Hipsters, tourists, and "artisinal" devil crabs...

[HudsonHawk]

So on one of the local nostalgia groups I belong to on Facebook, there was a discussion about the rise of chain restaurants and the demise of mom and pops places, and specifically what might be called "artisanal" vendors today. Got me thinking about what moves something from the traditional to the contemptible. Is it what we perceive as ridiculous prices? Is it something that caters to tourists? How does a local tradition turn into a tourist trap? Is it the insufferable hipster trend? If that's the only way these traditional recipes and places survive, do they get a pass?

I know Ibu Lizzie suffers this daily and has strong feelings, but mine are often mixed. I'll hang up and listen for a while.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I do indeed have strong feelings about this, but rather than restate them, I'll just add this thought: "traditional recipes" are generally a lot simpler and less "artisanal" than the current foodie places are comfortable admitting. A traditional Maine lobster roll, to use an example, is made up of four ingredients and four ingredients only: picked lobster meat from the body section of the lobster, ordinary Cain's Mayonnaise spooned out of an institutional-sized jar, and a buttered and grilled Nissen New England Style frankfurter roll. That's *traditional.* What's not "traditional" is tarting it up with cheffy spices and hand-made mayo and fresh-baked potato rolls and all such things as that, and then charging $20 a throw for it. It might taste great, and it might be something that would win a prize on the Food Network, but it's not a "traditional Maine lobster roll." It's the bourgeification of an essentially proletarian food.

It's instructive to look at actual menus from the 1930s and 40s and see what was actually served in the "traditional Mom and Pop places." The menus were heavy on things like breaded veal cutlets served with tomato sauce, pork chops, and Salisbury steak, served with canned vegetables. If soup was served, it very likely came out of an institutional-sized Campbell's can. There was very little "artisanal" cooking going on in a typical Mom and Pop eatery. The exceptions, like Colonel Sanders' original motel-cafe in Kentucky, were considered special and outstanding specifically because they *weren't* typical Mom and Pop joints.

 

[Frunobulax]

Well, part of it is just that we regularly have access to ingredients that weren't available everywhere in the 30s and 40s. When even I was younger, veggies were highly seasonal, tropical fruit was unheard of, and some things were simply nonexistent. Fresh broccoli, even, was a treat. A mango or papaya was unheard of. I don't think I saw an avocado until my teens. Cooks/chefs have always worked with what's available, which gave use regional cuisines. The fact that today's "foodies" have such access is a good thing, not a bad thing. Thanks to economic expansion, the free market and technology, the proletariat never had it as good as now.

As far as trendy places, I suspect places become unpopular with the locals the more successful they are. As Yogi (may have) said, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Except you'll be hard pressed to find any working-class person around here who can afford to pay $20 for a lobster roll, a food that was originally created to make use of the part of the lobster that was considered waste. We the locals knew that. Foodieism turned something that was originally in the league of a hot dog into something targeting the goormay crowd, and in doing so drove out most of the actual mom-and-pop places that actually served the version that locals could afford. Even the few that have survived -- I'm looking at you, Red's Eats in Wiscasset -- have been turned into overpriced tourist traps by the hype.

Sitting at some roadside joint eating a lobster roll out of a red-and-white checkered paper basket while listening to the ballgame on your car radio used to be a common Sunday afternoon thing. It is no longer that. The only lobster-roll eaters now are Joe Madrasshorts and Sally Boatshoe from Connecticut.

 

[Fading Fast]

IMHO, there are (at least) three distinct things: the original places (like Lizzie describes), chains and these new "hipster" places. Of course, there are variations on all three - some of the older originals have survived but updated, for example.

HH, awhile back, you taught me something when I was complaining about how complicated it is to just order in Starbucks and you said (I'm paraphrasing), being simple is not what Starbucks is about - it's for someone interested in and passionate about different types of coffees / it's not for the person looking for a cup of inexpensive coffee.

There's an "old-school" diner around here that I love. It goes back, at least, fifty years and serves a lot of traditional dinner food at, for the area, reasonable but not super-cheap prices, but cheap enough that almost all types can afford to eat there. But to be fair, they have updated not only their selections (no avocado toast yet, but veggie burgers are available), but how they do it - the food is less greasy and fresher than diners were when I grew up.

There is also a true throw-back burger joint near me that, to be honest, is lousy. Sure it's reasonably priced (but not cheap), but the food is bad - the lettuce is wilted, tomatoes like bricks, burger meat mealy and the fries are greasy in a not good way.

