Becoming "well dined"

[Jonathan Day]

Topic proposed by Robert Brown

The art form of our time, the final years of the twentieth century, has been the preparation of food. What the sonnet was to Elizabeth's London, the Lied to Schubert's Vienna, the easel painting to Impressionist Pontoise, the movie to the Nineteen-Thirties; that, to many of us, is the meal.

--Charles Shere, in the foreword to John Whiting's Through Darkest Gaul with Trencher and Tastevin

Not so long ago, only a tiny part of the populace paid much attention to where they or others dined. An interest in food was considered eccentric at best. One could become cultured and well-travelled without having any deep knowledge of the food or restaurants in the places one had visited.

Today, however, restaurants -- experiences, opinions, comparisons -- are a prime discussion topic. We size people up according to where they have recently dined. We view someone with respect if she can tell us the place to dine in Madrid or Venice, or if he knows the best little pizza joint in Brooklyn.

Society has always passed judgments about people being well-read, well-travelled or well-dressed. But it now has added, for better or worse, a concept we might call "being well-dined", referring both to international gastronomic travel and to deep familiarity with the restaurants in one's home town.

Being well-dined could be part of being cultured, or it could be thought of in the same breath as being self-indulgent. Some questions we might discuss in this thread:

• Is demonstrating knowledge of and interest in restaurants and chefs an effective shortcut (as wine can be) to appearing sophisticated or cosmopolitan? Do most of the people cultivate an interest in food do so for this reason?
  Unlike interests that engage the intellect more than the body, does the need to sate one’s appetite lessen the legitimacy of becoming well-dined?
  If you consider yourself well-dined, do you feel at all guilty about the time and money it has cost you to achieve this status? Could the resources you have devoted to travelling to restaurants, purchasing books about food and restaurants (not to mention participating in eGullet) have been better spent in pursuit of high culture: reading great books, listening to recordings, going to museums, theatre, the opera or the symphony?
  Can we consider someone cultured who is ignorant of history, literature, architecture or the visual arts, but deeply knowledgeable about restaurants and gastronomy?
  Conversely, can one really understand New York, London, Paris or Milan without having some grasp of the culinary traditions and the top restaurants in these world cities? Is becoming well-dined an essential part of a person's cultural development?
  Generally speaking, then, is becoming well-dined a worthy goal if it is at the expense of missing out on more cerebral forms of enlightenment, or is the cost of becoming well-dined worthwhile in and of itself?
  

[vengroff]

One of the benefits of being a member of the middle class is that one can generally afford one of more avocations. I don't see the choice to spend one's excess time and income on becoming "well-dined" as that significantly different from any of the myriad of other pursuits one might choose.

Fire up your favorite web search engine and I'm sure you can find subcultures who are just as devoted to model railroading, officiating amateur sports, souping up classic hot rods, scuba diving, or playing in amateur string quartets as any eGulleteer is to fine dining. Are these people bothered by the time and money they devote to their chosen hobbies? I doubt it. Do they feel socially superior to others? Some do, but most probably don't. They are simply taking advantage of their socio-economic position to pursue endeavors that interest them and give them pleasure. I'm not sure why the well-dined should feel any different.

[Deacon]

One can be "well-read" for very little money: there are plenty of used bookstores where a person can buy the great works of literature, history, philosophy, etc. very cheaply. A person can go to a museum on a "free admission" day, buy secondhand recordings of symphonic music, and see free performances of Shakespeare. You can be an autodidact for very little in money, although it's still a time-intensive door to a classical education.

However, I don't think there will ever be a comparable approach to being "well-dined" as opposed to "well-read." Everyone's self-educated in this hobby, and eating at places like ADNY and Daniel is expensive. Trips to Europe are even more expensive. No one's giving out gourmet food to educate the masses. Yet.

