When did you become such an adventurous eater?” my mom often asks me, after I’ve squealed about some meal involving jamón ibérico or numbing spices. The answer is, I don’t know, but I can think of moments throughout my life where food erupted as more than a mere meal: My cousin and his Ivy League rowing team hand-making pumpkin ravioli for me at Thanksgiving. Going to the pre-Amazon Whole Foods and giddily deciding to buy bison bacon for breakfast sandwiches assembled in a dorm kitchen. Eating paneer for the first time in India. Slurping a raw oyster in New Orleans.
To be a foodie in the mid-aughts meant it wasn’t enough to enjoy French wines and Michelin-starred restaurants. The pursuit of the “best” food, with the broadest definition possible, became a defining trait: a pastry deserving of a two-hour wait, an international trip worth taking just for a bowl of noodles. Knowing the name of a restaurant’s chef was good, but knowing the last four places he’d worked at was better — like knowing the specs of Prince’s guitars. This knowledge was meant to be shared. Foodies traded in Yelp reviews and Chowhound posts, offering tips on the most authentic tortillas and treatises on ramps. Ultimately, we foodies were fans, gleefully devoted to our subculture.
Which inevitably leads to some problems, when, say, the celebrities the subculture has put on a pedestal are revealed to be less-than-honorable actors, or when values like authenticity and craft are inevitably challenged. What it’s historically meant to be a foodie, a fan, has shifted and cracked and been reborn.
And ultimately, it has died. Or at least the term has. To be called a “foodie” now is the equivalent of being hit with an “Okay, boomer.” But while the slang may have changed, the ideals the foodie embodied have been absorbed into all aspects of American culture. There may be different words now, or no words at all, but the story of American food over the past 20 years is one of a speedrun of cultural importance. At this point, who isn’t a foodie? (...)
The premiere of 2005’s The Next Food Network Star, which later gave us Guy Fieri, baron of the big bite, was the network’s first admission that we were ready to think of food shows in terms of entertainment, not just instruction and education. But Food Network was still a food network. The mid-aughts brought the revelation that food programming didn’t have to live just there, but could be popular primetime television — when that was an actual time and not just a saying.
Then came Top Chef, inspired by the success of Bravo’s other reality competition series, Project Runway. There is no overstating Top Chef’s lasting influence on food entertainment, but off the bat it did one thing that further cemented foodieism as a bona fide subculture: Its air of professionalism gave people a vocabulary. “The real pushback from the network was but the viewers can’t taste the food,” says Lauren Zalaznick, president of Bravo at the time. But just like the experts on Project Runway could explain good draping to someone who didn’t know how to sew, Top Chef “committed to telling the story of the food in such a way that it would become attainable no matter where you were,” she says.
This gave viewers a shared language to speak about food in their own lives. Now, people who would never taste these dishes had a visual and linguistic reference for molecular gastronomy, and could speculate about Marcel Vigneron’s foams. If you didn’t know what a scallop was, you learned, as Top Chef was awash in them. Yes, you could hear Tom Colicchio critique a classic beurre blanc, but also poke, al pastor, and laksa, and now that language was yours too. And you could hear chefs speak about their own influences and inspirations, learning why exactly they thought to pair watermelon and gnocchi.
The food scene then “was more bifurcated,” says Evan Kleiman, chef and longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food. “There were super-high-end restaurants that were expensive, maybe exclusive, and for the most part represented European cuisines. And then what was called ‘ethnic food’ was often relegated to casual, family-run kind of spots.” Top Chef may have been entertainment for the upwardly mobile foodie, but in 2005, Bourdain’s No Reservations premiered on the Travel Channel, similarly emphasizing storytelling and narrative. In his hands, the best meals often didn’t even require a plate. His was a romantic appreciation of the authentic, the hole-in-the-wall, the kind of stuff that would never be served in a dining room. It set off an entire generation of (often less respectful, less considered) foodie adventurism.
“No Reservations is what got me interested in the culture of eating,” says Elazar Sontag, currently the restaurant editor at Bon Appétit. Because it was about food as culture, not as profession. But there was programming for it all. Also in 2005, Hell’s Kitchen premiered on Fox, with an amped-up recreation of a dinner service in each night’s challenge. “Hell’s Kitchen’s high-octane, insane, intense environment of a restaurant kitchen is actually what made me think, when I was maybe 12 or 13, that I want to work in restaurants,” says Sontag.
All these shows were first and foremost about gathering knowledge, whether it was what, indeed, a gastrique was, or the history of boat noodles in Thailand. It didn’t matter if you’d ever been there. The point was that you knew. “Food was becoming a different kind of cultural currency,” says Sontag. “I didn’t clock that shift happening at the time, but it’s very much continued.”
Language is meant to be spoken; knowledge is meant to be shared. Now that everyone knew there were multiple styles of ramen, there was no better place to flex about it than with a new tool: the social internet. Online, “talking about restaurants and going to restaurants became something that people could have a shared identity about,” says Rosner. “There was this perfect storm of a national explosion of gastronomic vocabulary and a platform on which everybody could show off how much they knew, learn from each other, and engage in this discovery together.” Your opinion about your corner bagel shop suddenly had a much wider relevance.