My not-that-important point (stollen from HH) is that while there were and still are some great old places, our expectations (across most / all socio-economic classes) has changed and that has forced changes to most places. There's an "artisan" bread bakery near us that - darn it - makes the best bread I've ever had. There's also an old school German bread bakery (100+ years) that is pretty darn close - but, like the diner, has been "upping its game," to keep pace. So, my guess, if I walked into that bakery in 1930, most of the product would be very different from what it sells today.

I have no problem on a given day having a PB&J on Wonder Bread, but that is not the same experience as a sandwich on either the 100+ year old German Bakery's or the new Artisan Bakery's bread. And, as noted, it's all evolving (Ovaltine today ain't what it was fifty years ago).

Last somewhat random thought: while some of the "regular" people places that Lizzie describes have gone away, there are (in NYC anyway) plenty of new very low-price places coming in. Many are chains - 7-Eleven does a rocking food business for those on a really tight budget (and the foods not bad) and there are a bunch of $1 slice pizza shops (with decent pizza) that have opened up in the last decade along side all the "brick-oven" this "artisan pizza" that places. It's all out there - different / evolved but out there.

 

[Paisley]

Upping the game with a million ingredients has even invaded canning. I was looking to can and freeze the produce from my garden when I got a canning guide from Better Homes & Gardens. I haven't even heard of some of the ingredients in their canning recipes--who knew white balsamic vinegar was a thing? Recipes include pear-juniper berry sauerkraut, mustardy pickled banana pepper rings, sweet saffron-scented picked fennel and red peppers, tangerine-kissed sweet potato butter, etc. There's no instructions for freezing potatoes.

 

[Fading Fast]

Continuing on the theme of the last post - what are the low-price dining / food places like in the city. One of the great things about the city's 7-Elevens and $1/slice pizza joints is the range of the clientele. Sure, you'll see (yes, I'm judging all this on surface appearance), the down and out, but also, construction workers, guys and women in business attire (and some pretty expensive threads at that), public school and private school kids (kids in uniforms from la-di-da prep which costs as much a semester for 8th grade as a private college does), the very old, and some very well-to-do who look like they just want a hotdog or Slurpy 'cause, well, it's fun, good food. The mix of people is awesome. Me, um, uh, I'm in there doing sociological research for Fedora Lounge - that I happen to pick up a couple of packages of one of my favorite packaged cookies of all time ⇩ is purely coincidental.

 

[Frunobulax]

Except you'll be hard pressed to find any working-class person around here who can afford to pay $20 for a lobster roll, a food that was originally created to make use of the part of the lobster that was considered waste. We the locals knew that. Foodieism turned something that was originally in the league of a hot dog into something targeting the goormay crowd, and in doing so drove out most of the actual mom-and-pop places that actually served the version that locals could afford. Even the few that have survived -- I'm looking at you, Red's Eats in Wiscasset -- have been turned into overpriced tourist traps by the hype.

Sitting at some roadside joint eating a lobster roll out of a red-and-white checkered paper basket while listening to the ballgame on your car radio used to be a common Sunday afternoon thing. It is no longer that. The only lobster-roll eaters now are Joe Madrasshorts and Sally Boatshoe from Connecticut.

So, life changes. Chicken wings used to be a cheap throw-away item and now there are entire restaurants, even chains, devoted to serving them. As tastes change, markets respond.

It's a highly parochial view anyway. In the midwest, lobster was never a common, everyday item. We as a family, saved our pennies (literally - we had a coffee can we would put our pennies in) and once a year, have a family penny rolling party and go to a local snazzy joint to eat lobster. It was never a working class food in Ohio.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[Fading Fast]

So, life changes. Chicken wings used to be a cheap throw-away item and now there are entire restaurants, even chains, devoted to serving them. As tastes change, markets respond.

It's a highly parochial view anyway. In the midwest, lobster was never a common, everyday item. We as a family, saved our pennies (literally - we had a coffee can we would put our pennies in) and once a year, have a family penny rolling party and go to a local snazzy joint to eat lobster. It was never a working class food in Ohio.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

Funny, in Central Jersey, growing up in the '60s and '70s, it was always an expensive food that was way outside the lines of what we ate / would spend for even on the very few occasions we went out for dinner at an up-one-from-a-diner place. Lobster and shrimp were luxury items price outside our "Wonder Years" (the TV show) family food budget.

