The City Pages’ food blog, Twin Cities Eater, recently did a short interview with our fellow food bloggers over at We Got Served. Ben and Erin, congratulations for the well-deserved kudos! There was one thing in the interview that gave us pause, though—when the interviewer asked Erin why she and Ben don’t consider themselves “foodies”:
“To me, a foodie is someone who is very knowledgeable about food, and has a pretty discriminating palate. Usually foodies know what ingredients are in each dish and can tell right away just by tasting. By doing this blog, taking part in a CSA (community supported agriculture), cooking more, and just becoming more interested in food and food literature, we are slowly getting to be more knowledgeable, but our palates haven’t yet caught up. We are both pretty easily pleased when it comes to food. The reason we have that statement in our “About Us” section is to let anyone who is reading our blog know that we are not experts — our blog is about our personal experiences eating out, and is not to be taken as a guide to Twin Cities restaurants.”
Erin, you’re selling yourselves short! We can certainly appreciate that you two don’t want to claim to be experts (neither do we!), but since when did “foodie” become an exclusive club? In our opinion, foodies are by definition amateurs—diners distinguished not by their expertise or their distinguished palates, but by their love of, interest in, and curiosity about all things edible.
Somewhere, and somehow, this definition has been lost, and “foodie” has become indistinguishable from “gourmet.” Case in point: when Andrew Zimmern recently linked to We Got Served, he was flooded with comments claiming, “That site is all right, but they aren’t exactly foodies.” It’s that kind of attitude that prevents some people from getting out there and trying new things—and it’s that kind of attitude that keeps places like Applebee’s in business while local restaurants struggle to stay afloat.
Don’t play into the hands of the elitists. Anyone can be a foodie.
October 2, 2008 at 12:07 pm |
Interesting perspective. The curiosity part is important–no matter how much you love food, if you’re eating the same kind of stuff everywhere you go, you’re not a foodie.
October 2, 2008 at 1:26 pm |
Excellent post! This is something that has been very interesting to both Ben and I since we started our blog… especially after the Andrew Zimmern mention and subsequent comments on that site. I guess it is kind of a semantics issue as to what the word foodie really means. To some it means food snob, to some it means lover of food. While we both (especially me) definitely fall into the latter category, putting that into the About Us section makes certain that everyone knows we don’t fall into the former
October 2, 2008 at 10:56 pm |
I AM A FOODIE, and I don’t really know what it means, but I embrace the title. It DOES mean, that I’ve pretty much resigned from any reading or responding on Chowhound.com which is allegedly ANTI-snobbery (read their manifesto here http://chowhound.chow.com/manifesto) due to the insane amount of simple minded individuals that think their palates are more important than someone else’s opinion on that board. Fuck that! Being a foodie is about love of food, period… Not gluttony, not gourmet (though I have been accused of such) but a modern day gourmand, one who had a great love and appreciation of food. And if that means they still like Tostidos brand salsa con queso, then god bless!