NYC Culinary Cultural Fluency

[babka]

I'm reading through the NYC dining threads and feeling quite overwhelmed and curious You have a fluency in talking about food and chefs that's quite foreign to me, a D.C. resident, and I'm struggling to understand its genesis. Yes, New York is a top dining city--but that seems to mean more than just multiplying the number of good restaurants. We've got several chefs here who could easily hold their own against New York's finest, but reading Fat Guy's posts on them, compared to his discussions here, is like reading in a foreign language. I get the words, but I know that I'm cold to their intended nuances.

Apologies if you've already discussed--a forum search on new york dining culture was less than helpful, as you might imagine--but does anyone have any thoughts or pointers? What flows into the ether of New York City food culture?

[Stone]

Perhaps you can quote some examples of what you're referring to?

Fat Guy, of course, is a professional food writer who spends not only an inordinate amount of time thinking about food and restaurants, but he probably also puts more thought and effort into his posts than us lay-people. eGullet also seems to have had hard-core group of New York based posters that that write seriously about the restaurants here. There are, of course, many serious posters in other cities, but due to the way eGullet grew, it seems that New York has more of a critical mass. (The San Francisco crowd has -- or at least had some very serious thinkers.) Also, I think that due to the fact that many New York restaurants get more nationwide and worldwide attention, there is more interest in them, which in turn leads to more significant analysis. Of course, you'll fnd a lot of in depth coverage on eGullet about "national" restaurants elsewhere in the country, such as French Laundry, of course, Trotters and Trio. There are certainly many posts with in depth analysis of El Bulli in Spain and Fat Duck in England.

Edit -- when I first read the title of this thread, I thought it read "NYC Culinary Cultural Flatuency."

Edited March 4, 2004 by Stone (log)

[babka]

To take two current examples--the JG thread makes several leaps from the basic 'facts' of the restaurants to their broader context through a discussion of the role of innovation and of stasis in cooking. The Oceana thread jumps off the food to a discussion of fine dining definitions, expectations, and measurements.

maybe that's what's so striking--you frequently start with the facts on plates, and then you use those facts as a springboard for the broader dynamics of food and chefs and all things good and gustatory. And while that _is_ much of egullet's mission? goal? purpose? the New York threaders appear better at it than the rest of us regionalites, and I've frequently heard New Yorkers do the same in person, at length, and wondered at it.

That might stem from self-selection of the hard core new york crowd--but I wonder how the city plays back into nurturing that crowd, with its myriad of print, online, and personal mirrors to the food world there intensifying examination and discussion....

does that make any sense?

Edited March 4, 2004 by babka (log)

[Stone]

Oh. I think you've simply discovered the fact that New Yorkers are smarter than people in the rest of the country. I mean, after all, the others haven't moved to NY.

(I am reminded of a night when the extended family was sitting around watching America's Funniest Home Videos. My cousin, from St. Louis, observed, "you know, you never see New Yorkers on this show.")

(Yes, I'm only joking.)

[Bux]

Before I answer your question, can I ask if it's a good thing or bad thing in your mind.

It makes some sense, but I'm not completely sure I understand what you're seeing or sensing. At the base of all this, there's an appearance of obsession. Am I correct? I was about to make some comparison to the obsession of sports fans, but DC hasn't got any obsession-worthy teams, does it? I think the level of interest and involvement is not unlike that of a sports fan or opera fan and I am sure there are afficianados of other endeavors.

I'm glad you think we're better at it rather than afflicited with it.

[babka]

I was thinking less along the lines of obsession and more along the lines of a grand, ongoing school, but however you say tomata...

at the base of it, I'm seeing restaurants as a source of food for the tongue and the brain, and I'm trying to figure out how the latter got so thoroughly wedged in there. A friend once hypothesized that it had something to do with the minescule size of NYC apartments--difficult to host dinner parties at home, so restaurants became the salon. The NYTimes must help tremendously in pushing the brain/food conspiracy, together with other local papers/writers I don't know of....does the radio there do this as well?