I never even tasted lobster until I was an adult. I had had shrimp at a wedding - I think - and a few other times growing up, but never once lobster.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Last somewhat random thought: while some of the "regular" people places that Lizzie describes have gone away, there are (in NYC anyway) plenty of new very low-price places coming in. Many are chains - 7-Eleven does a rocking food business for those on a really tight budget (and the foods not bad) and there are a bunch of $1 slice pizza shops (with decent pizza) that have opened up in the last decade along side all the "brick-oven" this "artisan pizza" that places. It's all out there - different / evolved but out there.

I immediately thought of pizza in NYC, as what spurred the earlier discussion I was having was the "devil crabs", a local delicacy where I grew up and the ultimate local street food back in the day...made from a mishmash of local ingredients, sold off of bicycles and street carts to local cigar factory workers, made to eat with one hand so you could keep doing what you were doing. But the cigar factories are long gone, and the cost of the crab has skyrocketed, so that what was once 10 cents is now closer to 10 dollars. People complain that they have been appropriated by foodies and people who will only eat things prepared ironically in a van, washing it down with a 9-dollar "craft" beer that tastes more like quinine than a regular ol mug 'o suds, but what was the alternative? They are the same food, and I'm glad they are still available at all. Am I encouraging this type of "foodification" of what was once just lunch pail filler? I lean towards the "I'll pay the $10 because I like it, and I don't want to see it disappear", but not everyone feels this way. The discussion just reminded me so much of ones we have here, though not in the same way for the same reasons.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Funny, in Central Jersey, growing up in the '60s and '70s, it was always an expensive food that was way outside the lines of what we ate / would spend for even on the very few occasions we went out for dinner at an up-one-from-a-diner place. Lobster and shrimp were luxury items price outside our "Wonder Years" (the TV show) family food budget.

I never even tasted lobster until I was an adult. I had had shrimp at a wedding - I think - and a few other times growing up, but never once lobster.

Shrimp might have been the only thing I ever ate out at a restaurant growing up. We rarely went out to eat, and when we did I was a very special occasion that called for the highest class restaurant around...Red Lobster. We did occasionally have the aforementioned street food, or a fish sandwich from the pier when we went fishing. But not much of the sit-down variety.

 

[Fading Fast]

I immediately thought of pizza in NYC, as what spurred the earlier discussion I was having was the "devil crabs", a local delicacy where I grew up and the ultimate local street food back in the day...made from a mishmash of local ingredients, sold off of bicycles and street carts to local cigar factory workers, made to eat with one hand so you could keep doing what you were doing. But the cigar factories are long gone, and the cost of the crab has skyrocketed, so that what was once 10 cents is now closer to 10 dollars. People complain that they have been appropriated by foodies and people who will only eat things prepared ironically in a van, washing it down with a 9-dollar "craft" beer that tastes more like quinine than a regular ol mug 'o suds, but what was the alternative? They are the same food, and I'm glad they are still available at all. Am I encouraging this type of "foodification" of what was once just lunch pail filler? I lean towards the "I'll pay the $10 because I like it, and I don't want to see it disappear", but not everyone feels this way. The discussion just reminded me so much of ones we have here, though not in the same way for the same reasons.

NYC pizza found a very democratic solution - it went upscale and, in truth, downscale and still offers a mid-market solution as well. When I moved to the city in the '80s, pizza was about a $1 slice (75 cents was still doable). But that was thirty years ago, so a $1 slice price today is actually much cheaper than in the '80s. But as noted, you can also get the artisanal slice (from a fancy truck or store) for $3, $4 or $5 (or more) with truffle this or special sauce that on it prepared in a wood-burning blah, blah, blah.

While the $1 slices today are decent, the two flaws I've found with them are they are cut tight (about 80% the size of a full NYC slice, so the $1 price is really $1.20 or so) and the sauces always seem a bit sweet on those slices, but the cheese and dough is good. The traditional - not fancy, not cut rate - NYC slice (as seen in my avatar), just a little greasy, thin crust, golden brown and wonderful costs about $2.50 today - and, IMHO, is worth every cent.

Funny, just checked the inflation calculator and $1 in '82 (my first working summer in NYC) is $2.52 cents today - I didn't cheat, it really worked out that way.

