Category Archives: Contemporary Food Culture

When Words Fail

20 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Food History

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falling-lettersWhat did the wines that stimulated conversation in Plato’s Symposium taste like? Or the clam chowder in Moby Dick, the “brown and yellow meats” served to Mr. Banks in To the Lighthouse? Or consider this repast from Joyce’s Ulysses:

Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Lovely.

But we shall never understand the peculiar attractions of this food, because sensibility is a matter of habit and habits are seldom articulated clearly. They are so familiar we don’t bother to reflect on them or explain them. But even if Bloom had engaged in “mindful eating”, I doubt that Joyce, despite his prodigious talents, had the vocabulary to capture in words the virtues of grilled mutton kidneys with the “tang of faintly scented urine.” We are just not very good at talking about taste. The history of sensibility cannot be written.

Of course, we have recipes (or sketches of recipes) from the past and can reconstruct meals from historical accounts, as some chefs are attempting to do. But recreating a recipe is not the same as recreating the sensibility that created the recipe. That is lost forever unless it can be described in words. The ancient Greeks were known to cut their wine with a bit of sea water. We can, if we want, easily duplicate this drink, but we probably cannot discover what they found attractive about it. Whatever peculiar bit of mental processing created a preference for this is forever lost. (And perhaps well lost)

The best we can do is rely on imagination. Reading a cookbook or a wine review is primarily an exercise of imagination. Paradoxically, our inability to precisely describe flavor, and our dependence on imagination to fully experience it, means that all writing about food and wine must be evocative and hyperbolic because it must compensate for the thinness and unreliability of our taste memories and concepts.

Sometimes this tendency jumps the shark.

Napoleon of Sourdough Brioche, Artisan Cheddar and minced, aged Hereford, garnished with a Preserve of Cucumber and Dill, and finished with Heirloom Tomato Coulis.

Basically a cheese burger with fancy plating.

20th Century Philosopher and food historian Jean-Francois Revel savages this sort of writing:

Indeed, the function of this toplofty jargon is to disconcert and thereby create the illusion of originality, a more facile solution than the honest execution of tried and tested recipes

According to Revel, fancy food and fancy food descriptions fail as a source of memory and cover up the real source of flavor in commonplace food traditions.

But the difficulty when one  explores the past (and even the present) lies in appreciating the difference between silent cuisine and cuisine that talks too much, between cuisine that exists on the plate and the one that exists only in gastronomical chronicles. Or else, to state the matter in a different way, the difficulty lies in discovering, behind the verbal facade of fancy cuisines, the popular, anonymous, peasant or “bourgeois” cuisine, made up of tricks and little secrets that only evolve very slowly, in silence, and that no individual in particular has invented.

Revel thinks the traditions of family cooking are necessary for culinary innovation. It is where much of the real work is done, not in the palaces of fine cuisine. But Revel’s very useful history, Culture and Cuisine, was written in 1979, well before the Internet, the Food Channel, and celebrity chefs made expertise widely available thus influencing “bourgeois” cuisine. I doubt family cooking still plays the essential role Revel assigns it.

Fancy food may sometimes be soulless and vacuous, but when done with conviction and genuine creativity it stimulates the imagination. Without imagination there is no flavor.

Words fail as representations but words do more than represent—they move the heart and cause the mind to take flight.

Cultural Appropriation and Moral Worth

13 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, The Ethics of Eating

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padma 2Sophie Gilbert’s review of Padma Lakshmi’s new exploration of American cuisine, called Taste the Nation, identifies the central issue of any discussion of the ethics of food.

Lakshmi’s flirtatious manner, her unquenchable glamour, allow her to Trojan-horse Taste the Nation’s true intentions for viewers who might be expecting a vaguely patriotic travelogue through America’s most iconic meals. What she’s offering instead is one of the most fascinating food series to emerge in recent years: a ruthless indictment of how a nation’s cultural heritage has been constructed out of the people and traditions that it has consistently and brutally rejected….. But what becomes clear through the series’s 10 episodes is how distinctly American cuisine encapsulates a paradox, in which dishes made by immigrants are quickly appropriated as national staples while the people who make them are rejected over generations.

