I'm only into Jean-Georges's early stuff.
September 14, 2014 11:36 PM   Subscribe

There once was a time when your working knowledge of, say, Junot Diaz or Radiohead was all you needed to show some conversational with-it-ness. Now, though? Restaurants - the currency of the young and cash-strapped - are the key to the cultural kingdom.
posted by paleyellowwithorange (49 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
See, I'm in a medium sized city that at any given time has, like, one cool restaurant, and a million other really good ones that are relatively inexpensive, and being the Person Who Knows What Places Are Good is a pretty good piece of social currency, and though it does cost money to eat out, knowing places that are both decent and cheap is way more useful than knowing the handful of higher-end places, especially the "hip" ones, because there's few enough of them that everyone knows what they are already. I love talking about food with people, since it's pretty accessible-- everyone does it-- and everyone has opinions about it, but there aren't many opinions people might have that will make me instantly lose all respect for them, so it's an easy topic for smalltalk. It helps that New Mexico is in love with its own style of food, so everyone has opinions about that and most people can bond over that.
posted by NoraReed at 12:12 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


Unless "cash-strapped" means "possessing straps that are actually made of cash," the young and cash-strapped don't eat at restaurants.
posted by koeselitz at 12:38 AM on September 15, 2014 [8 favorites]


Unless "cash-strapped" means "possessing straps that are actually made of cash,"

It was the style at the times.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 12:41 AM on September 15, 2014 [9 favorites]


From the third paragraph ...

Recently, though, I've started thinking that chasing restaurants is the least interesting way to be interesting.

well, maybe not as bad as being an 80s hair metal completist, because food at least tastes good. But yeah, you're onto something, man.
posted by philip-random at 12:44 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I hate poseurs. I hate it when eating becomes such a complicated thing. Eat stuff because it tastes good, man!
posted by Omnomnom at 1:26 AM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


Having been young (well, young-ish) and very very cash-strapped in Atlanta about five years ago, believe me, I did a lot more reading about places I wanted to eat at than actually eating at them. I knew about almost any and all new restaurants anywhere but only because I could occasionally scrape up the money to buy new issues of F&W/Bon Appetit/Saveur, etc.

I suspect the author's idea of young and cash-strapped might mean something very very different than the reality.
posted by Kitteh at 4:06 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


I live in London and the only reasonable hopes you can take into a restaurant are that a) your food will come within an hour and be the thing that you ordered, b) it will taste OKish, and c) a meal for two with wine might cost less than £80. So I stopped altogether 6 months ago and it's great.
posted by colie at 4:57 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think that this guy may have the wrong kinds of friends.

I once was young and now am not so old, as the fellow says, and I can testify that it's perfectly possible to run around in snob bohemian circles while still doing things you authentically enjoy and can afford - so possible, in fact, that I have never really encountered all this "pressure" to collect all the things and go all the places. I did have a couple of record snob guy friends in my twenties, it's true, but their power over me was about my own insecurity rather than any cultural imperative.
posted by Frowner at 5:02 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I suspect the author's idea of young and cash-strapped might mean something very very different than the reality.

Yeah, a "twenty-five dollar meal" does not really "seem reasonable" to me. That's two and a half hours of my labor at my current main gig. So.
posted by threeants at 5:25 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm a full-blown Brooklyn hipster myself, and I find that the restaurant thing doesn't have nearly the traction that it did a few years ago. These days it's pretty much everyone going to the same places anyway; it's become way less of a status thing. In my experience, the hipster dick-waving contest du jour is beer (or bourbon/rye among the richer hipster set) - who's been to what brewery, what rare releases you can get a hold of, the up-and-coming breweries you know about. It gets exhausting, thought at least it's cheaper than restaurant-chasing.
posted by Itaxpica at 5:44 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Nobody goes to that hipster restaurant anymore--it's too full of hipsters.
posted by box at 5:47 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I suspect the author's idea of young and cash-strapped might mean something very very different than the reality.


Well, it is an article in GQ, but yes, when you are cash strapped and not a fool, eating out is the first thing to go.