 

[GHT]

The subject matter does seem to be typical American, but here in the UK we too have had the gentrification of what was once basic fare. Nowadays pubs that once served basic, wholesome meals, are now called gastro-pubs, they have arty-farty menus, chefs with one, two or three Michelin stars, the Oscars of the food industry, and rarely give you enough to fill you up. For all that you pay a King's ransom, yet the places are packed.
Do you have, on American TV, an overload of cooking shows? We have professional chefs showing us how to cook, we have game orientated shows like The Great British Bake Off, we have Master Chef and more, more and yet more. Are these programs partly responsible for the demise of the kind of eateries that our parents once fraternised.
That point about avocado's, I never knew that guacamole was squashed avocados until these foodie programs. Then one of the chefs talked of cilantro. Cil-what? It's the plant from which the seed is called coriander. Well you live and learn. I must remember to ask the waiter not to put any cilantro in my guacamole next time we eat out. I bet the expression on his face reads as WTF is cilantro?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Funny, in Central Jersey, growing up in the '60s and '70s, it was always an expensive food that was way outside the lines of what we ate / would spend for even on the very few occasions we went out for dinner at an up-one-from-a-diner place. Lobster and shrimp were luxury items price outside our "Wonder Years" (the TV show) family food budget.

I never even tasted lobster until I was an adult. I had had shrimp at a wedding - I think - and a few other times growing up, but never once lobster.

For us, lobster was what you ate when you couldn't afford to go grocery shopping that week. We lived about a quarter of a mile from the dock, so it was easy to walk down and find some fisherman willing to sell you some lobsters for a couple of bucks, and it didn't cost anything to dig some dandelion greens out of the dooryard to go with them.

Right now, I can walk up the street and find a guy selling shedders for $6 a pound cash and carry. That's pricier than usual -- more often it's down around the same price as hamburger -- but still cheap enough that there's no point to pay some red-bearded gouger in a flannel shirt a Jackson for a lobster roll.

 

[Harp]

Do you have, on American TV, an overload of cooking shows? We have professional chefs...

I love Nigella Lawson.

 

[Frunobulax]

Funny, in Central Jersey, growing up in the '60s and '70s, it was always an expensive food that was way outside the lines of what we ate / would spend for even on the very few occasions we went out for dinner at an up-one-from-a-diner place. Lobster and shrimp were luxury items price outside our "Wonder Years" (the TV show) family food budget.

I never even tasted lobster until I was an adult. I had had shrimp at a wedding - I think - and a few other times growing up, but never once lobster.

Heck, for us, just going out was a rarity. Mom (and later, me) made dinner every night. Going out, was getting a pizza or a bucket of chicken. Sit-down was usually chinese. I still remember the novelty of an accessible seafood restaurant opening up down the road. It was called "Long John Silver's."


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[Bamaboots]

It was called "Long John Silver's."

Sent directly from my mind to yours.

Probably the first fish I ever ate that wasn't catfish.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The subject matter does seem to be typical American, but here in the UK we too have had the gentrification of what was once basic fare. Nowadays pubs that once served basic, wholesome meals, are now called gastro-pubs, they have arty-farty menus, chefs with one, two or three Michelin stars, the Oscars of the food industry, and rarely give you enough to fill you up. For all that you pay a King's ransom, yet the places are packed.
Do you have, on American TV, an overload of cooking shows? We have professional chefs showing us how to cook, we have game orientated shows like The Great British Bake Off, we have Master Chef and more, more and yet more. Are these programs partly responsible for the demise of the kind of eateries that our parents once fraternised.
That point about avocado's, I never knew that guacamole was squashed avocados until these foodie programs. Then one of the chefs talked of cilantro. Cil-what? It's the plant from which the seed is called coriander. Well you live and learn. I must remember to ask the waiter not to put any cilantro in my guacamole next time we eat out. I bet the expression on his face reads as WTF is cilantro?

We have more than our share of pretentious blowhards cooking on TV (though not as many as you Brits) and donut "wars". But I enjoy shows that really cook and are informative and educational.

And I just have to know...what did you think guacamole was? How much mushy green stuff is out there?

 

[Frunobulax]

Probably the first fish I ever ate that wasn't catfish.

After that was the 70s "fish and chips" craze, with Arthur Treachers, etc. Before that, seafood was all-you-can-eat clams at Howard Johnson's.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[Frunobulax]

We have more than our share of pretentious blowhards cooking on TV (though not as many as you Brits) and donut "wars". But I enjoy shows that really cook and are informative and educational.

And I just have to know...what did you think guacamole was? How much mushy green stuff is out there?

Have you seen what's in the back of my Fridge?


Sent directly from my mind to yours.