We incorporate so called “ethnic foods” into the mainstream of American cuisine, and then betray and traumatize the people who created the food. Without the food of enslaved and colonized people, American cuisine would be a bland and colorless land of pot roast and mashed peas.

I’ve always been skeptical of the view that there is something inherently wrong with appropriating the artifacts of other cultures. Cultures are not hermetically sealed, homogeneous units with fixed borders and clear boundaries. Because of the movement of populations, cultures have always mixed and exchanged cultural products, and today’s world of hyper-connected communication makes it impossible to preserve a pure cultural essence unsullied by the influence or appropriation of “outsiders”.

Culture doesn’t “belong” to anyone—it isn’t something you can own.

But if you are going to use the cultural products of others you owe them something in return—respect. You have an obligation to learn how they used that product, what it means to them, and most importantly to accept and honor their worth as human beings. That isn’t too much to ask, but Americans have always failed in this task and it is why our democracy is failing.

Food Rules and Authenticity

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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mostlyreal_thumbCooking is an art mired in tradition. Each nation has its food rules encrusted with the patina of age, and each region within each nation has its way of doing things that seem natural and “right”. Violations of “food rules” are met with moral indignation and contempt.

In Italy, the food rules say grated cheese is never added to seafood, oil and vinegar is the only proper salad dressing,  and coffee is never consumed during a meal. In France, salad is always eaten after the main dish, never before, ketchup is not a condiment for pommes frites.  Even in the “anything goes” United States, beans are part of a chili recipe only in certain regions of the country; and do not eat Carolina barbeque in Texas. [The rules are of course routinely violated—the food police carry no weapons.]

But of what value is authenticity when defined in terms of these rigid norms? Does it matter if these rules are followed or broken?

“Food rules” ignore the fact that all food traditions have been influenced by outsiders. All food traditions are a hybrid hash of influences thrown together by the movement of populations and the imperatives of trade. For instance, neither tomatoes nor polenta are native to Italy. Tomatoes and corn were brought to Europe from the Americas.

Whatever “authenticity” means it cannot mean pure or unadulterated.

Authenticity is not about origins but about the commitments people make and what those commitments reveal about their sensibility. There is a reason why tomato sauces marry nicely with pasta and why a tomato served with olive oil and basil is heavenly. Tomatoes may not be originally Italian, but Italians have done wonderful things with tomatoes. They committed themselves to tomatoes, discovered how they resonate with their local ingredients, and now there is a certain way with tomatoes that is uniquely Italian.

So should we just throw out the food rules?

I think not. It’s good that food rules exist because they set the table for innovation—they define the standards that innovation must meet. Food rules say: “If you want to violate this tradition it better be good.” Without tradition, innovation is just novelty.

However, anyone who is just a slave to tradition and rigidly conforms without entertaining new ideas is violating the very identity of living traditions—their ability to be affected. What makes traditions great—and this is certainly true of Italian food traditions—is their capacity to seamlessly absorb new influences.

Tradition and authenticity are not opposed to innovation–they depend on it. No tradition can remain alive if it does not innovate by accepting and transforming influences from abroad.

So if you’re dying to try miso polenta or achar-spiced pancakes. Go for it. You may be creating the food rules of the future.

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Alder Yarrow Jumps the Shark (Part 3)

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

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wine and food pairingI have one more post in me trying to navigate the logic of Alder Yarrow’s trashing of wine and food pairing. After arguing it’s a sham because pre-modern European cultures didn’t indulge and then arguing its all subjective anyway so why bother, he gets to what I imagine is the motivation behind the whole piece—he just doesn’t get much satisfaction from pairing food and wine.

But what about those lightning strike moments, those organoleptic epiphanies that rock your world when you taste the perfect wine with the perfect dish and the heavens open and the choir sings?

They don’t really exist. Not really.