(and no, we don't have any obsession-worthy sports teams to speak of....sigh. my local liquor store guy just told me that he didn't carry any tobacco advertising because he played soccer and thought it was just wrong--and hadn't I seen him on television?)

edited b/c I scanned the oldest egulleters thread:

Maybe the longetivity of new york restaurants also spill into this mix. In the midwest (my original home), many of us grew up on a looonnnnggg frugal history of eating out only on special occasions, when you ordered the cheapest prixe fix and got one glass of wine for the entire meal. dessert was once in a blue moon--maybe you'd split something and have cookies at home. not sure what you all did during the Depression, but I don't think it scarred your culinary development in quite the same way.

Edited March 4, 2004 by babka (log)

[plpcolumbia]

I live just outside of DC and I enjoy reading the NYC dining threads much more than the DelMarVa threads.

Part of my fascination with the NYC dining scene is that for the past 6 years as a Christmas present my sister has gotten me a gift certificate to a wonderful Manhattan restaurant. I've been to Aureole, Gramercy Tavern, Gotham Bar and Grill, Daniel, Babbo, and most recently Craft. My wife and I have wonderful meals at all these places.

Compare these restaurant to a high end DC establishment like Citronelle. I just ate there last month and thought the food was excellent, but I don't experience the same buzz or excitement as I would if I were getting ready to dive into the pasta tasting menu at Babbo.

DC has great places to eat, but if it's a special occasion and I'm looking for a transcendent dining experience, count me in as part of the B and T crowd that's headed into the City.

[Bux]

The depression? I guess I'm not the oldest one here.

I don't know where you grew up in the midwest. Chicago is a great restaurant town. I think it may be a big city thing. Restaurants, by and large, are probably a city product supported by urban density. Life in the great midwest may not have been so different from Long Island or Upstate NY. As for small apartment kitchens, you may have something there. I've heard the same thing about Paris. Kitchens there can be smaller than NY kitchens. Urban housewives in France have great resources for already prepared foods and baking is something that's almost always purchased from a professional.

At the same time, my own history is of our having to chose between the two of us eating out or entertaining a bunch of friends for the same money. We didn't eat out a lot when we were young. I mean younger. The lure of restaurants and of fine restaurants came from traveling and not having the choice but to eat out. It also came from magazines we bought for the recipes. I recall reading old Gourmet magazines. We bought them for the cooking information, but I remember reading articles about the great restaurants in France and that contributed to the bug. It also started me thinking of restaurants as a subject to take seriously as the authors took these places seriously--and in France, chefs and restaurants were taken seriously. I think of the NY Times as inadequately covering the dining scene in NY, but that again may be symptomatic. What an outsider sees as terrific coverage, isn't satisfying enough for me. If one is used to less attention to dining in the media, my focus may seem surreal. Then again, I don't know that many in NY who really share it. What you read here, may not be a typical cross section of the population. So the question may not be about the average citizen, but that you don't find the same degree even in smaller numbers elsewhere. I don't know. I spent enough time here to think I was normal until you came along.

[Christopher]

I was about to make some comparison to the obsession of sports fans, but DC hasn't got any obsession-worthy teams, does it?

When the house chaplin routinely says a prayer for the Redskins in the well of the senate.

When the score of the Redskins game appears above the title of the Washington Post.

When once a season D.C. prepares for Dallas Week

When the most common bumper sticker is Redskins, Love 'Em or Leave Town

When elementary school kids are taught Hail to the Redskins

That a man rises to the level of Senator on the strength of his father's name and his father is The Redskins coach for the ages.

Well then, I think you have a sports obsession. Not even the subway series came close the the fervor that grips Washington during the football season, although it has been muted since they moved the games out of the city proper.

As for the worthy part ...?

And now, back to the food.

[Bux]

I have to admit I'm not a major pro sports fan. If a team doesn't play in a series with a Roman numeral, I may never hear of it. The last thing I recall reading about the Redskins was that they left town. I didn't realize it was just for the suburbs.

