The political economy of flavor: an exchange with a chowhound
Responding to this post--my tribute to an effort to link traditional hog-raising with traditional North Carolina barbecue--New York food writer and chowhound.com founder Jim Leff objected to my characterization of his take on a Manhattan barbecue joint. I had written: "Leff once told me he thought it was ridiculous that a certain restaurateur insists on using Niman Ranch pork, from heritage-breed pigs raised on small farms without industrial inputs, at his high-toned Manhattan BBQ joint."
Leff went on as follows:
Bitter Greens Journal responds
Jim Leff may be the most important restaurant critic writing in English today.
I say that not because he visited my farm once and wrote mostly nice things about us. Or because I consider him a friend and excellent company. (I once spent an afternoon careening through Lexington, N.C., with him in what he calls his "chow-mobile," sampling the famed local 'cue. On the chow trail he comes off as a kind of nebbishy Falstaff, mixing wry humor with unchecked hedonism. Watching him unlock the secret to Lexington 'cue--two words: "side brown"--was like tagging along on Saul's fateful trip to Damascus.)
I praise Leff for his ability to slice through the swaths of marketing hype that blanket "dining" in America today to find what he calls the treasure. Celebrity chefs may be plunking down foodie temples in Vegas and snatching book, TV, and even movie deals with the ease with which they can julienne a carrot; but that doesn't mean that our national store of culinary treasure is growing.
Indeed, what's happened along our highways tells a different story, one not likely told in the Dining In/Dining out section of the New York Times or Bon Apetit magazine. What one finds there is the death of culinary culture: a torrent of bland, institutional food--what Leff might call "soulless" fare. I'm not even speaking of the hordes of McDonald's and its ilk. The locally owned holdouts, by and large, have surrendered. The ubiquitous Sysco truck has left a trail of culinary death in its wake.
And, whether we like it or not, the cities have succumbed as well. From my perch in North Carolina, New York--with its great diversity and bulk of wonderful food--seems a culinary paradise. But a visitor who walks randomly into a restaurant in Manhattan--or even Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island--is likely to find crap prepared with all the passion a suburban pool cleaner might bring to his task. Face it: Typical New York pizza--save for a few miraculous outposts--sucks. So does most food there. But the exceptions, the treasure, are glorious--if you can find them.
That's what makes Leff so valuable. He's omnivorous; he haunts the city's dining scene--its haute temples and shabby storefronts alike--with an eager palate and what Hemingway called a bullshit meter. "Astonish me," he essentially says, whether confronted by an indifferently cleaned plastic table or a purse-lipped sommelier with a crisp white cloth draped over his forearm. He can find mana or dreck as easily in one as the other.
The formidable owner of Kitchen Arts and Letters, a bookstore on Manhattan's Upper East Side, once told me, as I was buying Jim's old guide to New York restaurants, that "Leff isn't impressed with a place unless its some filthy dive in Queens." He had it wrong, of course. Sure, Leff has discovered gems among Queens' filthy dives; but he has also bowed with great respect to some of Manhattan's great chefs. Go to a four-star recommended by Leff, and you can be sure that its celebrity chef still cooks with passion and care.
I hail Leff's importance because I've seen what he's done in New York. One example: Some years ago, he identified an obscure pizza joint in deep-central Brooklyn--Di Fara--as a throwback to the days when southern Italians swarmed into New York and created its reputation as a pizza paradise. His writing has given Di Fara's venerable owner and master cook, Dom, near-celebrity status. Go there now on a Saturday afternoon and you'll find the place buzzing--thrill-seeking Manhattan pilgrims jostling elbows with locals just hungry for a slice.
Many have plausibly speculated that without Leff's intervention, Dom would have retired long ago. Now I hear tell that Dom's sons recently opened a pizza place in Greenwich Village. Ultimately, that's Jim's doing.
And yet...reading Leff's philosophy of food--as exemplified by his response to my post--reminds me of reading the literary criticism of the great Vladimir Nabokov. I'm thrilled by it, I learn from it--and I mostly disagree with it.
Nabokov didn't give a damn about anything in literature expect for what he called the shiver a writer could or could not send up his spine. He reveled in artistic genius and rejected everything else. Writers have nothing to teach us about the era in which they wrote; they only offer us a vivid or dull prose style, a well- or poorly told story. Politics is divorced from literature, or at least irrelevant to it.