[robert brown]

Deacon, I meant to put forth the notion that a person can be well-dined without necessarily dining in Europe or the expensive restaurants in America. I consider Calvin Trillin and Jane and Michael Stern well-dined and they never admit to eating anything other than what has been called "prol food". eGullet has many well-informed and ardent eaters (perhaps even yourself) who spend a lot of time researching and going to "de rigeur", but not necessarily expense places. Trying to determine the best pizza in New York or fried clams on Boston's North Shore is all part of the pursuit to become well-dined.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Deacon, I meant to put forth the notion that a person can be well-dined without necessarily dining in Europe or the expensive restaurants in America. I consider Calvin Trillin and Jane and Michael Stern well-dined and they never admit to eating anything other than what has been called "prol food". eGullet has many well-informed and ardent eaters (perhaps even yourself) who spend a lot of time researching and going to "de rigeur", but not necessarily expense places. Trying to determine the best pizza in New York or fried clams on Boston's North Shore is all part of the pursuit to become well-dined.

Becoming "well dined" as Robert Brown defines it is very expensive, and is not attained by eating "prole" food. Hence the well meant, but ultimately futile, attempt above to avoid the 'elitist' arguments that have dogged so many similar threads.

Generally, "well dined" is far closer in meaning to "well dressed" than to "well read". One thing that should be made clear about "being well dined" is that it has no real connection with satiating hunger. Just as Armani shirts aren't worn to keep us warm. It forms part of a treat mentality; in which we consider ourselves worthy and deserving of the, often absurd, expense. We can continue this parallel with fashion; both are ostentatious, superficial, a way of asserting a believed superiority and are arguably non-essential. However, there is a cline on which we can place individual diners including ourselves: at one end, there is the intrepid individual on a personal quest for culinary knowledge and on the other, the bragging collector of expensive experiences who hears but doesn't understand.

To conclude, it may be that while an interest in the culinary arts is to be expected in a cultured individual, it doesn't follow that this interest or a furtherance thereof, is a condition of being 'cultured' any more than who designs your clothes.

[JAZ]

Oh lord, you guys aren't asking much, are you? But here goes:

"Is demonstrating knowledge of and interest in restaurants and chefs an effective shortcut (as wine can be) to appearing sophisticated or cosmopolitan? Do most of the people cultivate an interest in food do so for this reason?"

Of course it can be (question #1). But do most people cultivate an interest in food for that reason? I don't think so. That is, as with any popular cultural form, some people will pretend an interest, or cultivate a limited interest to seem cool (one of my all time favorite movie food scenes was when Steve Martin was trying to get reservations at "L'Idiot" in L.A. Story). But with most of the people interested in food, it's like any other "cultural activity"; about half are really interested in the activity for its own sake, and the rest will try to parlay their probably limited interest and knowledge into some kind of social prestige.

"Unlike interests that engage the intellect more than the body, does the need to sate one’s appetite lessen the legitimacy of becoming well-dined?"

Okay, now's where you need to bring Professor Korsmeyer into the discussion.

"Can we consider someone cultured who is ignorant of history, literature, architecture or the visual arts, but deeply knowledgeable about restaurants and gastronomy?"

No. Being "cultured" entails at least a passing acquaintance with a majority of the various arts. You can consider someone who is ignorant of history, literature, architecture or the visual arts but deeply knowledgeable about restaurants and gastronomy a fanatic (in the benign sense of the term) but not cultured. And, no, I don't expect everyone "cultured" to have a broad and deep knowlegde of every art form known to mankind. But I think the term "cultured" can only be applied to those who know at least a little about a number of fields. Someone who knows "everything" about jazz musicians but nothing about literature, architecture, food, wine and painting wouldn't be called "cultured" -- why should we award that term to the gastronome with no other interests or knowledge?

"Conversely, can one really understand New York, London, Paris or Milan without having some grasp of the culinary traditions and the top restaurants in these world cities? Is becoming well-dined an essential part of a person's cultural development?"

Well, no (in answer to question #1). Culinary history and tradition is crucial when trying to understand a culture. But does one have to dine in the country to get a grasp on a country's culinary history? No. It helps, certainly. But one can read, and if one is lucky, one can visit ethnic restaurants.

