Help, I’m Friends with Foodies
Le Dauphin in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement is so nondescript that, on the day I meet Jules and Nick there for lunch, I not only walk right past it and have to circle back, a lost duckling, but I then proceed to stand outside the glass facade searching in vain for the door. By the time I push my way in, I am flustered and uncool, earning disapproving looks from Paris’ hipster elite. The bistro’s interior is as disorienting as its exterior: white marble walls blend into white marble tabletops and floor-to-ceiling mirrors create endless reflections of the large oval bar which stands in the middle of the room. Jules and Nick wave to me from a corner table, two glasses of orange wine already half drunk in front of them.
“We’re here to test their steak au poivre,” Jules tells me as I sit down. “We’re trying to find one that beats Paul Bert’s.”
The steak at Bistro Paul Bert (also in the eleventh arrondissement, as most of the city’s hottest restaurants are) might cost fifty euros, the boys tell me, but they have yet to taste a better one in all of Paris. Cue the eye roll.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my foodie friends. But boy, can they be insufferable.
***
If you haven’t come across them yet, “foodies” are food enthusiasts who spend their free time and money trying out wine bars and restaurants. Foodies tend to be white, well-dressed and suspiciously thin. They will go to a restaurant just to taste a particular dish, much like a Michelin inspector. But unlike Michelin inspectors, whom I imagine sit surreptitiously at small tables in darkened corners, foodies seek to stand out in aesthetic cadres that make them look cool by association. Bonus points if they can greet the sommelier (“som,” as they say — pardon me while I gag) or chef by name, making them look even cooler.
Being a foodie, I’m convinced, has little to do with eating and a lot to do with performing. If a foodie walks into a hip wine bar and doesn’t tell anyone about it, do they even deserve the title?
***
I don’t know when being a “foodie” transitioned from humble passion to high-profile fetish. When I think of the original “foodies,” I think of Julia Child and her light-hearted kitchen entertainment. I think of food writers like Laurie Colwin or Nora Ephron, who spoke of cooking and life and love in the same sentence and made you feel better about all of it. I think of Nancy, my parents’ close friend, who was a caterer in her younger years and today cooks incredible meals using fresh vegetables from her garden. These are the old-school foodies, as far as I’m concerned, and they have very little in common with the ones I know today.
I say this with some authority, given that a surprising number of my friends are proud cardholders of the “foodie” club. To begin with, there’s Jules, who was raised dining in Boston’s finest restaurants and now eats most of his meals out, most often in the pre-approved eleventh arrondissement. There’s Nick, who dreams of becoming a chef and who exclusively dates women who are a part of the “food and bev” scene. There’s Fabian, who worked at a restaurant in New Orleans one summer and likes to tell the story of his tomato consommé which grabbed the attention of a high-profile critic. And then there are the Matts — the first, a chef at a farm-to-table restaurant in Portland, who travels to Paris regularly to stay up to date with the culinary scene; the second, a wine-bar devotee with a platinum credit card and an insider’s knowledge of the newest, hippest addresses to try.
That all my foodie friends are men says something, perhaps, of the braggadocio I associate with this culture, a subject which merits its own reflection entirely. Also, I have never met a French foodie, though this doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just have no proof that they do. Lastly, I have never met a foodie on a budget.
But all this is beside the point, because what I really want to say is that my foodie friends are generous, funny, and lovely people whom I enjoy very much. And sometimes, my foodie friends make me feel like shit.
***
In my friend group, being a foodie feels obligatory if you want to be “in.” I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard one of them say of someone else, “They’re really cool — they like food.” As though the rest of us shun sustenance.
I had no idea how elitist the food scene could be until the day I found myself ordering a white wine to accompany red meat. Around the table, my foodie friends paused, raised their eyebrows just a little, and waited for me to realize my mistake. I must not have meant to say that, I stammered. I meant a red, right, yes, a red. Never mind the headache I’d have later, or the velvety sensation my tongue would take on. As I sipped my glass of red wine obediently, my head beginning to pound, I felt ashamed and uncultured.
***
My culinary education came, like most, by way of my mother. My mother is an excellent cook. My mother is also French. These two facts seem to go hand-in-hand for most people: Ah, they say, you must have grown up with such good food. And I did. My mother makes a mean ratatouille (her secret ingredient is curry), a boeuf bourguignon so good that it’s the first thing I ask her to make every time I come home, and a host of other mouth-watering dishes: pork chops, cauliflower gratin, onion soup, quiche Lorraine, roast lamb… I could go on. But for all her skill in the kitchen, my mother would never identify as a foodie, and for this I am grateful.
Like many French people, my mother likes things when they are simple and good. And, like many French people, my mother’s favorite meal is a good steak. Give her an entrecôte de boeuf cooked just to the right temperature, served with mustard that stings the eyes, crispy potatoes and a glass of Bordeaux, and she’s the happiest woman on earth. My father jokes that her diet of red meat is what keeps her in such good health. He may be right. Or maybe she’s in such great health because she approaches food much like she approaches life; enjoy the simple pleasures and don’t overthink things. If I want a glass of white with my steak, she certainly won’t object.
***
Ask my mother about her cooking and she’ll tell you that it’s nothing complicated, and never very sophisticated — just a rotation of classic dishes she’s learned to make over the years. But whenever I watch her at work in the kitchen, I become overwhelmed with awe and intimidation.
“You call that simple?” I ask, pointing to the roux she’s preparing, or the endives she’s braising, before throwing my hands up in despair.
“You’ll learn,” my mother says calmly. “Remember, I only started to cook when you girls were born.”