Do people have great experiences drinking a wine they love with something delicious they’re eating? Of course, that’s why we all eat and drink and pay for the good stuff when we can. But for more than 25 years I’ve been eating at some of the world’s top restaurants and getting wines paired by some of the world’s best sommeliers, and I can tell you that the times a particular combination of wine and food specifically selected by a chef and sommelier (or other non-professionals including myself) resulted in a sum greater than the parts can be counted on the fingers of one hand. With some fingers left over.

At this point we really are getting into the realm of subjectivity.  Curiously, instead of leaving matters there he insists that not only does he not experience the thrill of a good pairing—he claims they don’t exist, for anyone I suppose. But since there are many, many apparently rational people who think they do exist there is obviously an explanatory hurdle here. Are the rest of us delusional?

Lurking behind the foot stomping and hyperbole, however, there is a good point. Food and wine pairings sometimes don’t succeed. I too have eaten at some of the world’s top restaurants and I usually purchase the pairing. Some restaurants do a better job than others. Some are just going through the motions; others take it seriously. For those who take it seriously they still produce something beautiful only about half the time in my estimation. The rest are usually acceptable but not noteworthy. There is an argument to be made that such a ratio of success isn’t worth it. For me it is. YMMV. If the wine is good, part of the fun is figuring out why the pairings work or don’t work.

I suspect there is a bit of an expectations game going on. When pairings work they are harmonious and interesting because the wine and the food pull something out of each other that would not be highlighted without the combination. Is that an epiphany that “rock’s your world” or opens the heavens? No. It’s more of a quiet beauty—the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of taste are fun to explore without the fireworks.

What I don’t get is why he thinks the interest in food and wine pairing is harming the industry. Wine is more interesting because it creates synergies with food. How is making wine more interesting harmful?

I think what is harmful is the idea that wine and food pairing is easy and can be mastered by knowing a few rules. It isn’t easy. It requires a lot of experimentation and a thorough knowledge of ingredients. And there no rules. There are a few guidelines that are useful to keep in mind. But it you think that’s all there is to pairing you will of course be disappointed. Generic pairings are, well, generic.

Once again we get the wine populist’s manifesto—wine is too complex and people are intimidated by it. If we just simplify it people will ditch their cocktails and weed and return to wine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Young people are turning to cocktails because it turns out there are lots of interesting flavor combinations available now that mixologists have learned to be imaginative and creative. Wine too is interesting because of its variations including the variations possible when paired with food. Subtract the complexity from wine and you have a commodity like orange juice or milk.

Good luck trying to sell that for $50 a bottle.

Here are links to part 1 and part 2.

Alder Yarrow Jumps the Shark (Part 2)

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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my head hurtsI’m still recovering from the brain cramps I get when trying to fathom the point of Alder Yarrow’s claim that food and wine pairing is a sham because it violates the norms of pre-modern Europe. (My Part 1 is here) But I will soldier on because the mid-section of his post trots out the hoariest of canards from the wine populist’s bag of treats. Taste is all subjective, he claims, so there is no point in making recommendations on what to eat or drink. Need I point out that this is coming from someone with thousands of wine reviews under his belt. What is the point of wine reviews if taste is subjective?

Here’s the offending introductory passage:

Contrary to the impression conveyed by “authoritative” tasting notes and numerical scores from experts, not to mention what you might see MS candidates trying to do in movies like SOMM, science increasingly suggests that the experience you have when tasting a wine is uniquely your own.

Science shows nothing of the sort.

He goes on to provide the usual liturgy of variables that influence what we taste—biological differences in our sensitivity to chemical compounds, the complexity of saliva, the influence of environment, price, and reputation, the company you’re with. These are all well-established influences on what we taste; those are the facts. But the conclusion that taste is purely subjective simply doesn’t follow from these facts.