"If you consider yourself well-dined, do you feel at all guilty about the time and money it has cost you to achieve this status? Could the resources you have devoted to travelling to restaurants, purchasing books about food and restaurants (not to mention participating in eGullet) have been better spent in pursuit of high culture..."

Well. I'm not sure if I count as well dined, but of course I feel guilty about the amount of money I spend on food. But JEEZ, it's not because I think I shoud spend that on symphony tickets; damn, I should spend it on feeding the poor or fighting cancer or something. I mean, I'm not rich by any means, but I look at my books and CDs and my expensive kitchen ware, and yes, I wonder about my priorities. My concern, thoug, is not about the relative weight of cultural amenities; it's about the value of "cultural amenities" at all given the state of the world.

[Tonyfinch]

The notion that being well dined is a relatively new concept is a myth. Social history tells that the ruling elites in all societies have always placed great importance on feasting and banqueting.

Contemporary accounts of meals in Ancient Rome, Medieval and Elizabethan England, Pre Revolutionary France and so on tell of incredibly lavish feasts ,with dish after dish of incredibly complicated and labour intensive recipes and huge amounts of food that would make today's well dined person look like an anorexic.

Curnosky's account of his hunting weekend,recounted in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, shows that the 19th Century French bourgeoisie were eating three rich and elaborate meals a day and that pleasure and leisure at table were considered the primary purpose of most upper class social gatherings.

In the backwash of both Communist and Fascist revolutions the puritanical left and right may have considered "well dinedness" to be an example of bourgeois decadence, but these days inceased wealth distribution has led to :

1) A decline in the number of people employing servants to cook for them in their own homes

2) A larger number of people with the disposable income to spend on goods other than the bare neccessities, including food.

Both factors have led to the rise of restaurants as a major element in Western social life, but when it comes down to it all that's happened is that what was always available to the few is now available to far more.

[macrosan]

Let me say initially that while I think the primary questions are of value, I dislike the optional answers provided by Robert. I agree with Michael Lewis's view that gastronomy may be compared with couture, but I find no validity of comparison between gastronomy and literature, or art, or indeed any cultural pursuit.

Of course people become gastronomes for as many different reasons as people read books. For pleasure, for interest, for education, for enlightenment, for lack of other things to do, and for pereceived status. We all know people whose conversation revolves around how well-read they are, and of course some of those can quote hundreds of "serious and important" books and authors without being able to quote a single idea from any of them. Such people read by the yard, but they don't understand. Similarly with gastronomy, there are people who "collect" the restaurants they have visited for no other reason than that they want everyone to know they have done it. Those are the braggarts, and I find such people relatively harmless, but unimportant.

The idea that gastronomy can add to an understanding of the culture is really stretching a point. To understand French history and culture, it may indeed be of some small value to know how and what the French ate and eat. But the thought that eating at Alain Ducasse or Arpege is desirable to achieve that understanding is patently ludicrous. Far better to eat at a small bistro in Montreal or Marseilles, one would have thought

Michael Lewis raises the spectre of elitism, and he is right to say that elitism (the definition with the denigratory connotations) is at the heart of the questions posed by Robert.

Perhaps this is most evident when considering the gastronomy of wine rather than food. The history of the manufacture of wine has generated a mystique which has been carefully fostered by wine buffs. This is not to say that oenology is not a valid subject of interest, nor to say that it is not a worthy hedonistic and intellectual pursuit. But at the end of the day, wine is just another drink which happens to be able to be produced with many variations. But I can think of no other field within gastronomy whcih is capable of so much esoteric discussion (although perhaps truffles come closest).

All of this makes oenology an ideal pursit for elitists. A wine buff need not explain or justify his statements in terms which can be understood by anyone other than another wine buff. Oenology has its own unique language. It is all too easy for an elitist oenologist to say "This is better because I, an avowed expert, say it is better. You, a non-expert, cannot understand this unless and until you join our ranks. Until then, you are not qualified to express a view, and nor are you worthy of further explanation from me."