Jim brings a similar "art for art's sake" sensibility to food. "Ingredients are irrelevant, really," he declares. "[A]l that truly matters is the skill, care, and touch of the chef."
He's overstating the case here, and I think he knows it. Jim, what if a scoundrel were to sneak into Di Fara at night and replace Dom's beloved extra-virgin olive oil with Wesson corn oil? Could the great one, even with all his soul and care, salvage that pie?
But Leff is wrong in a deeper sense, too. I grant that cooks play a key role in creating what ends up one the plate, but let me usher a second actor onto the stage: the farmer. Everything we eat, from the palest Perdue chicken to the greenest leaf of spinach, was ultimately coaxed out of the earth by a farmer. And I argue that whether that farmer is suspended high above a vast corn field in some massive and terrifying contraption spewing petrochemicals or on the ground spreading well-composted manure into his field makes a critical difference.
I salute the cooks the world over who have learned to turn industrial products--what Jim calls crap ingredients--into delicious food. Yes, it can be done. But the returns are diminishing as topsoil erodes and parches and small farmers are evicted from the land.
Yes, by all means, let's “receive ... every manifestation of treasure”! But let's also question why there is so little of it, and what we can do to restore our stock of it. The answer lies in the earth, my friend, and in transforming the political economy of food.
Leff went on as follows:
Hmm...if you say so, I'm sure I said this in some context. And I'm glad if discussion of the issue helped spur some insights. But this isn't actually how I feel - about food in general or about that particular Manhattan BBQ joint.
I've eaten food made from crap ingredients where the final result tasted so ecstatically delicious I was made to gasp. And I've gasped over food made from fussy foodie fixings (FFF's), as well. Ingredients are irrelevant, really. Unless you're eating a single raw ingredient (i.e. gnawing on an artichoke), all that truly matters is the skill, care, and touch of the chef. I'd vastly prefer soup made by a loving genius from canned supermarket ingredients to soup made from FFFs by someone just going through the motions. This might sound reverse-snobbish, but it's not.
If a chef feels the need to pour 1959 Chateau Lafite into the stock to give it that certain oomph (and someone else is footing the bill), I'm all for giving that chef what s/he thinks is needed. But same if the secret ingredient is Jiffy Peanut Butter. I don't take a materialistic view; ingredients don't interest me. Great cooking is more than the sum of its parts, and I aim to live entirely in that margin.
By the same token, I'm never impressed with glib adjectives or pandering to status...though that, too, could be mistaken for a reverse-snobbish attitude.
The place you're talking about is Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant run by Danny Meyer (of Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe). They use blue chip provisions, and the chef is a fancy trained fellow, not some backwater 'cue meister. The result doesn't taste like folkloric 'cue; the meat is infinitely more subtle and rich, and everything's extremely refined...and there's soul to the food and I deem it delicious. It's not "authentic", but who cares? It's just another manifestation of deliciousness.
And it's Blue Smoke's deliciousness that impresses me, not its refinement in and of itself. Refinement is merely a parameter. The spectrum from sophisticated refinement to guileless simplicity is horizontal, not vertical, and there are peak experiences (and soulless crap) to be found at every point of that spectrum.
Both snobs and reverse snobs miss good stuff, and I strive to be a universal receiver for every manifestation of treasure (there's so little of it, we mustn't disregard an iota!).
--Jim Leff, chowhound.com
Bitter Greens Journal responds
Jim Leff may be the most important restaurant critic writing in English today.
I say that not because he visited my farm once and wrote mostly nice things about us. Or because I consider him a friend and excellent company. (I once spent an afternoon careening through Lexington, N.C., with him in what he calls his "chow-mobile," sampling the famed local 'cue. On the chow trail he comes off as a kind of nebbishy Falstaff, mixing wry humor with unchecked hedonism. Watching him unlock the secret to Lexington 'cue--two words: "side brown"--was like tagging along on Saul's fateful trip to Damascus.)
I praise Leff for his ability to slice through the swaths of marketing hype that blanket "dining" in America today to find what he calls the treasure. Celebrity chefs may be plunking down foodie temples in Vegas and snatching book, TV, and even movie deals with the ease with which they can julienne a carrot; but that doesn't mean that our national store of culinary treasure is growing.
Indeed, what's happened along our highways tells a different story, one not likely told in the Dining In/Dining out section of the New York Times or Bon Apetit magazine. What one finds there is the death of culinary culture: a torrent of bland, institutional food--what Leff might call "soulless" fare. I'm not even speaking of the hordes of McDonald's and its ilk. The locally owned holdouts, by and large, have surrendered. The ubiquitous Sysco truck has left a trail of culinary death in its wake.
