"Foodies" give Jessi Klein indigestion.
I remember the first time I heard a co-worker refer to himself as a foodie. It immediately irritated me. Was he implying that he appreciated food more than other people? That his love of eating was somehow more evolved than mine? Don’t all people love the thing we can’t live without? The word strikes me as absurd. It’s as if I called myself an “Airie.” Because I’m simply nuts for air.[...]
I’m sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture, a Proust novel, evoking the world with each crumb. Foodies who need everything to be caramelized, sauteed in a blabla reduction, nested in a bed of shredded whatevers, served with a mushroom top hat and a julienne of leeks that have been knitted into a sequined scarf. It’s not that wonderful food doesn’t make me drool—I’m a bit of a St Bernard when I start thinking about cheese—it’s just the foodie chatter I can’t stand, the circle jerking in print and on an ever growing number of websites over this new place and that revamped old place, the obsessive fawning over such and such amuse-bouche, the kerfuffle over truffles.
I've always been slightly annoyed by the term foodie, even though I use it in my vocabulary, but mainly due to its acceptance at large. It strikes me as affected colloquialism. How about epicurist? Or simply gourmet or gastronome?
Anyway, with Klein's opening salvo I predict it's going to get "hot" in the blogosphere kitchen with foodies setting their stove to flame.
[Via]