That is not, of course, to say that all wine buffs take that position, nor that the position is in itself invalid. But it does raise a suspicion in the non-expert's mind that there may be an elitist context to the pursuit. That same suspicion certainly surrounds the whole field of gastronomy.

Robert's final question starts with "Is becoming well-dined a worthy goal ... ". I ignore the qualifications, which I think are not meaningful. But the answer to this part of the question is a simple "No". For me, becoming well-dined is not a goal at all. It is the process of fine dining that provides me with pleasure, and interest. There is no goal or objective that I am attempting to reach.

[Jonathan Day]

No one's giving out gourmet food to educate the masses.

Not so. The French and Swiss governments do exactly this.

Key "semaine du gout" (week of taste) into Google, and have a look at some of the sites that come up. There are national, cantonal (Swiss) and departmental (French) "taste weeks" every year, mostly in the fall.

I have translated the set of objectives for "taste week" from one of the French sites (click here).

• Educating and training consumers (in good taste), especially young ones
  Developing the taste of the largest possible number of consumers, in every good category
  Producing and developing quality foods
  Offering information, creating transparency and developing knowledge within the general public about the origins of foods, their production and their quality
  Promoting eating behaviours that lead to a balanced lifestyle (un mode de vie équilibré)
  

The activities in "taste week" are planned both for adults and children. Here is one example of a workshop recommended for children:

• You can help children learn to recognise and classify foods by their dominant flavour. For example, you could use the following foods:
  • Acid: rhubarb, lemon, vinegar, green apple, gooseberries, pickles...
    Bitter: cucumbers, frisée salad, endive, grapefruit, gentian flower...
    Sweet: lump sugar, strawberries, cherries, brown sugar, ice cream, melon, cake ...
    Salty: bread, salt, Gruyère, Parma ham, Roquefort, sausage, salted butter...
    

Present the foods you have chosen, as a tasting for the children. Let them see you preparing the tasting: cutting up foods and arranging them on plates. Before they taste, be sure to let them know the categories into which they will be classifying flavours.

Other workshops are prescribed for adults.

I realise that I have shifted the focus from "restaurants" to "taste", but developing sensitive and thoughtful taste is also part of "being well dined", a part that does not require large expenditure.

[Louisa Chu]

But it was Nazi General von Cholitz - entrusted by Hitler to destroy Paris - who defied final orders reduce it to rubble, some historians say because of his love for the culture.

I agree to a degree that being well-dined, etc. does not necessarily make one more compassionate but it certainly can - especially if we expand the parameters to include the common food of the common people - which has often evolved to haute cuisine. It's interesting to me to have dish such as escargots in a grande palace restaurant, but more so with the vineyard workers who picked snails for sustenance and transformed them with soul. I think the latter kind of experience is much more important in the pursuit of becoming well-dined - and to a better understanding of the resilient people who create iconic cultural cuisine.

[Busboy]

The whole myth-of becoming "well-dined" (let us please kill this phrase now) is a status marker put down by today's so-called "Bourgeois-Bohemians" -- the hyper-intellectual, hyper-competive elite that, outside the gentry in the Bush Administration, runs the world -- to elevate themsleves above the old-line bluebloods they overthrew and the vast proletariat they pretend to respect.

At the upper end, partners, developers, art diectors and financial giants wield their knowledge of the Micheline galaxy and the hot cuisine of the moment in the face of the tired "old-economy" types who made AT&T a giant and dined on steak medium well and martinis, warning them off with the message that "there's a new world now, and we're in charge, gramps."

At the lower end, academics, activists, 1st-year associates and their ilk fall back on their taste for doro wat, goat curry and sweetbreads as evidence of their superiority over the teachers, skilled blue-collar workers and mid-level managent who share their income bracket.

Od course they -- by which I mean we -- can't appear to revel in pure snobbery. That's what the generation they replaced did, with their country clubs and white shirts and debutante balls. So the "bobos" couch their dining preferences in a vocabulary that implies a superiority, in intelligence, taste and global sophistication, and ramble on about that 3-star in Paris or the new "authentic" Peruvian spot down the street.