And, whether we like it or not, the cities have succumbed as well. From my perch in North Carolina, New York--with its great diversity and bulk of wonderful food--seems a culinary paradise. But a visitor who walks randomly into a restaurant in Manhattan--or even Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island--is likely to find crap prepared with all the passion a suburban pool cleaner might bring to his task. Face it: Typical New York pizza--save for a few miraculous outposts--sucks. So does most food there. But the exceptions, the treasure, are glorious--if you can find them.
That's what makes Leff so valuable. He's omnivorous; he haunts the city's dining scene--its haute temples and shabby storefronts alike--with an eager palate and what Hemingway called a bullshit meter. "Astonish me," he essentially says, whether confronted by an indifferently cleaned plastic table or a purse-lipped sommelier with a crisp white cloth draped over his forearm. He can find mana or dreck as easily in one as the other.
The formidable owner of Kitchen Arts and Letters, a bookstore on Manhattan's Upper East Side, once told me, as I was buying Jim's old guide to New York restaurants, that "Leff isn't impressed with a place unless its some filthy dive in Queens." He had it wrong, of course. Sure, Leff has discovered gems among Queens' filthy dives; but he has also bowed with great respect to some of Manhattan's great chefs. Go to a four-star recommended by Leff, and you can be sure that its celebrity chef still cooks with passion and care.
I hail Leff's importance because I've seen what he's done in New York. One example: Some years ago, he identified an obscure pizza joint in deep-central Brooklyn--Di Fara--as a throwback to the days when southern Italians swarmed into New York and created its reputation as a pizza paradise. His writing has given Di Fara's venerable owner and master cook, Dom, near-celebrity status. Go there now on a Saturday afternoon and you'll find the place buzzing--thrill-seeking Manhattan pilgrims jostling elbows with locals just hungry for a slice.
Many have plausibly speculated that without Leff's intervention, Dom would have retired long ago. Now I hear tell that Dom's sons recently opened a pizza place in Greenwich Village. Ultimately, that's Jim's doing.
And yet...reading Leff's philosophy of food--as exemplified by his response to my post--reminds me of reading the literary criticism of the great Vladimir Nabokov. I'm thrilled by it, I learn from it--and I mostly disagree with it.
Nabokov didn't give a damn about anything in literature expect for what he called the shiver a writer could or could not send up his spine. He reveled in artistic genius and rejected everything else. Writers have nothing to teach us about the era in which they wrote; they only offer us a vivid or dull prose style, a well- or poorly told story. Politics is divorced from literature, or at least irrelevant to it.
Jim brings a similar "art for art's sake" sensibility to food. "Ingredients are irrelevant, really," he declares. "[A]l that truly matters is the skill, care, and touch of the chef."
He's overstating the case here, and I think he knows it. Jim, what if a scoundrel were to sneak into Di Fara at night and replace Dom's beloved extra-virgin olive oil with Wesson corn oil? Could the great one, even with all his soul and care, salvage that pie?
But Leff is wrong in a deeper sense, too. I grant that cooks play a key role in creating what ends up one the plate, but let me usher a second actor onto the stage: the farmer. Everything we eat, from the palest Perdue chicken to the greenest leaf of spinach, was ultimately coaxed out of the earth by a farmer. And I argue that whether that farmer is suspended high above a vast corn field in some massive and terrifying contraption spewing petrochemicals or on the ground spreading well-composted manure into his field makes a critical difference.
I salute the cooks the world over who have learned to turn industrial products--what Jim calls crap ingredients--into delicious food. Yes, it can be done. But the returns are diminishing as topsoil erodes and parches and small farmers are evicted from the land.
Yes, by all means, let's “receive ... every manifestation of treasure”! But let's also question why there is so little of it, and what we can do to restore our stock of it. The answer lies in the earth, my friend, and in transforming the political economy of food.
posted by Tom Philpott at 4:21 PM
17 Comments:
Tom, I agree with you about the crucial importance of ingredients. But I disagree with your negative assessment of our ability today to obtain wonderful food.
(1) Indeed one might make a great-tasting mole sauce with Jiffy peanut butter (with its hydrogenated oil and refined sugar), Smuckers grape jelly (more refined sugar), and Hershey's milk chocolate (more refined sugar, plus powdered milk). But food serves purposes other than merely to delight or offend our sense of taste; it also nurishes or undermines our health. I for one try to "read labels" before I eat anything, though in a restaurant this is not always possible.