[mags]

I think New Yorkers have a history of incorporating restaurants -- and people's choice of restaurants, and people's choice of what to order in restaurants -- into a broader social context. Village coffeehouses, Le Pavillon, La Cote Basque, Elaine's, Ratner's, kosher dairy restaurants, Katz's and "send a salami to your boy in the army," pizza joints, the importance of not ordering pastrami on white, whether Lindy's sells more cheesecake or apple strudel...they've all been powerful carriers of meaning and symbolism in the city for as long as I can remember, and a lot longer than that.

Why that should be so, or more so than it is in some other cities, I'm not sure, although I think Bux is onto something in suggesting that it has partly to do with population density. I think it might also have something to do with various ethnic and social groups staking out identities, and doing that in part through food, such that you recognize "your people" in part by where they eat and what they order when they go there. A dear friend of mine grew up on Long Island and now lives in Westchester, and the class diference between the two of us is underscored every time he tells me that he went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered egg rolls and shrimp with lobster sauce and lo mein. That stuff is delicious, no question, but -- to my mind, at least -- it's also a clear class-marker; your upper-middles moved past kung pao chicken a few decades ago.

I'm not sure whether eating habits are such strong cultural markers in other cities. And I wonder whether the fact that they are so strong in New York is a function of people's needing to make clear cultural statements in a city with so many cultural identities screaming for attention. All of which is to say that for at least some New Yorkers, I think, talking about food is a kind of shorthand way of talking about other things, so the transition to those "other things" becomes very natural.

You raise a really good question.

[slkinsey]

Babka, I think this has to several things...

First, New York is, as you may well imagine, a gigantic city. This means that one is almost always able to find a fairly large group of people who share even a relatively obscure interest. What this means is that people like Steven and Bux and me and et cetera are able to accumulate a decent sized circle of friends who like to talk about food, and certain aspects of cuisine, to the same degree that we do. This element, I think, is not to be underestimated. For example, compare New York with Washington DC as others have done in this thread. Washington is by no means a small town, but consider the following: The population of NY as of 2000 is 8,008,278. The population of DC as of 2000 is 527,059. NYC is roughly fifteen times the size of DC. This means that, assuming that the culture of both cities is exactly the same, there would be fifteen intellectual foodies in NYC to every one in DC.

Second, of course the cultures of various cities in the States is not the same. For a variety of reasons, NYC is the "cultural and high art capital of America." This is to say that we have more arts institutions, more leading arts institutions and a more highly developed art culture than any other city in the US. This goes from places like the Lincoln Center entities (Metropolitan Opera, NY Philharmonic, etc.) and Carnegie Hall to the Museum Mile entities (Met Museum, Gugenheim, etc.) and similar cultural institutions to Broadway and Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway (etc.) to the SoHo galleries to the Fashion industry to the Publishing industry and so on. People with a professional or strong personal interest in these things tend to gravitate to New York, and as a result we tend to have a higher percentage or people who like to analyze and talk about the subjects that interest them much the same way they might talk about the theater or a sculpture or a piece of literature. Similarly, I am sure that many discussions and ways of looking at things common to Los Angeles are influenced by that city's position as the center of the television program and movie making entertainment industry.

Going back to the earlier comparison, what this means is that there will be more like one hundred intellectual foodies in NYC to every one in DC. In my own personal experience, conversations like those used as examples in this thread are not all that unusual. This is not to say, of course, that there aren't plenty of great things about other cities in the US and plenty of great reasons to want to live in them -- nor that there aren't plenty of bad things about NYC.

All that said, however... to be honest, I think that the effect you have perceived on these boards is more due to the fact that users like Fat Guy, Bux, etc. happen to live in NYC. Now, it may be the case (and indeed I am making the case) that NYC generally has more of this type of person than other American cities. But if it just so happened that these members lived in, say Portland -- and I am sure that such people are to be found there -- you might be saying the same thing about discussion in the PNW forum.

