Gourmet Food?
What exactly is “gourmet”
food? By the book, gourmet food is characterized by high quality, accurate
preparation, and artistic presentation. Let’s tease apart that definition.
High quality. Hmmmmm.
So if my hamburger meat comes from 100% USDA prime chuck, from a steer that
grazed in a pristine meadow, is my burger gourmet? No, not yet. It has to
be prepared with utmost dexterity. OK, so if I season it perfectly, and
flawlessly sear it to precisely medium-rare, is it gourmet yet? Oops.
Almost forgot. Artful plate presentation. OK, so then I position it on
beautiful china on a bed of decorative greens, maybe with some edible
flowers around the edge of the plate. Now, is my burger gourmet food? Of
course not. But why? We followed all of the criteria?
Because hamburger meat,
regardless of quality, preparation, or presentation, is a common item. I
submit that what deems a food as “gourmet” is more related to its
availability, price, public perception, and clever marketing techniques. In
essence, gourmet food has less to do with the food itself and more to do
with the sometimes arbitrary forces in the external environment.
Many foods are indigenous
to circumscribed areas of the globe and/or are only in season during
specific times of the year. Thus, no matter where you are, there will
always be some foods that are unobtainable. Moreover, these elusive
victuals are less likely to be embraced by the general population since they
rarely become a dietary staple. They are prone to be conceptualized as
“gourmet” because of their limited accessibility and foreign origins. Yet
in their native lands, they may be a simple and unexalted food.
Take the grain quinoa for
example. Unless you’re a foodie, or of Latin descent, you probably never
heard of it. Quinoa is a highly nutritious and tasty grain that has been
grown in South America for thousands of years. In fact, it has always been
a subsistence crop for poor, rural Andean families. Astute purveyors have
touted it as a “super-grain,” and market it as a gourmet item with a
considerably inflated price. In America, it is usually only found in
extravagant restaurants. This would be like some local villager in Tibet
paying over $100 for a meal that included hot dogs.
Undoubtedly, price is a
clear differentiator between pedestrian and gourmet food. Sometimes the
price is arbitrarily inflated because the item is being marketed as
“gourmet”, as in the previous quinoa example. Other times the price is high
for legitimate reasons, e.g., white truffles. White truffles are rare, in
season for only three months, are in high demand, cannot be cultivated, and
are labor intensive to harvest. But the reasons a food is expensive are
superfluous. The high price, justified or not, immediately separates it
from the common man and hence, the common palate. If potatoes suddenly cost
$200 an ounce, (like fresh white truffles), they would be elevated to
“gourmet” status and would only be found in the most expensive restaurants.
Gourmet food can also be
a matter of perception. Generally speaking, humans are more likely to
perceive a rare commodity as superior as opposed to an everyday item. As
stated, many foods are less available because of their place of origin or
growing season. These foods, particularly if they hail from an “exotic”
locale, (another definition burdened by subjectivity), are more likely to be
viewed as special.
Sometimes price alone can
influence this perception. We all intellectually know that price does not
presuppose quality. But savvy advertisers and marketers also know that
intellect often yields to emotion. Psychologically we still possess a
tendency to equate expense with an item’s inherent worth. This is
manifested in everyday mantras like “you get what you pay for,” and “it pays
to buy the best.” Often this is true but sometimes we are merely inflating
the coffers of shrewd businessmen.
Marketing techniques can
be employed to manipulate public perception and ultimately revenues. A
common ploy is to identify a variation of your product as superior and then
sell it at a premium price. The new version may or may not be better, but
by selling the conception that it is, a higher price is commanded
from the unsuspecting public. Although not considered a gourmet item, a good
example of this process is “gold” tequila. Gold tequila is nothing more
than regular tequila with caramel coloring added and a higher price. The
term “gold” is not an actual tequila designation but nevertheless, the word
itself conjures up an air of supremacy. It’s this kind of mental gymnastics
that results in a product being perceived as exceptional and sometimes
“gourmet.” At its absurd extreme, there’s even a cat food company that
endeavors to pass off its smaller canned, more expensive product as
“gourmet.”
Another example is Angus
beef. Angus is nothing more than another breed of cattle. Yet clever
marketing has resulted in a perception that it is the zenith of beef. Along
with that perception comes a bigger price tag. Angus may be better than the
typical beef on supermarket shelves but the price to quality ratio is
disproportionate. This is camouflaged however by the little signs decreeing
“certified angus” and the fact that it is often housed in its own decorative
case, separate from the undistinguished beef.
So I say we need to expand
the definition of gourmet food to read something like this: An expensive,
seasonal, non-native food, perceived as superior, that under the best of
circumstances is also of high quality, accurately prepared and presented
with artistic flair. How’s that for a gourmet definition?
|
