Are you a quality relativist or absolutist?

[Shalmanese]

I was reading an old eGullet thread on pizza toppings when I was suddenly struck by slkinsey's post:

I say (and I have said it before, so I'll keep it short) that America has often flipped Italian culinary ideas on their heads in transforming Italian food into Italian-American food. There are a lot of reasons for this that I won't bother elaborating, but to make an obvious example: In Italy, pasta dishes are first and foremost about the pasta. They may be considered "pasta with a condiment," and the amount of condiment is likely to be modest. In America, we have changed this idea so that the pasta becomes a mere vehicle for the sauce and the condiment becomes the game. This may be considered "sauce, with some pasta," and the amount of sauce is likely to be copious. In this case, and most others, this transformation has had a detrimental effect.

Something similar has happened with respect to pizza. I don't think that pizza needs to adhere rigidly to Neapolitan orthodoxy, but I do think pizza should be about "crust (with some stuff on it)" rather than being about "a big pile of toppings (on a crust)." We call that second idea "pizza" here, but I firmly believe that it is something else entirely. Something that can be good? Sure, sometimes. Personally, it is not usually to my taste and I don't believe it can aspire to the heights of perfection that can be obtained through the crust-centric approach.

All of which is to say that, while I don't "insist only on the three official variants" I do think that the paradigm that calls for toppings piled high to the heavens results at best in a pedestrian product, and usually something that could perhaps aspire to edible. The degradation of the noble pizza, indeed.

I realized there are two very different philosophies on what is considered "good food" which I'm going to term quality relativism, embodied by slkinsey and quality absolutism, embodied by me.

To slkinsey, what makes a pizza worth eating is that it's better relative to other pizzas. Thus, what you see is a focus on creating a sublime crust topped with great ingredients and focusing on eking out the best flavor and texture possible from the given parameters.

I'm of the opposite school of thought. When I decide what I consider to be "good food", I compare it against every other thing I could be eating. As a result, what slkinsey would consider a sublime Neapolitan pizza, I would yawn at. Sure, it's good bread, cheese & tomatoes. But, at the end of the day, bread, cheese & tomatoes just aren't too exciting to me compared to the much more delicious things you could be putting on a pizza. I'm very much of a pile em high with toppings guy because there's a hundred different things that taste better than even the best bread, cheese & tomatoes.

I love roast chicken and I love a good steak but, all else being equal, if I had the choice between the most organic, free range, biodynamic, chickeny chicken cooked by Thomas Keller himself compared to a decently marbled, inch thick, supermarket ribeye basted in butter, I'd choose the ribeye every time. To me, no matter how good chicken is, it just can't aspire to the same heights as a steak. If you're a quality absolutist, this choice makes perfect sense but must be baffling to a quality relativist and I think this is the crux of the difference.

So, are you a quality relativist, a quality absolutist or some complex mix of the two?

[Tri2Cook]

I guess I would be a mix of the two. Actually, I'm probably usually one or the other but it varies depending on the subject. With pizza, I'm firmly on slkinsey's side of the fence. With your steak/chicken example, I'd jump over to your side of the fence. And then there are some things that I really don't care one way or the other about, it's just whatever happens to be handy when I'm busy and hungry.

[Katie Meadow]

Shalmanese, you are pretty much of a nut case, but you probably already know that. Okay I'm just kidding. Would I rather eat a mediocre broiled steak than a chicken grilled over charcoal by Thomas Keller or even by me? Nooo. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a crispy piece of grilled chicken, sometimes I'm in the mood for a nice juicy rib-eye. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. Anything that doesn't use good ingredients and isn't cooked well is going to be less appealing to me than some other thing cooked really well, even if I generally like eating both of those things. Of course there are certain foods I don't especially like, even if high quality or cooked to perfection: tripe, brussel sprouts, scallops, beef liver and milk chocolate, but I assume that isn't what you are really talking about. On the other hand, even though I am not very fond of scallops, I would chose scallops cooked by Thomas Keller over a supermarket steak cooked by my mother. Then again, I would chose the pizza my husband and I make over one made by Alice Waters. But even though I favor a thin-crust minimalist pizza rather that a mile-hi topping on soggy crust, I would rather have a toaster oven pizza on an English Muffin cooked by a six-year old than eat tripe cooked by anyone. Actually an English Muffin pizza cooked by a six-year old would be a nicer experience than one cooked by me. So figure this one out. Relativist, mostly yes, I think. But I don't believe there are only two philosophies of good food.

