Personal Taste

[Wilfrid]

Of course, where it all went wrong with art galleries, was providing those perky little head sets, so people could walk around having the pictures explained to them without having to look and to do some work. Now the places are packed to the gunnels, and precious blossoms like me can scarcely move. Call me a snob. Go ahead.

[rich]

People who pay for a meal, much as people who pay to be entertained have the basic right to enjoy the presentation anyway they desire.

To ask people to enjoy something the "correct way" is akin to limiting personal choice. Just because I enjoy a steak rare and my Broadway plays dramatic, doesn't mean I should improse those preferences on anyone else.

I truly don't believe the amount of money matters at all. "Ownership" matters. Once I "contract" for a meal, a ticket, an admission or an item, it's mine to do with as I please (barring violating a law).

Some 225 years ago a minor skirmish broke out over this "thread." And as I recall, a major issue was tea.

[Gavin Jones]

People who pay for a meal, much as people who pay to be entertained have the basic right to enjoy the presentation anyway they desire.

Do you dine frequently at, err, Hooters?.

[rich]

Oh no, I've been outed!!!!!

[Steve Plotnicki]

Rich - That's not true at all. When you buy a ticket for the theater, you can't tell the performers how to sing the songs. They try to sing it the "right way" everytime. You might not like the way they sing it but your only choice is to leave. But you would send a steak back to the kitchen for more cooking or even to get a new one. And if the chef told you that rare is the "right way" to eat it, you wouldn't care.

I have to add to this point that I used to insist on having my meal prepared my way. And sometimes I still do. But I must say that when a restaurant recommends to have the food prepared a certain way, I allow them to make the decision about 95% of the time. In fact, quite often they say they prefer to serve things medium rare and when I ask them to prepare it rare, I find out that it's their preferrence as well, and they chose medium rare as a compormise.

[Wilfrid]

When you buy a ticket for the theater, you can't tell the performers how to sing the songs.

My father used to. So embarrassing.

[rich]

Steve - Obviously when buying a ticket the performers perform "their way." Otherwise your beloved Mets would win every game.

However, if the producers or Met management said to me the best way to enjoy this performance is standing behind in the last row - I might just my skip their recommendation and try something else on my own.

In a restaurant, if the chef says dish is best served cooked a certain way and I don't enjoy my food made that way, I would order it the way I liked or order something else. Recommendations are only as good as the day's starting pitcher.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Rich - But that's the same issue Wilfrid and I are talking about. Where you like to sit at the ballgame and what's the "best seat in the house" are two different things. If we were to stick with baseball and you told me that the best seat in Shea was in the upper deck, top row and last seat near the foul pole, I'd tell you that you are entitled to your opinion but I would also feel on pretty firm ground to say you are wrong. That's an easy one. Then again, calcaulating what the best seat is, is somewhat more difficult. But I'm sure there is a scientific way to take a crack at figuring it out. Field of vision, closeness to the players, where the plays normally take place, left hand vs right hand batters etc. And I'm sure that we would find that what consititues the best seat(s) are a range of opinions. But claerly some opinions wouldn't be valid because they wouldn't meet the criteria.

I think the steak example is no different. You might like your steak well done, but it just happens to taste better when it's cooked rarer because it's jucier. But of course you won't buy into that because you want to argue about the definition of the word better. But if we were to poll 250 chefs in America and ask them what the "right way" to eat steak is, I bet you not a single one of them would say well done.

[Wilfrid]

All correct Steve, but I wonder if I can tempt you another step down that path. A group of American chefs would agree with you, and a group of American groumets. But what about a group of beef eaters from a country where they never eat their meat rare. Now, of course it would be possible in theory to take any one of these people and persuade them, gradually, to try to eat steak another way. But when they tell you it tastes bad when it's rare, are they wrong?

You'll say "yes" of course. I would just say that this is a different community applying a quite different set of rational, shared criteria to the question. And I don't think it's the same as saying that just anyone's opinion is equally valid. I think an American chef, trained in the normal way, and with mainstream experience (sorry, that's a bit vague) - if he or she says that, according to the general standards of the American kitchen and restaurant, rare steak tastes bad - well, they're definitely wrong.

See the difference between us? it's quite subtle, but worth identifying.

[rich]

Wilfred - I agree that a standard becomes such because of the sociological patterns of a specific community. The world "wrong" should never be used regarding an opinion, the term minority would suffice.

When you're adding 2+2 and come up with something other than 4, you're wrong. When calculating Pi to its final digit, you're never wrong when you stop and round off correctly.

