The Answer: The Official Foodie Handbook
The gourmet was typically a rich male amateur to whom food was a passion. Foodies are typically an aspiring professional couple to whom food is a fashion. A fashion? The fashion. Couture has ceded the center ground to food.
You don’t live with the same menu for years–you discover, embrace, explore minutely, get bored, and move on tomorrow to fresh meals and pastas new.
You are an elite, an international elite with branches in every country. You are helpful to planet earth rather than doing any harm. Glamorous. Fun.
Who wrote this, when and where? That was the challenge. Thanks Karen, Susan and Erica for your entries. Speaking as Katerina la Vermintz Karen added ruminations on her own blog in her inimitable and well informed voice. Check them out, specially how to be a 5 minute faux foodie. Susan hit the button. And maybe Erica too, though she wasn’t letting on.
1984. That’s the date. A quarter of a century ago.
The quote is from The Official Foodie Handbook by Ann Barr, editor of Harper and Queens, and Paul Levy, who is his own introduction, the inventors of the invaluable term “foodie.” The man himself, a self confessed foodie, Paul Levy reflects here. It’s a wonderful send up and ruffled quite a few feathers when it came out.
And I have to plead guilty. This is my past.
Get it for yourself. $1.99 on Amazon. Still current. I swear, you will learn history, attitudes and those invaluable turns of phrase. And have a good laugh.
1984. That is pretty amazing. On re-reading The Official Foodie Handbook, I had the same feeling as John Newton writing in the Sydney Morning Herald three or four years ago. “The alarming thing is nothing has changed.”
Nothing has changed. Barr and Levy nailed modern culinary philosophy, eating well is doing good. Of course it took Carlo Petrini of Slow Food to give this institutional form and Corby Kummer of the Atlantic to coin the phrase “Doing good by eating well.”
But, my goodness, we’ve had a quarter of a century of this message and people are still signing up in droves. And the message really hasn’t evolved that much.
So why? Because this is the truth? I don’ think so. Because entry requirements are low? Perhaps.
i cant stand foodies
these people know where to get the best walnut baklava in town, but they have no idea what a walnut tree actually looks like.
’nuff said
O my my.
This is really great! And it’s 1984 (a doomed year btw)?
“Because entry requirements are low? ”
I think this is a big part of it. It’s so easy to imply/suggest so much superficially with just a morsel of food– social status, education, disposable income, amount of leisure, political beliefs, etc..
It seems a crime to pay that low price for that much fun and knowledge. You can not even buy a Big Mac (ha ha ha I just slipped up typing and wrote Big Man! but I do not know how much they cost!) for that price.
Heading to Amazon.
I saw that it was going for .01 US (one cent!) paperback.