@CWOTUS Actually my answer is no, I do not consider myself to be a foodie, only because it’s the term foodie that I don’t like. I associate that term with people who are snobbish, with regards to food, as if someone couldn’t possibly enjoy a plate full of bright orange nachos, or ding-dongs.
Foodies tend to have an agenda, and that makes me uncomfortable. There used to be a restaurant critic that almost drove me to despair, because she was always dissing certain restaurants and types of food, or even types of food preparation, because they were beneath her. I don’t think she gave a hoot about whether the stuff tasted good, or whether or not regular people (like us) liked it or not. It was as if food needed to be hip (whatever that means) to be worthy of her attention and respect. I remember an article that she wrote several years back (thank goodness she’s since retired) but it was all about BBQ restaurants. You’d think that she would enjoy BBQ at any of the 10 or so restaurants that she discussed (most people like BBQ) but she had nothing good to say about any of the restaurants, and to one of them (one of the most popular BBQ places in our area) she gave a very ugly and scathing review and it just didn’t make any sense.
She had really odd food preferences and she didn’t like a lot of things (stuff that regular folk enjoy) so her reviews tended to sound like this If you don’t understand the proper preparation for X,Y or Z, then you are a moron and don’t deserve to eat in public. If you don’t like what I like, and dislike what I dislike, then you are not worthy, and you’re an idiot. None of what she said ever made much sense to me, because as you know, we all have different preferences and likes and dislikes, but to accuse a restaurant of not being worthy, because they don’t prepare the halibut the way she knows it should be prepared, even though lots of other people seemed to enjoy it, it just ridiculous. She never seemed to understand that any particular food, whether it’s fish or chicken or baked beans, can be prepared in many, many different ways.
Anyway, after she wrote this scathing article about how all of the BBQ, especially at this very popular place was wrong and bad and incorrectly prepared etc. a bunch of local people wrote in to tell them how much they loved all of these places, especially the most popular one, and what they liked about the food and how this critic was big meany who obviously doesn’t like BBQ. Also, the owner of one of the restaurants wrote a very touching letter explaining how Ms. Critic’s article could potentially damage his business because if people believed what she had said (which seemed to be almost like libel) he might have to go out of business. Everyone rallied around the BBQ restaurants owners and the critic was actually forced to make a written apology in the publication (I think, someone behind the scenes probably suggested that her review could get her into legal jeopardy).
Also, this critic used to live and dine in San Francisco, so everything she wrote compared the food and restaurants to things in SF, not taking into account that the tastes of people in our region are different. We like Mexican food and BBQ and if people like their steak well done, then that’s OK (she used to regularly blather on about how ignorant people were if they didn’t order their steak rare). She also had some aversion to any kind of fusion cuisine which is what Southern California is all about. I could never really figure out just exactly what her agenda was, except to make all of us food enthusiasts look like a bunch of yokels.
So that is the definition of what I am, a food enthusiast. What that means to me, is that my only agenda is to spread information about yummy stuff to whomever is interested. I love to cook and to share information about cooking with people. I love to eat, whether it’s at Taco Bell or at a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant like Au Lac, or deep fried stuff on a stick from the county fair, or from a little Jamaican booth at the local farmers market, or a giant slice of pizza from the window at Costco. And I love to help people find what they want, even if they didn’t know they wanted it, simply because they’d never considered it or maybe had never heard of it before.
So no, I’m not a foodie, and that’s OK.
Now, who’s hungry? Please pull up to the window to place your order : )