Yes, we are all unique in our biological constitution. But the differences are typically not large and there is a great deal of overlap in our sensory equipment. There is simply no evidence that people vary widely in their natural ability to taste. We are dealing with statistical norms here, tendencies, not absolutes. This is why recommendations from genuine experts are worth heeding—they are more or less likely to be useful. We know from the wine trade that a wine scored in the mid-90’s by Parker, Suckling and the Wine Spectator is likely to be worth drinking even if you think the score is inflated. There obviously is no guarantee. There are exceptions and all of us have our idiosyncrasies. But the idea of a normal distribution of preferences and sensitivities describes most of us most of the time and no scientist would tell you otherwise. Despite our differences most people like chocolate and think Petrus is worth drinking. Most people will find Chardonnay is better with lobster than Petite Sirah.

The exceptions can be starkly salient. If you’re really sensitive to brett you will find Chateau Beaucastel disgusting. If you can’t smell pyrazines you will find Sauvignon Blanc boring. To some people cilantro tastes like soap.   A super taster sensitive to bitter compounds may not be able to handle espresso. But these are on the tails of the curve. In other respects, these same people will fall into a normal range. (And don’t ignore the word “range”. It is a range and degrees matter)

People with talent and experience who seek to provide guidance about food and wine pairings are speaking to what is likely to be appealing to most people most of the time. They are assuming statistical norms. What else could they be doing? Sometimes they will miss—by definition since statistical norms are averages. That doesn’t make wine and food pairing a sham. It makes it more or less useful, and when it isn’t, not something to get worked up about.

What does get me worked up is this bullshit about taste being subjective. Yarrow claims that all this pressure to seek quality food and wine pairings is harming the wine industry—it’s all just becoming to complicated. I’ll tell you what will ruin the wine industry. The belief that wine tasting is subjective. Everyone in the wine industry from winemakers, to wine retailers, to wine critics, to consumers are in the business of making quality distinctions about wine. If wine quality were wholly subjective there would be no reason to listen to anyone about wine quality. Wine education would be an oxymoron; quality control an exercise in futility; wine criticism just empty talk; price differentials based on nothing but marketing.

That is not a world anyone reading this blog should welcome.

Alder Yarrow Jumps the Shark (Part 1)

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

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food and wine pairingI usually admire Alder Yarrow’s writing. But last week he published a screed entitled “Food and Wine Pairing Is Junk Science” that is a very strange amalgam of insight, non-sequiturs, and nonsense.  The insights are worth thinking about and the nonsense is worth flagging, so I think I will devote some time this week to commenting on his post. For today I will just deal with his introduction that wastes no time in getting to the nonsense.

Like the endless stream of lousy paintings sold at garage sales, or the ceaseless arguments for why climate change isn’t real, the supposed principles and rules of food and wine pairing are nothing more than bad art or junk science. Holding food and wine pairings up as the apotheosis of the gustatory experience does far more harm than good — both to consumers and to the wine industry — because it turns wine from something universally simple and essential into something special and specialized that requires knowledge and skill to fully appreciate.

And that, my friends, is a sham of epic proportions.

Enjoying wine with dinner has been one of humanity’s greatest pleasures since forever. So how in the world did it end up being a source of panic attacks and the fodder for hundreds of books and scores of useless smartphone apps?

The first sentence I agree with wholeheartedly. Principles or rules for food and wine pairing are nonsense. Food and wine pairing is not science and “principles” or “rules” have no place in art or food and wine pairing. Any generalization you make about what goes with what will be subject to so many exceptions that formulating the pairings one enjoys as an embodiment of a rule is a non-starter. So no disagreement there.

But then the post just goes off the rails. I’ll get to food and wine pairing as the height of gustatory experience in a later post. But the idea that taking it seriously is a sham because it takes something simple and turns it into an activity requiring knowledge and skill is preposterous.

He rightly points out that throughout most of history, people consumed the food and wine they produced locally, and there was no choice to be made about what to drink. You drank what was available. This is still true within those cultures in Europe that have an indigenous wine tradition.

Fine.

We no longer live in a world where choices are so limited, but traditions die hard and If people prefer to limit their choices and keep it simple there is no harm in that.

