Wednesday, October 13, 2010

We have made it all so complicated.

There's a restaurant review in The New York Times today of a restaurant called Xiao Ye which is owned and operated by Eddie Huang.

About 1/3 of the way through the review, I happened upon this quotation by Huang, “I’m interested in the culture of eating. I am not a chef.”

I admit my tastes in food run to the plebeian, but if I go to someplace expensive, I want my food prepared by a chef, not a culinary anthropologist. Huang's statement (and I'll admit I'm in an unusually curmudgeonly mood) strikes me as the apotheosis of pretense.

It is yet another example of the removal of reality from real life. Ads today are about the culture of advertising. They speak to the culture of this sub-group or that. And along the way, they alienate the masses who want a pair of sneakers not to imbibe in sneaker culture.

2 comments:

writer said...

Maybe he just likes soy curd.

Max Katsarelas said...

George, you could also make the argument that these highly trained chefs alienate themselves from the masses of people who cook spaghetti or macaroni and cheese. To me it sounds like the guy into "the culture of eating" would cater to everyday people much more so than some chef educated in Paris who's only goal is to win awards.