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Food writer John T. Edge, in the latest edition of the under-appreciated Oxford American magazine, profiles scientist and serious eater Ken Ford, who has a depth of culinary knowledge that is earned only with constant searching. In profiling Ford, Edge raises an interesting observation about a common slang term used to describe a gourmet:
Foodie ... is dismissive, summoning comparisons to groupie (gotta have it) and junkie (can't quit it). Call Ken Ford a foodie and you trivialize his pursuits. "The word implies a kind of pathology," he says, gloves off, dander up.
We can sympathize. Having caught ourselves savoring an ort a moment too long in order to pinpoint that savory flavor whose name eludes us; drawing air into our mouth to open up a swallow of wine as though we just surfaced from the deep end of a pool; eliciting confused stares from diners as we broke out a camera at the dinner table; reading cookbooks with the zeal of the recently baptized, we've certainly done some foodie-like things.
And yet, we've never truly embraced the term. For us, "foodie" connotes both a geekiness we're hesitant to accept and an oversimplification of how we view food and drink. Coming from Edge, who is to us as Bourdain is to other food porn buffs (that is, the balls), it's a cold blast of air to the face that reminds us we are not alone.
So we'll ask you: Do you call yourself a foodie? If so, why? If not, why not?
Photo credit: Kyle Hood.
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the only people who use that word are old yuppies
I have no comment on the "foodie" label as I'm not one myself, but can I just tell you how great it is to see someone use the word "ort"? I feel like I'm either reading Virginia Woolf or doing a crossword puzzle - both great experiences. That's why I love Chicagoist. Language rules!
I hate "foodie." Unfortunately, I also hate "food snob," "gourmet," "gourmand," "food afficionado," and the rest.
It's the best of a bad lot.
I prefer "glutton."
that's funny. i was just thinking about that word at the end of the year, and how i hadn't really heard that word until i started hanging around chicagoist folk. and their 'foodies.' and i didn't know it referred to the gourmets themselves. i thought it sort of referred to people who followed the gourmets and liked to eat nice stuff and cook nice stuff and were into good wine/spirits and liked to take pictures of 'food porn,' and dish about dishes.
like ... grant achatz is a gourmet chef, and the people who keep up with all his latest endeavors are foodies. my parents are the antithesis of foodies.
Ugh, I hate this word. I'm sure it had some higher meaning (something like how Smussy defined it), but it seems to be just some label dirty yuppies use to sniff each other out. (Disclosure: I'm a dirty yuppie.)
I didn't think much of it until I was out to dinner with some friends-of-friends, and one asked me (after I made some comment about fennel or something equally quotidian), "Oh! Are you a foodie??" As if it were some aspirational label I'd self-appended.
It's like going to a bar, ordering a PBR, and someone saying, "OH! Are you a hipster?! I'm a hipster, too! Let's go listen to Band of Horses and tell stories about our tattoos!" (Disclosure: I love BoH.)
Can't we just like cheap beer and good music, or know things about sausage without having it fit into some profile? [dime store philosophy] Sigh ... I guess most of us are adrift in this world, trying to find the holes into which our pegs fit, even at this stage in life. [/dime store philosophy]
i like you, dave. anyone who throws down that many parentheticals in one comment is my kind of guy (i'm a tangential, parenthetical whiz myself).
Thanks, Smussy. I've tried to curb them, but there's no way (same goes for the ellipses ...)
yeah, i know. they're so uncouth and passe, but, what would i do without them ... ?