It does not follow that people who prefer to make considered choices about what to drink with their food are engaged in a sham. Consider this analogy. Since early humans began making sounds in ordered sequences, music has been part of the communal lives of ordinary people. Folk music, most of it reasonably simple, has always expressed the feelings and aspirations of a people and hopefully will continue to do so. People get together to play music and it doesn’t much matter if the music is good or not—it knits their community together via bonds of shared sentiment.

It does not follow that Beethoven or Coltrane are engaged in a sham. Jesus, that should be obvious. (Yes, I know. I’m comparing wine and food pairing to musical fine arts. I’ll address that in a later post)

Traditions are admirable and it’s lovely that Yarrow feels drawn to the simplicity of “if it grows together it goes together”. (That sounds a bit like a principle doesn’t it?) But why on earth are the rest of us subject to criticism if we don’t prefer that simplicity? He claims such a concern is harmful to the wine industry. Again, a topic for another day.

For now I will just wallow in this certainty that if it was good enough for a 19th Century Lombardian peasant, it’s good enough for me.

Will the Restaurant World Survive?

30 Monday Mar 2020

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restaurant workersFood world icon David Chang, owner of several restaurants including Manhattan’s Momofuku Noodle Bar,  was interviewed in the New York Times Magazine about the threat to the restaurant business from the coronavirus. It’s not a pretty sight:

…I do not want to incite panic and hysteria, but I think for restaurants and the service industry, there is going to be a morbidly high business death rate. My fear is the restaurants that survive are going to be the big chains, and we’re going to eradicate the very eclectic mix that makes America and going out to eat so vibrant and great. And there is a lot of feeling that even in good times, if chefs can’t make their numbers, they’re going to lose everything, so imagine what they must be feeling now. When the economy is booming, it’s hard for restaurants to get loans from the bank because there’s no assets to back them. I don’t know if it’s going to be feasible for the government to give out a stimulus loan to a restaurant or restaurant groups the way they were able to do in 2008 to the auto companies. So I’m trying to figure out what the best way is. The government should give a greater bailout package to real estate owners so that there can be relief for restaurant owners. It has to move up the chain.

To save the restaurant business we would need immediate income support to last for months for ownership, chefs, and top talent extending all the way though the supply chain. I don’t see this happening. As Chang points out “There’s a lot of successful chefs I know who have five to nine days left of money. And then what do you do? I don’t know.” And of course the situation for restaurant staff is even more dire.

I hate to be pessimistic but I think Chang’s worst fears will be realized. For the next couple years, even once we have the virus under control, for most people, going out to eat will mean heading to Olive Garden.

We’re all wondering when life will return to something like normal. For far too many people, even if they survive with their health intact, the world they inhabited a month ago is gone.

Of course, eventually we will rebuild and prosper. It’s important to remember that the modern world with its marvelous technology, copious freedoms, and extraordinary wealth was built from the rubble of two world wars and a great depression.

There is hope but one needs to look to the horizon to find it.

Timing is Everything

26 Thursday Mar 2020

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tasting at the wineryAs state and local governments order people to stay home to limit the spread of the virus, toilet paper and canned goods are not the only items people are snapping up. Wine sales at wine shops are soaring and large, highly-distributed wine brands are struggling to keep wines on the shelf.

Meanwhile, small wineries that depend on restaurants and on-site sales are trying to figure out how to survive. The question on the mind of  everyone  in the wine business is what will things look like on the other side when we get the virus under control.

I’m no economist so I won’t speculate but on matters of wine economics The Wine Economist Mike Veseth and Silicon Valley Bank’s Rob McMillan have already started to tackle that subject.

Rob McMillan went so far as to offer a tentative prediction about when things might open up:

Timing of an end is the most difficult to predict, but I have a current operating guess.

  • The CDC has worked with Major League Baseball to predict a tentative date for the opening of the Baseball Season and has come up with May 10th. Obviously, that’s not set in stone.
  • While I know this virus is different compared to the common flu (See Johns Hopkins comparison of the two), there are many similarities. The CDC also reports that flu season normally peaks between December and February, with activity at times lasting as late as May.
  • Finally, we are seeing South Korea and China having success flattening their curves and they are now restarting their economies. Both went through a period of about 4 months to work through this, and if that holds true for the US, that would put us in May when we do the same. So for scenario planning, I am coming up with the end of May as the expected case date we open tasting rooms and restaurants again.