Also, Itaxpica, sounds like you need better friends, and if they're not available where you are, move somewhere less dumb.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:48 AM on September 15, 2014


when you are cash strapped and not a fool, eating out is the first thing to go.

Cigarettes (if applicable), drugs, and alcohol are also good candidates to go first, for the non-fool cash-strapped set.
posted by thelonius at 5:59 AM on September 15, 2014


I'm also in Brooklyn, and so, so glad the restaurant thing seems to be fading. Of all the things to be culturally obsessed with, food is the most boring. Music, movies, architecture, local politics, even video games, the conversation can go somewhere, different lenses can be applied, comparisons to other art can be drawn. But food is just... There's just not much to say. Every conversation is "OMG, their [insert dish] is [insert superlative]" and there it repeats.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 6:04 AM on September 15, 2014


Well, it is an article in GQ, but yes, when you are cash strapped and not a fool, eating out is the first thing to go.
I suppose that depends on your definition of cash-strapped. When you're really broke, eating out is a bad idea, but if you're just young and not-rich, then it isn't heinously expensive if you do it as a way to socialize with friends, rather than something you do every night because you don't feel like cooking. And I think we're mostly talking about people in places like New York and maybe a few other big cities, where young people often live in apartments that don't make dinner parties very enticing. Where I live, there are fewer restaurants and people have more space, so people who fancy themselves foodies are probably going to cook at home a lot. If you live in New York, you're going to be doing a lot of your socializing outside your home no matter what, and you might as well get an interesting meal if you're going to be going out anyway.

I don't know. I'm the opposite of a hipster, and I probably don't even get what he's talking about, but going to interesting restaurants is more understandable to me than plenty of other hipster obsessions. I don't think it would make one interesting, but that's ok, because it would still be delicious.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:06 AM on September 15, 2014


So the cultural kingdom is, once again, Brooklyn. Huh. I'll be sure to mention that next time it comes up.

Admittedly, it would have had a lot of chuckle value in 1960, and will no doubt have some incredulity value in 2035.
posted by Frowner at 6:07 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


your working knowledge of, say, Junot Diaz or Radiohead

If a working knowledge makes you hip, then my encyclopedic knowledge of Radiohead should make me the coolest.

That's not the case.

:(
posted by Windigo at 6:08 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


A friend and I were discussing this the other day, and decided that the death of record and book stores was partly to blame. The people in our city whose personal identity is built on having better, obscurer taste than anyone else (a category that included both of us at one time) are now frowning at others' choices in pancakes or tacos than novels or used CDs, because that's the venue available to them, either as employees or patrons.
posted by heurtebise at 6:17 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


He lost me with the gratuitous Kundun slam early on.
posted by Mothlight at 6:21 AM on September 15, 2014


This phenomena is just starting to ramp up where I am, which dismays me, because I am a single poor. If I want to see my friends, I have to go out to eat, because they are foodies who don't cook. So I don't see my friends, but instead see out of focus poorly lit photos in my feeds of what could be truffle pizza or possibly an ironic grilled cheese.

I may need better friends, but that's an Askme.
posted by Lemmy Caution at 6:24 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


My theory is this is one of the continuing effects of GWB era anti-intellectualism. Food is more accessible than books or movies.

Ok, competing theory that I like better than my first theory... it's a result of the profusion of streaming media. Everyone has so much access to music and movies that more folks are listening to the long tail and have less in common taste-wise to discuss. Whereas restaurants are finite. We can assume that other folks who live in the area will be familiar with the major restaurants there.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:27 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: could be truffle pizza or possibly an ironic grilled cheese
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:29 AM on September 15, 2014


foodies who don't cook

I just have to repeat those four words for emphasis.
posted by gimonca at 6:35 AM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


Carrie Fisher to thread, "Restaurants are to people in the 80's what theatres were to people in the 60's. I read that in a magazine."

Am also tickled by the author's choice of Radiohead, rock music's elder statesmen for a least a decade now, as a metonym for "with-it-ness."
posted by octobersurprise at 6:39 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


If hipsters are interested in food as a checklist, they've got it all wrong - and yes - I do mean all wrong. And yet, they've also got a portion of it so undeniably right that it should be acknowledged, because I doubt they know what they've got right.

