What Makes A Gourmet Nation, Gourmet?
I returned to the States after four very tasty years living in Paris, France. Having visited and traveled to France often, my (now former) wife and I moved there, in part, to be immersed in the French culture of food. Our apartment in the Septième Arrondissement, near the Eiffel Tower, was
a blend of ex-pats like us (the American University of Paris is in the seventh), and a true Parisian quartier. Three blocks from our apartment was Rue Cler, one of the best food streets in Paris. The role of food in countries like France looms large. Seasons dictate menus. Regions pride themselves on their unique foods and the dishes prepared from those foods. Arguments can breakout over how to cook mushrooms. Foods, the market, cooking, eating, dining, are the heritage of the French.
And as an American living in the quarter, buying my food from the same shops weekly (daily sometimes), the butcher, the greengrocer, the cheese monger, felt a duty to elevate my understanding of how to eat in their country. It was a process.
This being France, I suspect that French children are introduced to the myriad of cheeses available to them in a very systematic manner. Some cheeses are more demanding than others and must be approached with some experience. One doesn’t leap from a Monterrey Jack to a Livarot overnight. My fromager (at La Fermette, a small family-owned cheese shop on Rue Cler) seemed to have a syllabus in his head when he began my cheese education. I would read or hear about a cheese and I would rush over to La Fermette to buy some.
Sometimes, however, I would come home with a very different cheese. For instance, I read about a cheese called Vacherin des Bauges and it sounded so great I had to try it. But when I went to my fromager to buy some, he smiled at me as if I were a pleasant, but not terribly bright, small child. He couldn’t sell it to me, because, as everyone else apparently knew, Vacherin des Bauge was out of season. (Being raised on pre-sliced-plastic-wrapped-cheese, how was I to know there were cheese seasons!)
On another occasion he refused to sell me a certain cheese because he felt I wasn’t ready for that particular cheese yet. When I insisted, he sold the cheese to me conditionally: if I didn’t like it I was to return it and he would refund my money! (And yes, he was right, I wasn’t quite ready for that particular cheese.)
If you’re a foodie, the joy of living in Europe is the depth of the food experience: the open air markets; a small town café serving house-made jambon persillé; following a hand lettered sign “Dégustation de vin” (wine tasting) up a dirt road to taste wine in the wine maker’s
kitchen; eating ricotta cheese, made that morning, drizzled with lavender honey from local hives. And while it is true that you can find a poor meal in France, you can, more often than not, find amazing food almost anywhere. That little village café serves magret de canard because the villagers, who eat there regularly, are culturally educated to know and demand good food. They have hundreds of years of culinary experience to draw upon.
On an excursion to the south of France, to the small port town of Bandol, we found a dégustation of the local wine cooperative. We tasted the great rosés that Bandol is famous for,
as well as the very interesting, but lesser known white wines of the area. The patron of the cooperative poured our wine. He was very animated talking about the wines, but when the conversation moved on to food the patron looked down and shook his head. He said he was distressed over the state of cuisine in France. He felt that the French were losing their passion for food and were embracing the American way of eating. MacDonald’s (the French call it MacDOE, with a long “o”) was too popular, families were not taking their meals together, and quality of the café, the bistro, and the national heritage of food was in decline. And yet, and this is what is so memorable to me, he felt that Americans were on the opposite tack. He held up his arms and made an “X” of them. He said that while the French cuisine was declining (he wiggled his right elbow), America’s cuisine was ascending (he wiggled his left hand).
The United States of Arugula
David Kamp’s food lover’s guide to the our own culinary history, The United States of Arugula, How We Became a Gourmet Nation, is a fascinating study of the American culinary world since 1950’s. It is the back story of James Beard, Julia Child, the French invasion of the fifties, the evolution of food awareness, designer pizza, and farm-to-restaurant provisions. And it’s I book I recommend to any foodie who is interested in how we have arrived at this particular culinary moment in America. But Kamp never answers the question inherent in his title: Are We a Gourmet Nation?
Kamp rarely looks beneath that upper echelon of the culinary world. Most of the players he mentions you already know: Beard, Child, Emeril, Puck. He talks about the contributions of the big name restaurants. He talks about Whole Foods Market and Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee. He talks about the celebrity farmer’s markets.
But he never talks about you or me. We are the players that will make America a Gourmet Nation. It is we who are discovering the magic of the culinary world. The big cities, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and others, have long had outposts of culinary excellence, both in restaurants and markets, but those were isolated islands. Now, from the east coast to the west, and most importantly, everywhere in between, the passion of food and eating and cooking, the passion that the food-centric cultures know, is settling into our national soul.
Gourmet Nationhood is not like instant Nescafé: you can’t just add water. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have a couple of good restaurants or cafes in your neighborhood. Maybe you’ve got a great food shop or artisan baker. But most of our American quartiers still are barren. Most of us don’t have the eating opportunities, or the depth of understanding of cuisine, that a Frenchman or an Italian has. We still have to learn those early steps of the process, just like my learning experience with cheese.
The good news is that Monsieur Bandol is correct. We are embracing good food, and embracing it passionately. Hence the Food Network. Hence the hundreds of available food magazines. Hence DancingSpoon.com. Gourmet Nationhood demands time, and learning, and tasting, and cooking, and sharing, and supporting your local bakers, and farmers and cheese makers, and weaving the world of food into our beings. (Whew!)
When one walks down the typical American city and can’t resist popping into that pastry shop for a regional treat, or grab a fresh baguette from the local baker, or stop every few steps to study the daily lunch menu hanging in the window of your neighborhood café, until our food shops are passionate about the meat, or vegetables, or spices that they sell you, until you are passionate about what you buy and cook and eat, we’re not there yet.
But you know what? I think our culinary education is proceeding just fine; no longer are we that small (culinary) child. We may not be a Gourmet Nation just yet, but I think we can become one.
– J. Michael Wheeler
Shopping list
The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
What makes a Gourmet Nation, Gourmet? What do you think?