[slkinsey]

A dear friend of mine grew up on Long Island and now lives in Westchester, and the class diference between the two of us is underscored every time he tells me that he went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered egg rolls and shrimp with lobster sauce and lo mein. That stuff is delicious, no question, but -- to my mind, at least -- it's also a clear class-marker; your upper-middles moved past kung pao chicken a few decades ago.

Ah... except that it's making a comeback, at least at Grand Sichuan International Midtown, it is.

[bpearis]

Restaurants are intrinsic to the NYC lifestyle. We have tiny kitchens with crummy appliances, it's easier to eat out and have myriad choices at our fingertips. I know tons of people who have never used their stove. Going out to eat, trying new places, it's just what many of us do. I also think living here brings the food-lover out of us.

As far as the size of DC, you have to figure in that most people who consider the Nation's capital their home live "just outside of DC" -- Arlington, Bethesda, etc. That adds a lot of people to the mix. But it's still much smaller than NYC.

Edited March 4, 2004 by bpearis (log)

[afoodnut]

A dear friend of mine grew up on Long Island and now lives in Westchester, and the class diference between the two of us is underscored every time he tells me that he went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered egg rolls and shrimp with lobster sauce and lo mein.  That stuff is delicious, no question, but -- to my mind, at least -- it's also a clear class-marker; your upper-middles moved past kung pao chicken a few decades ago.

Ah... except that it's making a comeback, at least at Grand Sichuan International Midtown, it is.

mags,

As an "old timer" who grew up in NY, but left as a young adult, I just want to add that egg rolls, shrimp with lobster sauce, and lo mein were the dishes on most NY Chinese menus in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. Those dishes were not necessarily an "upper-middle" choice, rather, what was on the menu. The restaurants were primarily Cantonese influenced, not Szechuan influenced (I'm using the word "influenced" to avoid getting into an "authenticity" debate). Kung pao chicken and the like weren't much available before the Szechuan restaurants started opening in NY in (I think) the '70's. I became aware of those differences when I first visited San Francisco in the 60's, and discovered Szechuan Chinese food, which I had not seen in NY.

edited for punctuation and clarity.

Edited March 4, 2004 by afoodnut (log)

[slkinsey]

As far as the size of DC, you have to figure in that most people who consider the Nation's capital their home live "just outside of DC" -- Arlington, Bethesda, etc. That adds a lot of people to the mix. But it's still much smaller than NYC.

Well, yes. But if you start figuring in "just outside of NYC" (a.k.a. "metropolitan New York") then NYC gets even more outlandishly huge in population.

[Fat Guy]

That might stem from self-selection of the hard core new york crowd--but I wonder how the city plays back into nurturing that crowd, with its myriad of print, online, and personal mirrors to the food world there intensifying examination and discussion....

It's interesting to see your perspective on this, because I find myself having to fight an uphill battle anytime I want to write anything intellectually challenging in the food press. I can only think of one thought-piece I've done for a food magazine or newspaper food section, and I rarely see such pieces coming out of the New York-based media. My opportunities for higher-level expression about food have been limited to online, non-food magazines, and my forthcoming book. And it's not for lack of trying -- I pitch tons of stories to the food press and routinely have them rejected ("That's too controversial/advanced/nobody-will-read-it, but can you give us ten hot new trends in dining for Summer 2004?"), only to be published elsewhere (and even sometimes to garner Beard Award nominations or other recognition that helps me to believe what I wrote wasn't completely stupid).

In other words, yes we have a lot of restaurant reviews and a lot of food coverage in the New York Times, New York Magazine, et al., but is there really anything remarkable about it in terms of social-criticism or related intellectual content? To me, the answer is no. After all, the dominant restaurant "review" source in New York is the Zagat survey -- the most intellectually barren and lowbrow system ever designed for evaluating restaurants.