You would probably have a better chance of surviving on a desert island than I would if you could only have two ingredients. I might starve to death before being willing to commit to a favorite food for the rest of my life. I'll tell you one thing, it's hot and icky weather here today, and I would really love it if a sublime Neapolitan pizza showed up on my doorstep. Today, a rib-eye with lovely grill marks would not be high on the list, but I couldn't say why. Tomorrow, there's no telling. Hopefully something in the fridge jumps out at me.

[fooey]

The dichotomy isn't clear (or I'm just too slow to grasp it).

I think you're saying that if you're a truffles to truffles eater, then you're a relativist; if you're a truffles to everything-you-can-put-in-your-mouth eater, then you're an absolutist.

If so, then I'm a relativist.

There's just too much food in my head to be an absolutist. I'd never enjoy anything. I can always think of something better (especially the 75% of the time I want to return the entrée I ordered at a restaurant).

I forget the chef who said this, but it sounded so limiting to me:

Q: "Why don't you cook x dish?"

A: "Because I don't know what it's supposed to taste like."

I couldn't agree less.

It's exploring dishes from their baseline that really gets me going.

I love it when I make something (I've always read about) and confirm that there's a very good reason for its reputation, like the Noisettes de Porc aux Pruneaux I'm having for dinner.

Edited September 11, 2009 by fooey (log)

[David A. Goldfarb]

I'd take the great chicken over a good but otherwise undistinguished steak. I'd rather save up for an extraordinary $200 meal than have four merely competent $50 meals out.

I suppose I prefer the cello to the banjo, but I'd rather hear a great banjo player than a mediocre cellist.

[paulraphael]

The dichotomy isn't all that clear to me either. But if a great Neapolitan pizza makes you yawn, I'm left wondering if you've ever had one.

Maybe sex at zero gravity would be better ... but I cant say; I've never had THAT.

[paulraphael]

Ok, I reread your post and think I see where you're coming from.

Sure, I think we all fundamentally like some foods more than other. Or respect that some are more decadent, luxurious, or special than others.

But, if in your personal heirarchy foie gras is above a hamburger, does this mean that even with unlimited resources you'd ALWAYS choose the foie? Would you eat Thomas Keller's or Masa's food three times a day, and your mom's food never?

I think most of us like variety--not just in types of ingredients, but in the style and formality of their preparation and presentation. Even if practical concerns didn't impose this variety on us, i think we'd insist on it.

I share your taste for the thick, super marbled rib eye. I just don't want it every day. Sometimes I crave a roasted chicken, and I want it to be a good one.

[Chris Hennes]

The idea behind this dichotomy seems to neglect the fact that, at least for many of us, variety is worthwhile for its own sake. Certainly, I can think of one or two "best dishes of my life." But I wouldn't want to eat them all the time, to the detriment of anything else! Where do you draw the line, if you're an absolutist? How far down in your rankings of all foods ever are you willing to eat?

[Tri2Cook]

How far down in your rankings of all foods ever are you willing to eat?

I should refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may ruin any small amount of food-related credibility I may or may not have but, in the interest of this scientific survey, I will admit to not being above eating a convenience store burrito despite it being way down my list of quality foods. It's a hold-over from out-of-town weekend kayaking trips where grabbing something quick while gassing up (and then gassing up on that something ) and trying to get home early enough to get some sleep before getting up at 4am for work monday morning was S.O.P. I won't drop down to spam though... I have to have some limits.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Tri2Cook (log)

[snowangel]

And, where just does ambiance enhance or detract from the food? Some of the best meals of my life have been celebrated with not very good food, but the company and atmosphere were beyond compare.

[maggiethecat]

Hey Shalamese --

Interesting topic, although it took me five read-throughs of your initial post to try to make sense of it. It's late, and I may not have sorted it out yet. I'll let alone slk's limited personal knowledge (though genuine) of Italian-American cooking, and I'm all over the place about pizza. I love and revel in many styles and ingredients.

I'm still not sure what absolutist means to do with steak v. Keller chicken. And why does it matter?

Eat what you want, enjoy it, and don't parse the experience to death. I eat what I can afford and do a pretty fair job cooking dinner every night. I'm not comparing my (Excellent, Roman style) pizza to your opinion's and Sam's about what a pizza ought to be. Why would I waste my time or care what you or Sam or anyone else thinks? My dinner is, I suppose, relative to everything, but i don't give a care. And, as I suspect I'm older than you, my early absolutism became exposed as the ignorance and snobbery it was.