Food is cultural tradition, but we now live in times where organic heirloom tomatoes can cross the country in less than two days. The abundance of food availability to those with resources is amazing - and - unless you truly live in poverty you have available food. Not necessarily 'good for you food' or even 'good food' but you do have access to oral-ready caloric substances. And as a result, there is this great leveling of the food play-field. You can get the same Cheetos in Brooklyn that you can in Milwaukee. And pea tendrils too.

So then why does food exist? Why are restaurants the way they are? Why do things get popular? Why do they go out of phase? History folks - history. See variety in your diet wasn't always a thing. Variety is something that only globalization lets you have. Before that, you ate what you grew or killed - and given that subsistence was that tough, generally you were also growing and killing to sell to support every other aspect of your life - meaning that your ingredient list was limited to what was local to your area and what you could locally trade for. This is why when I say 'normande' you should be immediately thinking of fish, cream and cheese - the rest of the dish gets more complex, but the availability of fish in Normandy meant that people could use that protein easier and save the cows for dairy. Now that flys in the face of 'bourguignon' where everyone should suddenly start thinking beef and the fertile lands of Burgundy for raising cattle for slaughter - less fish, more beef. Get the idea?

So here's the thing, peasants still didn't eat really well in the middle ages - boil it, cook it on a spit, dry and season it... but food was calories on a plate and eating was checking an item off your list on your daily chores. Ignoring the fact that the beef was all grass fed, that the greens were seasonal and that everything was hand picked was first done by the poor - not the hipster.

Any joy of food was likely overshadowed by the fact that you were really providing commodities to the lords and guilds - because those were the people who could afford to buy your goods, and barter necessary trades to get the good stuff from all over the world. As such, they threw lavish parties, lived lives that would make the trendiest hipster jealous, and had chefs to feed their manor / castle / guild hall. They lived the dream. and if you were poor - you had none of it. Well, not the variety. And if you were a chef, you still had none of it - because it was your job to cook the food - not to join in the party. Being a dandy must have been pretty awesome though, because being able to talk about all these wild guild parties and good food despite being of a lower social standing and likely not able to normally afford what you were eating - well you don't get more hipster than the dandy.

So anyways, the big turning point in French cuisine is the French Revolution. Its amazing what chopping off a few heads of pretentious a-holes on a power trip can do. For starters, if you were a chef - your revenue stream has been cut off... quite literally. And, you really are just a peasant, but you've got no land, no cows, and no knowledge of how to raise a crop... what you know is how to cook. Also, these other a-holes from the countryside are going to string you up if you don't show you are useful pretty quick. And here is where restaurants are founded... flee the city, find a common house to stop at, offer your services for room and board, make the place famous - and suddenly a new class of rich a-holes will now leave Paris by carriage just to stop at your restaurant on the way to their new summer home. Cue Marie-Antoine Careme, the original Boy Named 'Sue', since as we all know - hipsters still dig Johnny Cash.

Now lords and ladies - they got beheaded, the guilds they beheaded a little but mostly just restructured - and the relationship between the guilds and the chefs became far more of a SYSCO style supplier... But, this is where local foods suddenly got a lot more interesting.

Moving from there, cooking still was a poor man's job... yeah people paid you, but it was work. Then napoleon decided 'Hey Europe - I'm feeling a little Julius Ceasarish - you're mine.' so he marched an army all across Europe. You don't do that on an empty stomach so he took a bunch of cooks with him. Allegedly, the original white chef's jackets were dress jackets worn inside out because the cooks were too lazy to clean them. Napoleon saw this and was all 'yeah, I don't think so a-holes - you need to learn to keep your clothes clean so some a-hole will see that that french military jacket is vintage'. He replaced their jackets with all white ones - think: spill and die, or at least spill and demerit, but at least he knew his cooks would take their jobs a little more seriously.

Then came Escoffier at the turn of the 20th century and he was at one point a military man, and re-arranged the french kitchen into the brigade system - which I really hope I don't have to explain here but lets just say that if one guy's whole job is talking about how good his fruits and veggies are today we know he's probably vegan, carrying an iPhone and into 'Apple'. Escoffier called him an entremettier (loosely translates to apple-asshole).