Last night I very excitedly went to a new Mexican restaurant in Dearborn, MI, on the recommendation of a Mexican chick who lives here. I visited the restaurant's website, looking for welcoming (to me) claims that their rice used vegitable stock rather than chicken, and that their refried beans included neither pork fat nor vegitable shortening. The website provided no info, so I posted an e-question, which did not get answered. So I traveled to meet the party there, and learned that the rice contained chicken juice and the beans -- which the waiter enthusiastically described as "vegitarian" -- contained veg shortening. Ugh.
The waiter explained that the rice had to contain chicken stock because it was "Mexican" style. I responded that the restaurant not only served Fajitas, but did so as its most-promoted item, with the "Home of the Flaming Fajita" included as the venues official slogan. Fajitas, of course, is hardly authentic Mexican food. And I have had great "Mexican rice" with veggie rather than chicken stock in several Austin joints, as well as my own kitchen. No meat-eater would notice a negative difference, nor refuse to eat the rice if it lacked chicken juice.
And if the restaurant was willing to stray from "authenticism" by making their refried beans with veggie lard rather than pig lard, in a tip to health freaks like me, why not go all the way and simply use un-hydrogenated oil? No health-concious person would dare eat veggie shortening.
Your buddy the Chow Hound guy may be digging his grave with a kniefe and fork, as we health wierdos say, even if he has a big smile on his face. I would much rather eat poor-tasting mole containing crushed peanuts, organic raisens, and wholesome dark chocolate that nurished me, than to eat good-tasting garbage that defiled my health. I think the word "integrity" applies here. As a cook, I contrain myself to what I consider to be the most healthful ingredients, which usually means higher cost and more preparation fuss. This adds a higher level of satisfaction for me as a cook and as a consumer of food.
Also: I share the Chow Hounder's dismissal of "authenticity", at least as it relates to addherence to a traditional recipe. I do not think that "authentic" recipes always represent a cullinary apex, especially when accounting for health concerns. I have no doubt that in the streets of Mexico that people eating "authentic" food there are consuming lots of lard, hydrogenated oil, refined sugar, and pharmaceutical dyes. Aside from the lard, none of that stuff was around hundreds of years ago. So the people there have been recently playing around with "authenticity" anyway. I admire the cooks (like me) who modify even traditional recipes in the name of truly authentic ingredients: all natural.
(2) I think that we Americans have in the past 10 years gotten much greater access to wonderful, healthful food. Yes, if you drive down the highway -- as you say in your commentary -- you will find very little of sensory or health value. But when was this ever not the case? As a Fussy Food Snob, I have increasingly less difficulty in obtaining my foods of choice.
You are aware of the growing chain fast food joint, Baja Fresh. They have big signs: No Hydrogenated Oil, No Lard, No Refined Sugar, No Preservatives, No Artificial Colors. Imagine that. In the Detroit area I can get Mexican beans, rice, enchaladas, guacamole, etc., convieniently, cheaply, and without undermining my health.
The supermarkets now also have lots of wonderful ingredients, for people who look. And care.
These are just a few of many growing examples of Fussy Food Snobs having an easier time in the USA.
Tom, I agree with you about the crucial importance of ingredients. But I disagree with your negative assessment of our ability today to obtain wonderful food.
(1) Indeed one might make a great-tasting mole sauce with Jiffy peanut butter (with its hydrogenated oil and refined sugar), Smuckers grape jelly (more refined sugar), and Hershey's milk chocolate (more refined sugar, plus powdered milk). But food serves purposes other than merely to delight or offend our sense of taste; it also nurishes or undermines our health. I for one try to "read labels" before I eat anything, though in a restaurant this is not always possible.
Last night I very excitedly went to a new Mexican restaurant in Dearborn, MI, on the recommendation of a Mexican chick who lives here. I visited the restaurant's website, looking for welcoming (to me) claims that their rice used vegitable stock rather than chicken, and that their refried beans included neither pork fat nor vegitable shortening. The website provided no info, so I posted an e-question, which did not get answered. So I traveled to meet the party there, and learned that the rice contained chicken juice and the beans -- which the waiter enthusiastically described as "vegitarian" -- contained veg shortening. Ugh.
