“But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from...the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.”
J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)
I often dwell on foodie dreams that I’ll probably never fulfil during the working day and, naturally enough, these tends to permeate my sleeping dreams and I sometimes wake up from nightmares about bitter coffee, not being able to pay the bill and, worse of all, running out of chocolate. In these instances I receive glimpses of the true priorities of my disturbed/disturbing psyche. One such dream woke me up Thursday morning.
I was out in a shopping mall and spent some time spent browsing a bookstore (naturally enough the cookery section, as is wont).
In this dream, I had recently purchased a nearby coffee shop and wanted to go check the place out. The employees of the shop were unaware of the new ownership and so I entered anonymously. I approached the counter and ordered a “large coffee”. As anyone au fait with the modern coffee shop scene knows, this was not appropriate. The Yuppie movement of the early 80’s saw the rebirth of the beatnik coffee shop. With the rebirth came the introduction of Yuppie style pretension. The result is that now when you enter one of these establishments you must order a Vente café latte with a triple shot of espresso and biscotti on the side.
As I had digressed from the preferred modus operandi, I was refused service. I argued that I was just looking for a plain cup of black coffee. I was eventually served my coffee and a sandwich and sat down within earshot of the counter. I could hear the trendy college kids talking about how square I was and it was clear that they knew they were on the cutting edge of all things new and hip.
I finished my food and drink and walked over to the window to put up a HELP WANTED sign. The employees said, “Hey, man, what are you doing to our window?” I said, “advertising for help.” They looked perplexed and it was at this point that I revealed I was the new owner and they were all fired.
This dream is probably a reflection of my own aging process and an awareness that I am definitely not cool and hip anymore. It also speaks of a desire to get my own back on the people who are now “cool” and “hip”. The way I interpret this dream, however, is as a social commentary on the pretensions that have become an accepted part of the “foody” culture.
I found the book American Psycho highly tedious, but it paints a good portrait of the young professional movement that leached all the charm out of music, architecture, art, literature, and, for our purposes, food. The yuppie predilection to put form before function made the process of going out to eat thoroughly un-enjoyable for just about anybody outside this elitist subculture. The funny thing is, it was definitely for the best. Thanks to the ridiculous demands of the yuppies, most people now have access to better ingredients from all over the world. Elizabeth David famously wrote that the only place to get olive oil in England in the 1950’s was from the chemist as it was considered only usable medicinally, but in 2023, in the middle of the Essex countryside, I need only walk half a mile to buy tapenade, plantains, chorizo, or wasabi powder.
So now the playing field has been levelled and even an entry-level cook can obtain specialist ingredients, good quality produce, and organically reared meats. The result is that we should all be eating better, palates should be more sophisticated, and cuisine should be the last domain of the socialist state. But wait! Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen, a new wave of pretentious food snobs are trying to erect the barriers again. These people are trying to use food to create a glamorous lifestyle for themselves. They are the people you see on Instagram reels or TikTok for whom entertainment is about making a big impression and getting a ton of likes rather than camaraderie, companionship, and communion.
There’s nothing wrong with 30 second meals made from a bunch of random ingredients, but not at the expense of enjoyment. Nobody wants to be a guest at a dinner party where the host is in the kitchen filming their every move and crying because they only got 5000000 views.
I miss the days of Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Ina Garten, Keith Floyd, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Anthony Bourdain; I still get guilty pleasure from watching Delia Smith because I secretly enjoy being patronised; and although I became irate with Gary Rhodes for all his poking, patting, and prodding of the food on the plate, I can’t fault him on the strength of his recipes. The truth of the matter though is that my lifestyle more closely resembles Homer Simpson than any of these picture-perfect foodies.
A few years ago, we went to see Keith Floyd live in Bury St. Edmunds. During the Q&A session I asked what his favourite culinary experiences were during his trip to America. He answered, as I predicted, that southern food is the most closely associated with proper cuisine. Anybody familiar with the region will tell you that while the various cultures in the South have never managed to fully integrate, at least the flavours have. Soul food, Cajun, Creole, Caribbean, African, and European have all emerged and mingled into a new and timeless melange. The strength of this cuisine is the fact that it hasn’t lost touch with its’ humble origins and the great thing is that the lifestyle gurus haven’t seemed to take notice yet. The food probably isn’t clean enough, healthy enough, or hip enough for culinary groupies. I hope it stays that way.