Hmmm. I’m not so sure about this. According to most epidemiologists, even if we succeed in reducing the transmission rate of the virus, we are likely to see waves of resurgence until we get a vaccine or reach herd immunity. Even assuming a seasonal reduction when the weather warms up as with the flu, a possibility most experts are uncertain about, with the lack of immunity in the population, as soon we stop the social distancing, the virus might well go on the rampage again. We are likely to be playing whack-a-mole with the damn thing for many months.

Under such conditions, are people going to be willing to repopulate restaurants and tasting rooms? Unless we have comprehensive testing abilities including antibody tests and massive contact tracing to spot outbreaks before they take off, many people will be reluctant to resume their social activities. Our capacity for testing thus far doesn’t give me much confidence in that scenario.

Of course, as we saw last week with the beach hordes on Spring break, some people will throw caution to the wind in order to have their parties. Maybe there will be enough of them to make opening tasting rooms and restaurants worthwhile.

I think I won’t be joining them.

Covid 19, Christmas Ponies and the Taste Revolution

23 Monday Mar 2020

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christmas ponyThere are many tragedies unfolding as covid-19 ravages the planet. With the massive loss of life and livelihood up ahead, this is not among the worst outcomes, but given my interests it nevertheless saddens me when I think about it. Independent wineries, restaurants and their employees are going to take a big hit. That’s a lot of skill, imagination and determination gone to waste. I’m sure the chains and commercial wineries will survive by doing what well- financed firms with market power do. But it will be hard for the little guy to survive in a business as tough as the restaurant business or the artisan winery business.

No one knows what society will look like on the other end of this. There are too many contingencies to make predictions. But the food and wine revolution that has transformed the taste landscape in the U.S. over the past 50 years may well be over. It was driven organically by creative individuals with drive, courage, and an idea. But it was enabled by upper middle-class wealth and a global consciousness open to new influences. I suspect both will be in short supply in the near to middle future.

I hope I’m wrong. Maybe in 18 months with a successful vaccine in hand, the innovation economy will come roaring back with investment capital thrown around like confetti and consumers flush with government checks and a new job.

Please might I have a pony for Christmas?

The Future of Meat

24 Monday Feb 2020

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cultured meatIn 2013, Mark Post, a professor located in the Netherlands, created the first burger made of cultured meat. The meat is produced in a laboratory by culturing animal cells and growing strips of muscle from them. The meat is then put on a scaffold that moves in a way that stretches the muscle thus simulating the movement of a developing living animal.

Apparently this concept is getting close to commercial viability.

Cell-based meat (also known as cultured, cultivated, slaughter-free, cell-cultured, and clean meat) could be a common sight in supermarkets across the west in the next three years, according to the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto. California-based Memphis Meats made headlines for its world-first cell-based meatballs four years ago, and is currently building a pilot plant to produce its cultured beef, chicken, and duck on a bigger scale – with plans to launch more plants around the world.

Lab meat can be produced using almost no greenhouse gas emissions, very little land, and half the energy it takes to raise conventional livestock. It needs few antibiotics and eliminates animal suffering. What’s not to like?

We will have to overcome the “yuk” factor. But it isn’t fake meat; it’s the real thing. We use cultures to propagate seedless fruit. Why not manufactured beef?

As this article points, out there are  several companies across the globe racing to scale up production at a reasonable price. One company, Future Meat Technologies, “hopes to get the cost down to $10 per lb. by 2022.”

We should probably take the timing of this with a grain of salt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a radically new technology get off the ground on the time scale predicted by its ardent enthusiasts. Nevertheless, there is money pouring into this nascent industry and the concept has already been proven. It’s only a matter of time before “lab meat” becomes a dinner table staple.

If I were a cow I’d be very concerned about future employment.