[mags]

A dear friend of mine grew up on Long Island and now lives in Westchester, and the class diference between the two of us is underscored every time he tells me that he went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered egg rolls and shrimp with lobster sauce and lo mein.  That stuff is delicious, no question, but -- to my mind, at least -- it's also a clear class-marker; your upper-middles moved past kung pao chicken a few decades ago.

Ah... except that it's making a comeback, at least at Grand Sichuan International Midtown, it is.

mags,

As an "old timer" who grew up in NY, but left as a young adult, I just want to add that egg rolls, shrimp with lobster sauce, and lo mein were the dishes on most NY Chinese menus in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. They were primarily Cantonese influenced, not Szechuan influenced (I'm using the word "influenced" to avoid getting into an "authenticity" debate). Kung pao chicken and the like weren't much available before the Szechuan restaurants started opening in NY in (I think) the '70's. I became aware of those differences when I first visited San Francisco in the 60's, and discovered Szechuan Chinese food, which I had not seen in NY.

edited for punctuation.

Actually, I was trying to think of why What to Order in Chinese Restaurants seems like a class-marker to me. I THINK it might be because the greater, or over-arching, class-marker may be the extent of interest in the New. Lord, I'm sounding like a bad sociology textbook! What I mean is, upper-middle-class culture in NYC has, through my lifetime at least, been characterized in part by both a constant search for new experiences that haven't yet been glommed onto by the hoi polloi, and by a passion for "authenticity" -- i.e., the opposite of a mass-produced experience, whether that experience involves food or jewelry or theater tickets. We signal our superiority by the singularity of what we buy.

At the same time, lower-middle-class culture (at least in NYC, and at least in my experience) has as one of its hallmarks something of a disdain for the new and singular, and a powerful attraction to continuity. My pal is in his early 60s, and, like you, he grew up eating egg rolls and chow mein in Chinese restaurants. (I started going to Chinese restaurants in the late 60s and early 70s, so for me, the Chinese food of childhood was sort of on the cusp of the egg rolls years and the ensuing cold sesame noodle era. ) Today, he chooses to recreate the food experiences of his childhood, while I am on an eternal quest for dumplings that only three other people know about, made according to a centuries-old recipe from a tiny village in Fujien. I suspect we're both a little loopy, and I'm not suggesting that one set of choices is better than the other, only that the choices tend to indicate more than just a momentary preference for egg rolls over The Undiscovered Dumpling.

The Undiscovered Dumpling. I may have found a signature line.

[picaman]

What flows into the ether of New York City food culture?

One small thought--in general, people eat out far more often in this city than they do in just about any other city in America; at least that's my perception. That might contribute.

In other words, there are an awful lot of people who don't do an awful lot of cooking. But they do eat a lot of well-prepared and varied meals on a regular basis.

Jamie

P.S. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Fat Guy]

I'm sure somebody has collected precise statistics -- perhaps the National Restaurant Association? -- but I'm not under the impression that New Yorkers on average eat more restaurant meals per week than those in many other cities. Rather, I think there are some differences in how those meals are distributed: first, New Yorkers are taking a much higher percentage of their restaurant meals in non-chain, individually distinctive restaurants; and second, there exists in New York a substantial class of people for whom dining is a hobby/obsession -- I doubt that group is all that large in terms of raw numbers, but neither is the number of seats in 2-4 star restaurants and it's probably the largest collection of such people in the US by far.

[slkinsey]

Steven, that is a very good point about the type of restaurant normally visited by New Yorkers.

I was initially questioning your assertion that NYers are roughly equal with the rest of America in terms of restaurant visits per week, but when one figures in all the stops at McDonald's and their ilk I can see how the numbers might be roughly equal. On the other hand, if one compares non-chain, non-fast-food restaurant visits per week, I am sure that NYers are well above the national average. And this may contribute to a certain cultural literacy among NYers in terms of eating out, because let's face it, one is not likely to have a lot of interesting conversations about what the new chef at Applebee's is doing with the fiesta lime chicken (although I can imagine some spirited debates on the merits of the McRib sandwich).