The waiter explained that the rice had to contain chicken stock because it was "Mexican" style. I responded that the restaurant not only served Fajitas, but did so as its most-promoted item, with the "Home of the Flaming Fajita" included as the venues official slogan. Fajitas, of course, is hardly authentic Mexican food. And I have had great "Mexican rice" with veggie rather than chicken stock in several Austin joints, as well as my own kitchen. No meat-eater would notice a negative difference, nor refuse to eat the rice if it lacked chicken juice.
And if the restaurant was willing to stray from "authenticism" by making their refried beans with veggie lard rather than pig lard, in a tip to health freaks like me, why not go all the way and simply use un-hydrogenated oil? No health-concious person would dare eat veggie shortening.
Your buddy the Chow Hound guy may be digging his grave with a kniefe and fork, as we health wierdos say, even if he has a big smile on his face. I would much rather eat poor-tasting mole containing crushed peanuts, organic raisens, and wholesome dark chocolate that nurished me, than to eat good-tasting garbage that defiled my health. I think the word "integrity" applies here. As a cook, I contrain myself to what I consider to be the most healthful ingredients, which usually means higher cost and more preparation fuss. This adds a higher level of satisfaction for me as a cook and as a consumer of food.
Also: I share the Chow Hounder's dismissal of "authenticity", at least as it relates to addherence to a traditional recipe. I do not think that "authentic" recipes always represent a cullinary apex, especially when accounting for health concerns. I have no doubt that in the streets of Mexico that people eating "authentic" food there are consuming lots of lard, hydrogenated oil, refined sugar, and pharmaceutical dyes. Aside from the lard, none of that stuff was around hundreds of years ago. So the people there have been recently playing around with "authenticity" anyway. I admire the cooks (like me) who modify even traditional recipes in the name of truly authentic ingredients: all natural.
(2) I think that we Americans have in the past 10 years gotten much greater access to wonderful, healthful food. Yes, if you drive down the highway -- as you say in your commentary -- you will find very little of sensory or health value. But when was this ever not the case? As a Fussy Food Snob, I have increasingly less difficulty in obtaining my foods of choice.
You are aware of the growing chain fast food joint, Baja Fresh. They have big signs: No Hydrogenated Oil, No Lard, No Refined Sugar, No Preservatives, No Artificial Colors. Imagine that. In the Detroit area I can get Mexican beans, rice, enchaladas, guacamole, etc., convieniently, cheaply, and without undermining my health.
The supermarkets now also have lots of wonderful ingredients, for people who look. And care.
These are just a few of many growing examples of Fussy Food Snobs having an easier time in the USA.
A great post - so glad to have found your blog. I'm a Chowhounder, and I love Jim Leff, but I do believe that the Chowhound philosophy needs to expand to consider the importance of the farm and the environment.
And to the comment above I would say, why should we choose between flavor and health and sustainability? I don't want to eat bad tasting food, and I don't have to if I buy from organic farms and cook the food myself. I avoid restaurants, buy grass-fed and pastured meats directly from the farmer, rely heavily on vegetables, and eat more cheaply (yes!), more nutritiously, and more sustainably than most people I know. Oh yeah, and more deliciously, too. There's very little a good cook can do to make a factory-grown egg taste like one form a pastured chicken, or to make a supermarket tomato taste like an heirloom grown in rich soil.
(As an aside, I would far prefer to eat good old-fashioned lard from a pig that has been allowed to forage, given organic feed, and raised without antibiotics and hormones than to touch hydrogenated vegetable shortening.)
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I am greatly pleased to have come across this post with such info's. i think it will be helpful in future.
North Carolina barbecue--New York food writer ....
The discussion you shared, is very very important and really that exchange must exist. Otherwise it might create an imbalance internationally.
I agree with you.If I get the fresh food from the nearby farmer, then why should I buy food from the restaurant?Thanks for sharing the post.
I am totally agreed with you . You are successfully consult on this matter . I post good thing . Although "The political economy of flavor: an exchange with a chowhound" is not you best post .
If a chef feels the need to pour 1959 Chateau Lafite into the stock to give it that certain oomph ...
The spectrum from sophisticated refinement to guileless simplicity is horizontal, not vertical, and there are peak experiences.
The supermarkets now also have lots of wonderful ingredients, for people who look. And care.
I am greatly pleased to have come across this post with such info's. i think it will be helpful in future.
Great cooking is more than the sum of its parts, and I aim to live entirely in that margin.
The political economy is a weird thing man. I really tried to understand something about their thinking but no one helped me...
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