I was forwarded a link to an article from GOOD today on Twitter. The article is part of the Food for Thinkers series on the site, and in its own words sounds like the most tired brand of navel-gazing.
Food for Thinkers is a week-long, distributed, online conversation looking at food writing from as wide and unusual a variety of perspectives as possible. Between January 18 and January 23, 2011, more than 40 food and non-food writers will respond to a question posed by GOOD's newly-launched Food hub: What does—or could, or even should—it mean to write about food today?
But I like words, and I enjoy good writing, and y'all know I really like food. So despite my trepidations based on the piece's title, I read on.
The post is titled "The Rise of White People Food," and those last three words are conspicuously capitalized. The author, Morgan Clendaniel, goes on to describe the emergence of a type of culinary expression limited to people of ample quantities of both liquid assets and smugness.
The post is titled "The Rise of White People Food," and those last three words are conspicuously capitalized. The author, Morgan Clendaniel, goes on to describe the emergence of a type of culinary expression limited to people of ample quantities of both liquid assets and smugness.
White People Food has nothing to do with the relative melanin level of the person eating it. ... White People Food does, however, have a lot to do with money. Are you wealthy enough to afford cuts of [insert farm name] [insert special breed of pig] slow poached in [insert another farm name’s] [insert special type of milk] served with greens from [insert urban rooftop garden]? Then you are eating like a White Person. Do you feel really good about yourself while you’re doing it? Then you are a White Person.
Clendaniel goes on to assail a number of foods and techniques that are "White People"-centric. Making jam is White. Referring to tapas by the size of the plate on which its served is White. Sharing a table with strangers is White. Kale is White.
Grandmas make jam and pickle things (another target of Clendaniel's wrath); are they smug White People? Because the balloon Clendaniel hopes to puncture is this apparent smugness, this sense of superiority that he attributes to people who value things like the Eat Local movement, or heirloom vegetables, or who God forbid enjoy a meal in Brooklyn now and then.
After "What's this guy's problem, and is he serious?", there are a couple questions that came to me as I read the post:
Yes, there is an argument to be made that popularity kills innocence. And I'm fully in the Bourdain camp that believes Alice Waters, with her frequent obliviousness to scale or tact, is a terrible spokeswoman for the locavore crowd. But those positions are different from the thesis that the entirety of the locavore school of thought is fraught with masturbatory tone-deafness.
From the very first beat, this article hints at the phenomenally popular website, Stuff White People Like. With that in mind, a thought (I would never presume to issue a Cardinal Rule) on snide humor. The first person to make a snarky, disparaging, or self-deprecating joke--if it's done well--can be credited for the wit. The second feels cheap, a thin laugh. The third, or fourth, or fifth reveals the meanspiritedness and bitterness at its core. Not only that, but it revels in it.
Plus, there's a delicious irony in Clendaniel bemoaning the tendencies of writers in major metropolitan areas focusing on this so-called "White People Food," when there's an expanse between the coasts that appears to go unnoticed in this whiny critique. ("I would challenge the reviewers... Push the envelope a little. We'll follow," he simpers.)
And with the choice of .is as the domain for GOOD's website (making every URL begin with the declaration "GOOD is..."), one wonders whether Clendaniel notices he's writing for a would-be tastemaker.
Race, ridicule, anti-urbanism, and a complete lack of self-awareness. For writing online, these are essential amino acids for buliding what the professional wrestling world calls "cheap pop." You shout the name of the city you're in just to get the crowd cheering, or insult its most famous feature to get them angry. This article smacks of the latter, and for accusing the majority of the food world of smugness, Morgan Clendaniel sure seems certain he's right about all of us.
What's the word for that, again?
Grandmas make jam and pickle things (another target of Clendaniel's wrath); are they smug White People? Because the balloon Clendaniel hopes to puncture is this apparent smugness, this sense of superiority that he attributes to people who value things like the Eat Local movement, or heirloom vegetables, or who God forbid enjoy a meal in Brooklyn now and then.
After "What's this guy's problem, and is he serious?", there are a couple questions that came to me as I read the post:
- Why stigmatize a way of eating for its perceived class-based inaccessibility--thus making it easy to discount as ridiculous trendmongering--when what you would presumably prefer is for all classes to have access to that way of eating in equal measure?
- Why introduce race into the discussion, when you acknowledge in the next breath that actual ethnicity has nothing to do with it?
Yes, there is an argument to be made that popularity kills innocence. And I'm fully in the Bourdain camp that believes Alice Waters, with her frequent obliviousness to scale or tact, is a terrible spokeswoman for the locavore crowd. But those positions are different from the thesis that the entirety of the locavore school of thought is fraught with masturbatory tone-deafness.
From the very first beat, this article hints at the phenomenally popular website, Stuff White People Like. With that in mind, a thought (I would never presume to issue a Cardinal Rule) on snide humor. The first person to make a snarky, disparaging, or self-deprecating joke--if it's done well--can be credited for the wit. The second feels cheap, a thin laugh. The third, or fourth, or fifth reveals the meanspiritedness and bitterness at its core. Not only that, but it revels in it.
Plus, there's a delicious irony in Clendaniel bemoaning the tendencies of writers in major metropolitan areas focusing on this so-called "White People Food," when there's an expanse between the coasts that appears to go unnoticed in this whiny critique. ("I would challenge the reviewers... Push the envelope a little. We'll follow," he simpers.)