If it hasn’t become obvious enough at this point, I am no gastronomical goddess. I am impatient and clumsy, and I invariably leave the kitchen looking like a tornado passed through during the course of my cooking. I never set timers, and even when I do, I leave things on the stove too long and not long enough in the oven. I have made excellent versions of a recipe for reasons I could not identify, only to reproduce the recipe to a tee the next time and have it come out tasting like wet cardboard. I consider these imperfections a part of life, and thus a part of cooking.
This is something that my mother taught me, and which her own mother taught her. I don’t think it a betrayal to admit that my mother has known her fair share of culinary mishaps (though I have yet to see an abject failure on her part. I, to the contrary, have known several). But what I admire most is that, whenever a dish comes out underwhelming, my mother does not seem to care. She doesn’t take it personally if you decline a second serving (we are a second servings household, like most French families), nor does she complain if you don’t finish your plate (though my father – a good Irish Catholic – might grumble about kids starving in Africa). When she takes a bite of her own mishap, my mother will raise her eyebrows in surprise and simply say, bon, tant pis, and that’s the end of that.
My mother cooks because we must eat, and because liking what you eat is better, and because sharing good food with people you love is best. At the end of the day, my mother’s philosophy in regard to cooking is simple: food is life. And just like life, it’s messy and wonderful and unpredictable. But most of all, food is meant to be eaten, just like life is meant to be lived. There is no room for performance.
***
“That’s what you don’t get,” my foodie friends say to me. “Food is art.”
When I hear this kind of thing, my eyes want to roll back to last century. Instead, I keep my eyes in their sockets and take a deep breath and think about this.
I think about the dinner Matt (the second) and his wife (Ellie) hosted last winter. They served us a five-course meal that was as stunning and elegant a meal as I’ve ever been served by people under the age of forty-five. Clearly, they had spent not just hours but days slaving away in the kitchen.
And thus, as is only appropriate when such care has been put into something, our group of friends oohed and aahed around the table. Every dish was a new experience. Every plate brought out had to be commented on, applauded and photographed, before being savored slowly. Dishes whose turn hadn’t come yet went cold while they waited to be fawned over. We could have been at an art exhibition for all that we used words like “gorgeous,” “beautiful” and “exquisite.”
At the end of the night, we kissed Matt and Ellie on both cheeks and thanked them, a million times over, for such a nice dinner. I still remember, to this day, how beautiful it all looked. I don’t remember, however, what any of it tasted like. And I think that’s okay: it was art. The performance was the point.
***
Cut back to Le Dauphin, where the steak au poivre has finally arrived. Jules and Nick hunch over the table to inspect it. It is a beautiful piece of meat, served on a ceramic plate, and is tiny, the size of a small fist. It also costs twenty-eight euros. I wonder what my mother would say if she were here.
“It looks well-cooked,” Jules murmurs, and when he cuts into the meat, red juice runs out.
Nick runs the tine of his fork through the sauce and tastes it, eyes closed.
“That sauce au poivre is incredible,” he says, with a smack of his lips. “Just the right balance of pepper.”
I take a small bite to taste, though I don’t dare take more, for I’m a poor writer and one forkful alone costs three euros. The meat is juicy, well-cooked and full of flavor, though I say none of this, for I can think of nothing more noteworthy to contribute. Instead, I go back to the twelve-euro asparagus I ordered and watch the boys chew with serious expressions. I imagine them running through the backlog of all the steak au poivres they’ve tasted in Paris, deciding where this one ranks.
Once the plate is finished, Jules puts his fork down and wipes his mouth with the napkin. “Really nice,” he says, “but it still doesn’t beat Paul Bert’s.”
Nick nods in agreement.
***
“Is there something fundamental about gastronomy that I missed in Adulting 101?” I ask my sister over the phone as I walk home from lunch. “I felt so clueless, like they were speaking a foreign language I couldn’t understand,”
“You just put your interest elsewhere,” my sister reassures me. She is younger but, in so many ways, wiser than I. “You care about literature, about beautiful words,” she says. “That’s what excites you. I’m the same way with crypto or comedy. But your friends’ passion is oriented towards food. They’re not better than you because they spend money on fancy food and funky wine. It just means they care.”
Care about what, though? In becoming so performative, the foodie scene becomes exclusionary towards anyone who can’t afford — or doesn’t know “how” — to participate in it. And isn’t that antithetical to food’s fundamental purpose? Can caring so much about food be a caring act?
***
Over the course of my life, there a handful of meals I have never forgotten: I remember the honey and cheese Aunt Stella ordered for my sister and me one night in Rome, when it was past eleven pm and we hadn’t eaten yet and the adults were still sipping drinks on the piazza. I remember the osso bucco Dalva served at a dinner party to welcome me to Paris. The house was filled with people and laughter and I thought to myself, “I can be happy here.” And I remember the numerous times Mom’s boeuf bourguignon was waiting for me on our kitchen table back in Massachusetts after a long trip home. I remember these meals in part because they were delicious, but mostly because they were offered by people who cared and who wanted to enjoy a shared moment.
That’s what I love about food: the intention behind it that transforms food from sustenance to love, to life. No performance or applause necessary. Perhaps I am too simple to be a foodie, perhaps I am too sentimental, or perhaps I just care about other things. Whatever the reason, I hereby forfeit my cool points and withdraw my application for the foodie fan club.
But, because I do care about my foodie friends, I will continue to follow them to natural wine bars and trendy bistros. I will order “what he’s having” instead of trying to impress anybody. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get what I really came for, which is a good laugh, enriching conversation, and a special moment shared with people who, though they may love food, love me even more.
And if one day you see me at Bistro Paul Bert, eating their fifty euro steak au poivre, cut me some slack: like food, like friends, and like life, nobody’s perfect.