Robert Buxbaum

WorldTable

Recent WorldTable posts include: comments about reporting on Michelin stars in The NY Times, the NJ proposal to ban foie gras, Michael Ruhlman's comments in blogs about the NJ proposal and Bill Buford's New Yorker article on the Food Network.

My mailbox is full. You may contact me via worldtable.com.

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Bux - As usual, you just want to discuss the meaning of words without being willing to discuss the concepts that make the words tick. You keep saying the words make the concepts tick. That's bass ackwards. The context frames the inference of the word. When I say "artisinal," I'm using it the way the restaurant industry uses it. And when someone asks which beverage to drink with wine, the answer is the same. That you can drink milk or turpentine with your steak frittes has everything to do with personal freedom. But it has zero to do with having good taste when it comes to food and wine.

Tony - The only reason you say you can't get a consensus about drinking wine with steak frittes is that so few people are expert in wine. But if you were willing to accept a sample of expert opinions, you would quickly find a consensus. But there's a reason there are so few people who are expert enough to have a valid opinion. Wine is a diverse subject and a costly one as well. So the better question I think (and this is the ultimate in Plotnickiism,) is not what beverage to drink with your steak frittes, but who is qualified to answer the question in the first place?

Stellbella - The correlation between inteligence and the ability to know, discern and appreciate food, is about the same as the correlation between inteligence and the ability to make money. There isn't necessarily a correlation. So I don't understand your point.

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