And with the choice of .is as the domain for GOOD's website (making every URL begin with the declaration "GOOD is..."), one wonders whether Clendaniel notices he's writing for a would-be tastemaker.
Race, ridicule, anti-urbanism, and a complete lack of self-awareness. For writing online, these are essential amino acids for buliding what the professional wrestling world calls "cheap pop." You shout the name of the city you're in just to get the crowd cheering, or insult its most famous feature to get them angry. This article smacks of the latter, and for accusing the majority of the food world of smugness, Morgan Clendaniel sure seems certain he's right about all of us.
What's the word for that, again?
I think you're unable to see the forest for the trees. It doesn't sounds like you made it past the third paragraph.
I beg to differ, both on literal and figurative grounds.
I've reviewed a tiny barbecue place, a Chinese restaurant, a family-owned Moroccan restaurant, a family-owned Thai restaurant, sub shops... There aren't many trees obstructing my view.
And I think that's the problem. This article bemoans the national conversation on food, while only addressing New York and LA. Read the reviews from the Journal-Sentinel, or the Chicago Tribune, or the MPLS Star-Tribune--it's not all White People Food.
And if you try to say what I said in the first paragraph of this comment, I'd bet the author of the GOOD piece will say that White People Food isn't defined by ethnicity (which makes the name inflammatory rather than illustrative), but rather the mindset of the diner or reviewer.
Except if the food is actually made by White People, then it really is White People Food. Critics need to eat dodgy tacos (good tacos don't count?), and injera, and something else that's obscure. Because even humility and unpretty food doesn't sate this author's desire for bringing critics down a peg. I'm sure nose-to-tail cooking is White People Cooking, except that if anything is non-white, it's offal.
Because their argument is that White People Food is Food of Means, but offal is decidedly NOT Food of Means. No, the fact that white people have embraced it makes it White People Food. So it really is about race, which is the dumbest fucking tentpole for a discussion about food that anyone could possibly come up with.
And you and I have gone back and forth on the affordability of "good" food before; I doubt I'm going to be able to convince you any more now than before that a packet of seeds, a patch of dirt, and some rainwater is within--literally--anyone's means. Food Network programming can be watched at the public library. Hifalutin food reviews can be read in free newspapers or online.
Just because a white person likes something a lot doesn't make it exclusive, and the act of a white person liking something doesn't equate to smugness.
The trees in the article. Race, foremost, followed by bi-coastal-ignore-the-fly-over-states-ism.
We get it, Kyle. You bristle at every single article or forum post that mentions race, your hackles raised like a pug facing off against a brand new vacuum cleaner; you're the race police.
He pretty clearly defines "White People Food" as the cuisine and food culture of affluence, having little to do with "White People" other than the coincidence that the vast majority of these eaters are affluent whites.
As for the coast-centricity, GOOD magazine is a bi-coastal publication, based in LA and NY. Of course their viewpoint strongly favors those two cities and their publications. It's a magazine and website that caters to New Yorkers and Los Angelinos.
Trees aside... In this humble mid-west town the exceptions to rules ratio is higher, but we do like to fawn over our obscenely-priced cheeses, both young and extremely old, $15 a pint ice-creams and $20 hamburgers. Our exclusive kitchens are Underground and there is no shortage of ink spilled over the latest Chef Tory Miller offerings before they're even open to the general public. But as Clendaniel says, "there is nothing wrong with any of the individual aspects of White People Food." None of us should feel bad about it (and, in fact, most of us feel good about the very expensive things we eat and we like to tell everyone about them online). That's not his point.
[Poor people can watch Top Chef or read Muramoto reviews at the library and that makes "good" food affordable? I don't get it.]
Brett, I'm sure you can do better than riffing on my nom de Internet; I went through years of grade school with bullies rhyming my name with "Pile"; the result is that I don't think particularly highly of such techniques.
The point about public libraries is part of the larger point that you don't need Underground Kitchen to eat kale, you don't need a newspaper subscription or even an address to read NYT or LAT or STrib or Isthmus reviews, and you don't need cable to see the food media that the complainants think is propping up a class divide.
I bristle at the inclusion of race when there's no fundamental point being made about race. And I'm not sold on the utility of the race argument in this piece. Your defense only highlights that dubious character (it doesn't refer to race except when it refers to race).
If the point of the article was to address NY and CA food critics alone, then they shouldn't have roped "White People" everywhere into the conversation. Call it "Brooklyn/Mission Food" or something. But if the point was to address the food conversation everywhere, then maybe just one line--a throwaway would be enough--referring to the rest of the country would have been nice.
But my biggest problem is simply this: what is GOOD doing to help? Ridicule? Sniping from the rafters? Stigmatization? They could try to make a difference, or they could shame the restaurants that actual people--not snarkily capitalized caricatures--felt strongly enough about to take the risk and open.
No, instead they write about GM rice (how white is that?), someone in Australia canoeing into a McDonald's, and breast milk cheese--complete with an eye-catching shot of a topless woman lactating into a wine glass. Come down from the Mountain, Moses! Tell us what you have learned!
The race police is simply an observation--one need not read TDP forums too long to spot it--to illustrate my point, not a personal shot. And you really don't want to start comparing high school bullying experiences, do you?
I just think you latched onto the lazy, trolling context of his argument and missed the unfortunately slim content.
We've gone back and forth before on class issues, and I don't think anything I say here is going to get you to admit to a certain level of class smugness and self-satisfaction in food writing.
Have you ever grown your own food? A packet of seeds, a patch of dirt, and some rainwater doesn't go all that far to feed a family.