As we sat in a corner and talked, I was reminded a little of a scene from a scary black-and-white film starring Michael Redgrave, where guests at a country house spend the night talking, except that they were telling each other horror stories while our conversation revolved around food.
My companions were young. One was a university student, returning from visiting her parents while the other two were IT experts on their way back from business trips. We had nothing in common besides a passion for food. As you know, food is my profession and so my obsession is logical. However, I didn’t expect my newfound companions’ eyes to light up the way they did when I announced that I wrote about food. It was if I had told them I was a rock star or a Hollywood actress and it wasn’t long before they started sharing their food stories.
It’s true, food has become trendy of late but surely not to the point that it would create such interest in young people who shouldn’t in principle, be able to afford to eat in fine restaurants. But in fact, one of the IT experts was fretting about making it to London in time for his lunch reservation at Gordon Ramsay’s, where he and his wife were celebrating their anniversary and his reaction was the same as the one I get from those for whom food is a serious hobby. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. A recent feature in New York Magazine ran under the title of “When did young people start spending 25 per cent of their pay cheques on pickled lamb’s tongues?”
Perhaps it is to do with the status chefs have acquired thanks to the myriad cookery shows they feature in, from the brash Iron Chef to the more ‘serious’ Top Chef’ and the homely Barefoot Contessa. Or perhaps it’s to do with the proliferation of food blogs that have turned normal people, armed with cameraphones into instant food critics, read by thousands.
What was interesting about my airport companions was that their taste seemed nowhere nearly as sophisticated as that of the youngsters described in the New York Magazine article. The celebrity chefs they watched and the restaurants they liked were fairly predictable and their knowledge of the London food scene rather limited. Perhaps it’s an English thing. The foodie explosion happened in California and in New York long before it happened in England. But then when you think of countries like Lebanon, France or Italy where food has always been very much part of the culture, young people there don’t see their interest in food as trendy. Rather, it’s totally natural. Almost everyone in these countries is a foodie, from Lebanese youngsters who drive up to the mountains to have the freshest raw liver for breakfast, French teenagers who go to their favourite brasserie or bistro straight from lycée and Italian men who take great pains to explain how to make a perfect risotto, to the point of stressing that you need to fry the onion until soft but not browned so as not to spoil the creamy colour of the rice. Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, any interest in food is good whether it’s acquired as a badge of honour, or is simply innate.