Edited September 11, 2009 by maggiethecat (log)

[Fat Guy]

It's not so much that I'm having trouble understanding what Mr. Shalmanese is saying about relativism v. absolutism. It's that I think the preferences he's describing have nothing to do with relativism or absolutism. Furthermore, I can't see any of those arguments being logically derived from the quoted language.

As implied above, the "absolutist" model leads to a reductio ad absurdum: once we identify the best food in the world, in order to satisfy the model you must eat only that food.

The pizza question seems to be a separate one. I don't necessarily agree with any of the above characterizations. The reason a Neapolitan-style pizza or any other minimalist product is appealing is, in part, because it offers the opportunity to taste just a few great ingredients in their most flattering incarnations and, in part, because of the synergy that results from marrying a small number of great ingredients and cooking them a given way. The best crust, tomatoes and cheese, taken together, are greater than the sum of their parts. If you bury all that under a bunch of toppings, you extinguish the ideal. Not that I'm opposed to pizza with a bunch of toppings. But it's not the minimalist ideal.

[judiu]

I think that I am a REALIST. If what I REALLY want is(what passes for) a cheesesteak sandwich (here in Florida), then when I eat it, it will taste better (to me) than the best roast chicken, most succulent ribs, crunchiest Cuban sandwich, or other treat, because it's WHAT I WANT TO EAT. (Sorry for shouting... )It all depends on what my mouth is 'set' for. I rarely allow the pie hole to get 'set' for lobster, for instance, since it's not really in the budget, even at the bargain basement rates lately, but if I get a craving for something like that, nothing else will taste as good.! Good thing we have a Seafood Feast coming up at my club! , but it's not for another week.

[dividend]

I'm an absolutist when it comes to dining out. Left to my own devices, I eat in a restaurant only when I'm making the conscious decision to do so, and at places where I feel that the food is worth the money spent. Never just because I'm too lazy to go home and cook. I haven't eaten fast food since July, and I can't remember the last time I ate at one of those mid-priced chains. Neither of those are worth the money to me. I would rather drive home and make a peanut butter sandwich, or defrost something homemade. Well thought out packed lunches and snacks take the edge off being so hungry I make poor dining decisions during the work week, and good meal planning around each day's time constraints means there's never really a "what's for dinner?" moment. Like today, I go right from work to class, and get home at 9:30. So I brought breakfast, good coffee, lunch, dinner, and snacks with me, since the other option would be one of the mediocre overpriced sit-downs for lunch, or fast food on the way to class. That's an easy choice, even if it did take a bit of time last night to get organized.

I enjoy food and eating out more because of this mentality. Because dining out comes out of my fun money, and I used to hate walking out of a mediocre chain, wishing I could have that money back.

But there is relativism in this absolutism, hinging on how I define whether something is worth the money. That can encompass an expensive tasting menu, or a $6 plate of tacos, and the tasting menu does not have to be 33 times more delicious than the tacos for them both to be worth the money. And sometimes, what I really want is to pay someone else to make me a greasy spoon breakfast with all the trimmings. There's no bright line test. So does that make me an absolute relativist, or a relative absolutist?

[Peter the eater]

Shalmanese, thanks for the challenging question.

After some careful consideration, I'm joining the relativism camp. The only thing absolutistic about food, as far as I can tell, is that you will die if you don't eat it. Everything else is relative.

Is life too short for instant coffee? I think it is not.

[Kouign Aman]

After some careful consideration, I'm joining the relativism camp. The only thing absolutistic about food, as far as I can tell, is that you will die if you don't eat it. Everything else is relative.

Is life too short for instant coffee? I think it is not.

Oh, it is, it is. Its not too short for a caffeine-lack headache (thank goodness for no doz!), but much too short for instant coffee! :LOL:

[Peter the eater]

After some careful consideration, I'm joining the relativism camp. The only thing absolutistic about food, as far as I can tell, is that you will die if you don't eat it. Everything else is relative.

Is life too short for instant coffee? I think it is not.

Oh, it is, it is. Its not too short for a caffeine-lack headache (thank goodness for no doz!), but much too short for instant coffee! :LOL:

KA, I see your point, but I still have to disagree. My first taste of coffee was instant Sanka back in 1984, and it was fine. Of course it's not as good as fresh brewed arabica, but it is what it is, and I still like a decaf instant coffee from time to time.

If I only drank Luwak coffee from Indonesia (unlikely at $160 per pound, plus the fact it's picked out of civet shit from the jungle floor) I would surely grow tired of it, or at least I would become desensitized to it's virtues. All of our sense work on relative basis. Vive la différence!