![]() But from the outside looking in, it’s clear that foodie culture is roiling with a new awareness of social politics, undermining some of that culture’s unspoken tenets: that taste and pleasure are neutral, universal concepts that the kitchen is an apolitical zone. I don’t even know the difference between a meuniere and a mirepoix. And I’m talking, of course, about the #MeToo movement and how it has brought down erstwhile paragons of the foodie community like Mario Batali. I’m talking about the fact that you can still find “oriental Chicken salad” on the menu at Applebee’s, long after the outdated term was eviscerated in the Times. I’m talking about Summerhill, the restaurant that opened in 2017 in Crown Heights riddled with fake “bullet holes,” and the rosé and now water sold in bottles meant to resemble 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. And this is why it has also been buffeted by the kinds of public controversies that traditionally played out beyond the confines of the kitchen. “Foodie-ism” more than ever describes a special area in our culture, politics, and economy. But even though, 35 years on from Levy and Barr’s book, the foodie is ubiquitous, she has never been harder to define. A light goes on and you see the phenomenon everywhere. Looking back in 2007, Levy wrote that he knew the word would hit the culture like a “cocktail stick applied to a raw nerve.” People like to be seen, and neologisms like “foodie” give us a way to name what was previously unnameable. Mind, mouth, soul: This is where the foodie lives. ![]() The foodie eats to meet the demands of her body from the neck up, not the neck down. She is not a gourmand, either, since she need not possess a pathological appetite. In 1984 they published The Official Foodie Handbook, a lighthearted tome that explains that the foodie is not a gourmet, since she need not be a snob, a professional, or a man. New York writer Gael Greene first used the term in a restaurant review, but it was Ann Barr and Paul Levy of England’s Harper’s and Queen who popularized it. That's not me." OK, so my definition was too vanilla.The foodie-as a word, a concept, a person-began life in the early 1980s. "Foodies are people who feel this uncontrollable need to discover something never before eaten," she said, "these urban pseudo-sophisticates-cum-hipsters who get exhilarated by crawling on their hands and knees to some underground hovel where they have to knock three times with their head to be let in before they savor goat eye tempura. ![]() ![]() I remembered a friend describing an eating trip she'd taken she remarked that she liked food, but wasn't a foodie. In certain circles, it carries with it a tinge (or a whole barrel-full, depending) of judgment. But doesn't this describe everyone who eats food not merely for sustenance? Your taste buds are evolutionarily honed to ensure that you are "keenly interested in food." "Foodie" is not merely descriptive, as this definition implies. 1) Foodie: A person keenly interested in food, esp.
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