As with the elaborate banquets Tonyfinch mentioned, too often it's not about the food, it's about status.

[Tonyfinch]

I sense an assumption lurking behind this topic: ie. a "cultured" person is a "better" person.

It is this assumption that has led people to agonize over how the German people could have produced Hitler given that Germany was the land of Beethoven and Goethe and Schiller and so on. As if being well read, or well "musiked" or well dined etc. somehow leads automatically to greater understanding, compassion, tolerance etc. for one's fellow man.

The Nazis ,of course, were very well dined. As they slaughtered their way through Europe they acquired the finest wines, dined on the finest foods, stole the finest art.

It is an enormous myth that being "cultured" equates to being "civilized" if we judge "civilized to mean the way we treat our fellows.

Therefore being "well dined", well read, well dressed etc. may be fun, and they may be ways to pass the time or to stimulate us intellectually or sensorily, but ultimately they are only ends in themselves and bear no relation whatsoever to any moral or ethical standard by which we may assess and value ourselves and others.

[Jonathan Day]

Owing to an error on my part, Tony Finch's last post appears later than it should have ... it was originally just after my earlier post and just before the post by "loufood".

I inadvertently deleted Tony's original post while cleaning up a duplicated post. Tony has kindly reposted it, but because of the way the system works, there is no way to restore the correct order. Apologies to all.

[John Whiting]

Wow! Things have happened since I was active here. Let me start by saying that I left, not in a huff or in disgust, but in a panic. When not travelling around France, I've been locked in my study committing journalism.

I haven't read all of the above with care, and, with another publication deadline looming, I haven't time to post a considered response. But I will add the thought that, while eating may not be inherently superior to trainspotting, one qualitative measure of an activity is the writing it inspires. By that standard, food -- even more than wine -- has given us an enormous body of literature on a very high level.

In fact, the aesthetic pleasures attached to cuisine are one of the great unifying forces across the boundries between disparate civilizations, and some of the best writers in all languages have chosen to explore this cohesive influence. The very fact of "fusion" cookery as practiced for centuries is an indication of the cultural bonding that results when people are able to stop fighting each other and start feeding each other.

Someday, I hope, even belicose American politicians will again appreciate the preeminence of the native Iraqui date.

[Jonathan Day]

being "well dined", well read, well dressed etc. ... are only ends in themselves and bear no relation whatsoever to any moral or ethical standard by which we may assess and value ourselves and others.

Completely agree with this.

However, holding other qualities equal (the social/ethical/moral development of the individuals concerned), would you not say that "being well dined" could be an important element in one's cultural development, similar to being exposed to great architecture, literature, paintings, sculpture, music, etc.? Note that "being well dined" could refer not only to the highly refined world of the 3 star restaurants but also to simpler and older dishes, the connections between sea and farm and table, and between the cycle of the year, driven both by the seasons and by religious observances, and the foods people eat.

[Deacon]

No one's giving out gourmet food to educate the masses.

Not so. The French and Swiss governments do exactly this.

I didn't know about the French and the Swiss. And I had forgotten, in my earlier post, that in summer and in winter many otherwise-expensive NYC restaurants offer three or four course meals for the year in pennies ($20.03 this year). That amounts to a partial scholarship for those who want to become well-versed in fine dining.

[it aint easy being cheesy]

Just for clarification one does have to know what a society eats to understand it. Its one of the most fundamental ways societies are different and similar. It also shows different social classes, development, history, on and on. Whether one must eat at the upper levels is debatable. But to understand or study a culture one must have a grasp of its cuisine. Both high and low.

[Gavin Jones]

But to understand or study a culture one must have a grasp of its cuisine. Both high and low.

Just so. Though whether understanding culture translates into "cultured" is another matter.

Similarly with drinking which has such a central role in many cultures. How can anyone claim to understand the various cultures of the British Isles without the experiences informed by the near-universal form of the Pub?

And that is why becoming "well drunk" is a key step on my path to becoming cultured.

How can anyone claim to understand the various cultures of the British Isles without the e