I actually used the term "pi" in a reply.

[Wilfrid]

Steve doesn't like pi.

I have no problem with using the word "wrong" to describe opinions, so long as it's understood that one is working within some sort of horizon of rational, shared criteria, rather than making a remark about the fabric of the universe. For example, when someone claims that "Who will buy this beautiful morning?" is the most thought-provoking line to have been written in the English language, they are simply flat out wrong - by any kind of public critical standards regarding English literature, poetry or even songwriting. Of course, it might be their own favorite - no argument with that.

What I will agree though - and Steve won't - is that it's a hypothetical, if extremely remote, possibility that in a different culture or different age, critics applying a set of standards unrecognizable to us might find Lionel Bart to be the supreme master of the English language. As I explained on another thread, a while ago, something similar did happen (rather more plausibly) with Herman Melville.

Wilfrid aka "The Hammer"

[rich]

The Hammer - So what you're saying is that someday, in some hypothetical universe, Mr. Bart and well-done steaks might be considered the best of the best.

I think I agree that I was wrong about having opinions (especially mine), but right about how much 2+2 equals.

Is pie wrong, right or an opinion?

[Wilfrid]

I think I agree that I was wrong about having opinions (especially mine), but right about how much 2+2 equals.

I could even recommend some books on that question - All Things Are Possible by Lev Shestov, Froma Logical Point of View by Quine and Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Philosophy of Mathematics for a start. If you want to call me a pompous ass, go ahead. You won't be the first.

I always thought I could get the right answer to pi if only I had the right tape measure!

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid - Your response serves to illustrate that most of the times we quibble about semantics and nothing else. Because in your example, those people from another country are clearly wrong . And that isn't because you can't construct a rationale that wouldn't make their opinion be valid, it's that their opinion doesn't count. Now as hard as I'm trying to not sound arrogant when I say that, look at it this way. People who keep kosher usually eat their meat well done. The reason being that the laws of kashruth demand that blood be eliminated in the koshering and cooking process. So if you asked a room full of Orthodox Jews whether meat tastes better rare or well done, they are bound to say well done because they don't know any better. And I suspect it would be the same for your group of beef eaters.

But a strict reading of Plotnickiism would say the following. If your group of beef eaters had access to the same meats we have, and didn't have any outside pressure not to eat rare meat, that given the chance to sample all sorts of meats cooked across the spectrum of cooking temperatures, they would conclude that rare is best. As least the discerning palates would. But I would bet that the more we increased the sample group of tasters, the greater the odds that we would end up with medium as the result.

The real question that we are trying to crack is why can't we convince the people that like it well done that a rarer steak tastes better? Why do people so desperately cling to making choice be the most important thing about dining? And I have to add that I am guilty too but in different ways. Look how I haven't overcome my prejudices against game or tackled learning how to appreciate oysters correctly. Yet I think if someone beamed me to Brittany and tutored me I would be quite openminded about it. But few people are like that when it comes to food. Why is the big question.

[hollywood]

But a strict reading of Plotnickiism would say the following.

Forgive me for coming late to the party, but just where is P'ism clearly set forth in one confined space, treatise, etc.?

[Wilfrid]

Well the bit about their opinion "not counting" is arrogant, as you well know, my old monument.

But I am prepared to accept that this is a quibble we have here. What I'd say is that your educational process moves the well-done-beef-fanciers out of their own judgmental context and into yours - just as one might theoretically have tutored the literary critics who despised Melville in the 19th C (for quite plausible, not silly, reasons) into the twentieth century context which made Moby Dick a masterpiece. You need some sort of independent, ur-context to show that one set of criteria is superior to the other. But I don't think we need to get stuck on this again. As to your concluding question, I know what you mean. Maybe it's because eating is something people do day in, day out, unlike reading poetry or going to a gallery. But I don't have a pat answer.

We should meet up in London at the right time of year, and work our way through some feathered game.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"We should meet up in London at the right time of year, and work our way through some feathered game."

I'd rather fancy it was the Loire.

[Wilfrid]

The Loire has many attractions, but Britain really does have better game. Even the French agree. You see, we need to work our way from the different varieties of partridge, up through snipe and woodcock, to grouse, which isn't native to France. A secondary route takes you through wild mallard to teal.

Hollywood, I am to blame for the "Plotnickiism" term, and I coined it around page 19 or 20 of the Expensive/Cheap Eats thread:

"However, and here's where I read Plotnickism (for we must have a term for this innovative school of thought) differently from Shaw: I don't think Steve P. is focussing on demand rather than supply in the sense you and I would understand those terms. I don't think he cares about demand in the sense of how much people in general like and are willing to pay for filet mignon. I really think he's rejecting supply and demand as explanatory of cost, and focussing on intrinsic qualities of the product -"betterness" - which exist independently of subjective opinion, and which can be perceived by an elite of connoisseurs.

