Show & Tell 1.0: The Poetics of Food

I don't really have any familiarity with haute cuisine and the critical culture that surrounds it. The one-two punch of a tight budget and a wish to stay vegetarian (24 years and counting) excludes me from much that is expensive, elegant, and extravagant. Luckily, in the age of the blog, being a "foodie" doesn't have to mean dropping 4 figures at one of Cindy Wolf's restaurants, to give a local example. These days, a food article about the most amazing meatball sub can slide neatly in between the ones about beignets and beurre blanc. In these economically troubling times especially, food writers who want to remain relevant must be unpretentious as well as Epicurean.

In my admittedly limited research, it seems that the most beloved food writers understand that you are just as likely to peel away a greasy wrapper to paradise with a pit beef sandwich from a street vendor as you are to find it within a Restuarant Week prix fixe menu. There is a poetry to this kind of food writing, a reverence that swirls up not from the food itself but from the culture and ritual that surrounds and informs it. I picked up on this sense of poetics quite a lot while reading Ruth Reichl's blog.

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I initially discovered her on mashable.com, where she's been named one of 10 Food Writers and Critics to Follow on Twitter. Once a staple contributor to the New York Times Food section and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, she has written several books (including a 1000+ recipe cookbook) and now both produces and hosts food shows on PBS. It doesn't take long to discover that Reichl is just as comfortable with a wood stove and benches as she is with crystal and white table cloths. She also stresses the powerful ties between food and cultural identity, which is something I'd like to explore with our first project.

Here are a couple of favorites (blog posts, et al.) that I've read so far:
breakfast at an LA foodtruck
where to eat when you're in Paris
how to make a better grilled cheese sandwich (YES!!!)
on Alice Waters and Chez Panisse

Enjoy....