How often do you suppose that the average middle to upper-middle class NYer eats out per week?

[Fat Guy]

I don't have a 2004 Zagat survey handy, but for 2003 the average participant dined out 3.5 times per week. That's probably a good indicator of what upper-middle income New Yorkers who are into restaurants are doing.

The National Restaurant Association said the national average was 4.2 meals per week in 2002 (http://www.restaurant.org/rusa/magArticle.cfm?ArticleID=138) but of course the methodology could have been different.

[slkinsey]

Right... it all depends on what you are counting. I mean, the National Restaurant Association may be counting breakfast at BK as a "restaurant visit." When I think about it, I eat out more like 7 times a week, because I buy all my lunches in midtown during the week. But personally, I don't consider those five lunches "dining out" and wouldn't report them as such unless they were at a "real restaurant."

[babka]

In other words, yes we have a lot of restaurant reviews and a lot of food coverage in the New York Times, New York Magazine, et al., but is there really anything remarkable about it in terms of social-criticism or related intellectual content? To me, the answer is no. After all, the dominant restaurant "review" source in New York is the Zagat survey -- the most intellectually barren and lowbrow system ever designed for evaluating restaurants.

lots of good points throughout here that I'm chewing over...many thanks.

re: coverage, though--

Could the NYT do more and better? yes. But looks to me like it's already operating in a world quite different from most of the rest of the country's food coverage, which, as discussed eons ago in the CJR food porn thread, still operates as the harried housewife's column without the housewives. The de facto leap in most food and restaurant articles today is either towards saving time or towards novelty.

In the Times, I think the de facto leaps tilt towards culture and method/science. Restaurants have histories in its pages, and the development of dishes/NYC cuisine can be traced from chef to chef. Even time-saving recipes, like Bittman's, or novelty columns, like in the magazine, frequently draw their actual content less from shortcuts and trends and more from traditions/stories/methods of preparation that happen to sound quick or novel now. Doesn't that function as some sort of mirror for the restaurants and foods ya'all know and discuss? Or are they still way off-base?

Zagat's schmats--it's a more useful yellowpages, and I'd like to think that it's treated as such. Please don't disillusion me.

I can only think of one thought-piece I've done for a food magazine or newspaper food section, and I rarely see such pieces coming out of the New York-based media. ...And it's not for lack of trying -- I pitch tons of stories to the food press and routinely have them rejected ("That's too controversial/advanced/nobody-will-read-it, but can you give us ten hot new trends in dining for Summer 2004?"), only to be published elsewhere (and even sometimes to garner Beard Award nominations or other recognition that helps me to believe what I wrote wasn't completely stupid).

fat guy, I think "thought" pieces are hard to pitch in any environment (until and unless you've got a pulitzer, in which case you're probably okay). In my world, it's much easier to pitch a "facts/trends/change" piece, get it accepted, and then, um, happen to leap off into the thought rhealm from those facts. For me, after some struggles, that's actually turned out to be a useful discipline....but I'm not working anywhere near the food-writing world.

[Fat Guy]

Could the NYT do more and better? yes. But looks to me like it's already operating in a world quite different from most of the rest of the country's food coverage

The Times is extremely well funded, and is able to hire some of the best writers available and support them with all the resources they need to get the story. So there is a qualitative edge to the Times food section that nobody else can really touch. But I don't see that quality-of-reporting aspect translating into a quality-of-thought phenomenon. If anything, the self-imposed trend at the Times has been one of dumbing down in order to appeal to the mass market: Nigella Lawson? Hesser's magazine pieces on dating? No question, there's some great stuff in the Times food section, and it operates on a level far above that of the old-school home economist, but I'm not seeing the intellectual rigor, the culinary cultural fluency -- especially not in restaurant coverage. Nor do I see it in the dining coverage in New York Magazine or Gourmet -- overtly or implicitly -- save for perhaps some of Hal Rubenstein's work, which is some of the only New York restaurant reviewing right now that exhibits the culinary cultural fluency of which I think you're speaking.