Which inevitably leads to some problems, when, say, the celebrities the subculture has put on a pedestal are revealed to be less-than-honorable actors, or when values like authenticity and craft are inevitably challenged. What it’s historically meant to be a foodie, a fan, has shifted and cracked and been reborn.
And ultimately, it has died. Or at least the term has. To be called a “foodie” now is the equivalent of being hit with an “Okay, boomer.” But while the slang may have changed, the ideals the foodie embodied have been absorbed into all aspects of American culture. There may be different words now, or no words at all, but the story of American food over the past 20 years is one of a speedrun of cultural importance. At this point, who isn’t a foodie? (...)
***
How did we get to chefs-holding-squeeze-bottles as entertainment? The 1984 Cable Communications Policy Act deregulated the industry, and by 1992, more than 60 percent of American households had a cable subscription. Food Network launched in 1993, and compared to Julia Child or Joyce Chen drawing adoring viewers on public broadcasting programs, the channel was all killer, no filler, with shows for every mood. By the early 2000s, you could geek out with Alton Brown on Good Eats, experience Italian sensuality with Molto Mario or Everyday Italian, fantasize about a richer life with Barefoot Contessa, or have fun in your busy suburban kitchen with 30 Minute Meals. Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour gave viewers an initial taste of his particular brand of smart-alecky wonder, and there were even competition shows, like the Japanese import Iron Chef.The premiere of 2005’s The Next Food Network Star, which later gave us Guy Fieri, baron of the big bite, was the network’s first admission that we were ready to think of food shows in terms of entertainment, not just instruction and education. But Food Network was still a food network. The mid-aughts brought the revelation that food programming didn’t have to live just there, but could be popular primetime television — when that was an actual time and not just a saying.
Then came Top Chef, inspired by the success of Bravo’s other reality competition series, Project Runway. There is no overstating Top Chef’s lasting influence on food entertainment, but off the bat it did one thing that further cemented foodieism as a bona fide subculture: Its air of professionalism gave people a vocabulary. “The real pushback from the network was but the viewers can’t taste the food,” says Lauren Zalaznick, president of Bravo at the time. But just like the experts on Project Runway could explain good draping to someone who didn’t know how to sew, Top Chef “committed to telling the story of the food in such a way that it would become attainable no matter where you were,” she says.
This gave viewers a shared language to speak about food in their own lives. Now, people who would never taste these dishes had a visual and linguistic reference for molecular gastronomy, and could speculate about Marcel Vigneron’s foams. If you didn’t know what a scallop was, you learned, as Top Chef was awash in them. Yes, you could hear Tom Colicchio critique a classic beurre blanc, but also poke, al pastor, and laksa, and now that language was yours too. And you could hear chefs speak about their own influences and inspirations, learning why exactly they thought to pair watermelon and gnocchi.
The food scene then “was more bifurcated,” says Evan Kleiman, chef and longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food. “There were super-high-end restaurants that were expensive, maybe exclusive, and for the most part represented European cuisines. And then what was called ‘ethnic food’ was often relegated to casual, family-run kind of spots.” Top Chef may have been entertainment for the upwardly mobile foodie, but in 2005, Bourdain’s No Reservations premiered on the Travel Channel, similarly emphasizing storytelling and narrative. In his hands, the best meals often didn’t even require a plate. His was a romantic appreciation of the authentic, the hole-in-the-wall, the kind of stuff that would never be served in a dining room. It set off an entire generation of (often less respectful, less considered) foodie adventurism.
“No Reservations is what got me interested in the culture of eating,” says Elazar Sontag, currently the restaurant editor at Bon Appétit. Because it was about food as culture, not as profession. But there was programming for it all. Also in 2005, Hell’s Kitchen premiered on Fox, with an amped-up recreation of a dinner service in each night’s challenge. “Hell’s Kitchen’s high-octane, insane, intense environment of a restaurant kitchen is actually what made me think, when I was maybe 12 or 13, that I want to work in restaurants,” says Sontag.
All these shows were first and foremost about gathering knowledge, whether it was what, indeed, a gastrique was, or the history of boat noodles in Thailand. It didn’t matter if you’d ever been there. The point was that you knew. “Food was becoming a different kind of cultural currency,” says Sontag. “I didn’t clock that shift happening at the time, but it’s very much continued.”
Language is meant to be spoken; knowledge is meant to be shared. Now that everyone knew there were multiple styles of ramen, there was no better place to flex about it than with a new tool: the social internet. Online, “talking about restaurants and going to restaurants became something that people could have a shared identity about,” says Rosner. “There was this perfect storm of a national explosion of gastronomic vocabulary and a platform on which everybody could show off how much they knew, learn from each other, and engage in this discovery together.” Your opinion about your corner bagel shop suddenly had a much wider relevance.
by Jaya Saxena, Eater | Read more:
Image: Julia Duffosé