It's an opulent theory, and deserves to be beheld in all its purity. It's consistent, of course, with Plotnickism on art, music, and judgment in general. And I do not hold Steve in contempt for his consistency."

In a nutshell, it's all the consequences that follow from the view that judgments - whether in gastronomy, art, or wherever - have a truth value independent of any context, which can be perceived by an elite of connoisseurs. Platonism would be another name for it.

[Robert Schonfeld]

The real question that we are trying to crack is why can't we convince the people that like it well done that a rarer steak tastes better?

So this is where the discussion has gone. Can't keep up with all this.

I think it's true that it can be taught that a musical performance will be better if performed a certain way, or a kind of painting will be better if made or seen a certain way, and that a steak tastes better if eaten a certain way. But in each case, the consumer who resists just doesn't care or doesn't want to work hard enough to learn that particular thing. Exceptions are people who do something a certain way because they believe they have to do it that way such as those eating according to Kashruth. They aren't going to change even if they accept that the meat will taste better rare.

My question is a different one: why do we care? One can impart what one knows to another about a particular Callas performance, or a rare perterhouse at Peter Luger, but, once done, what more is there to do? *You* know Callas will sing it better. *You* know that the steak tastes better rare. You've done your job. What else are we expecting, or hoping for?

And here's another question: if everyone accepted Callas and rare steak to the exclusion of alternatives, what would it mean for those who like Sutherland and medium beef? Would you say that a preference among singers is understandable, but that only rare beef is acceptable? If so, what does this tell us about "palate education" versus (just for the sake of this example), music appreciation?

[macrosan]

We should meet up in London at the right time of year, and work our way through some feathered game

I would love to watch you two play badminton

[Robert Schonfeld]

Sorry. I posted to this topic before reading Steve's stipulation to semantics and Wilfrid's to quibble. Forget it.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert S. - Your post made me laugh in a good way. I think that there are two parts to this argument. One, is there such a thing as the difference between good and bad or is it all a matter of opinion? And secondly, if there is a difference between good and bad, is the answer something finite or is it a range. I think that Wilfrid and I are grappling with the first question, and then you come along and say well even if you can prove your theory in the first question, your stuck with a range because how do you compare Callas and Sutherland. Or really, why do you want to compare them?

I think that I argue against the bundling of those two questions as irrelevent. Because for me the issue isn't comparing Callas and Sutherland, it's comparing someone who can sing opera with someone who can't. The mystery in what we are groping for lies between can and can't sing opera. That's because opera doesn't operate in a vacuum. It's a demanding discipline that you have to *know how to do.* No amount of opinion will make someone who can't sing it be able to. And to me, comparing well done steak with rare steak isn't something that is a matter of opinion, one is good (like being able to sing opera) and one is not (like not being able to.) I just think that since food is consumable, we don't look at it this way but that is what I am arguing should happen. Fershtaist?

[Jonathan Day]

With advance apologies to the board and to Msgr Knox.

There was a young man who said: God,

I don't like liver, truffles or cod.

Yet a friend with good taste

tells me my life's a waste

since my palate's objectively odd.

Said God: what's so hard to believe?

I've got logic tricks here up my sleeve:

If I say something's good,

then enjoy it you would

P.S. Kindly address me as "Steve".

[hollywood]

With advance apologies to the board and to Msgr Knox.

There was a young man who said: God,

I don't like liver, truffles or cod.

Yet a friend with good taste

tells me my life's a waste

since my palate's objectively odd.

Said God: what's so hard to believe?

I've got logic tricks here up my sleeve:

If I say something's good,

then enjoy it you would

P.S. Kindly address me as "Steve".

Touche. More verses, please.

[Gavin Jones]

Steve, I spent some time in Northern Ireland associating with people who'd grown up on small farms - typically with a significant Beef component.

I would ponce around in my London way suggesting rare might be better & even on occasion managed to persuade people to consider (past genuine disgust) that "uncooked" meat might be better than "properly" cooked meat. Never a one.

This was a place where if you went to the local butcher he would name the animal that you were buying off. I still prefer my beef rare but I would now hesitate to force this upon people who had participated a whole lot more in the entire life-cycle of an animal than I aspired to.

And these were people who would drive 15 miles to get the best carrots - no messing they wanted the best food.