Anyways, so what I'm getting at is hipsters, as much as they may be saying food doesn't have a pull on them - have been around it forever... that they have a long line of history of really not carring about what it actually tastes like, that eating to check things off their list is important to them, and ultimately its ok that they are a bunch of entremettiers.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:55 AM on September 15, 2014 [11 favorites]


Snobbery isn't a zero-sum game. I know people who will make you feel small both for not having been to this amazing Szechuan joint in an obscure suburb, and also for not having heard of the latest chapbook by x obscure prose-poet.
posted by Beardman at 7:00 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


foodies who don't cook

I just have to repeat those four words for emphasis.


I just don't see what's so weird about this. I like to eat. I like to eat different, interesting things all the time. I am really interested in what extremely talented and passionate people are capable of doing with food. And I absolutely goddamn hate to cook. Why are these things at odds? Cooking /= eating, and cooking /= food.
posted by like_a_friend at 7:45 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


Yeah, I'm a foodie.

I hate cooking.

I suck at it. I hate taking the time. I hate cleaning up. I much rather go out and socialize, have a drink, enjoy the service, and be presented with food about 1 billion times better than the pre-made Trader Joe's meal we would have slapped into the oven at home.
posted by Windigo at 8:09 AM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


you know what I definitely think this is true. When I was in high school it was all about what bands you listen to, but now I don't see that as a defining feature - "Just listen to whatever you enjoy!" But, there seems to be something deeper about food, because it's enjoyment + cost + health + ethics.
posted by rebent at 8:38 AM on September 15, 2014


I know people who will make you feel small

You know people who will try to make me feel small.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:10 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


Good restaurant food is literally handmade every day by artisans and slightly different every time, so it's not really that surprising that hipsters would be into it.
posted by Small Dollar at 9:13 AM on September 15, 2014


I think there's two key elements to the restaurant's resurgence - firstly and most importantly, urban density is shooting up and living space is going down, which is discouraging in-home entertaining for a certain class of youngish people when they make the unfortunate decision to stop spending their leisure lives exclusively in pubs and bars.

Secondly it seems partly related to the back-to-the-earth authenticity quest/flight from the abstract that's been a growing undertow of culture in the last couple of decades.

Food is a tangible inarguable thing (in a way that you can see is being increasingly picked up and reified in gourmet marketing by attaching locations and methods and qualities) - organic oil brushed Gambian sundried umbrella turnips are things, drizzle baked Alpine red muesli croutons are things, wheat-fed soyaloaf pumpkin fillets brushed with loom-spun Pacific sea salt is thingy in a way that ballet and art exhibitions are no longer in the post-modern age, and unquestionably unsuspect in a way that things like cinema aren't in the post-computer age. Is this not a bowl of soup I see before me? Are you going to try to tell me that I don't like the taste of it? This, I claim, is part of the appeal. [ZIZEK MODE OFF]
posted by forgetful snow at 9:20 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not a single mention of Portland?

Please.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:23 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Do people gather in very large groups at restaurants, then? Except when I lived in the maybe 175-square-foot place, I don't think I've lived anywhere where I couldn't entertain three or four friends.

Going to a restaurant does mean that you don't have to do any dishes, though.

I know very few people who have the kind of discretionary income where you can afford fun meals out regularly, though, so inviting people to meet you at a restaurant is considered kind of poor form.
posted by Frowner at 9:25 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I will give up every other luxury ever before I stop eating out because cooking is pretty much the worst thing ever. It is tedious, it is messy, it makes an unending set of dishes that never stops and it takes forever in a life of very little free time. And if you go to people's houses, they try to guilt you into doing the dishes (aka, the most sucky of all parts) so they can pretend to be good people by doing the thing they (inexplicably but whatever) like while foisting the mess and grossness of food cleaning on others. Nope nope nope.

In sum: restaurants forever.
posted by dame at 10:37 AM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


"I know people who will make you feel small"

You know people who will try to make me feel small.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:10 PM on September 15


Eponyappropriate.

(Also, {{salute}}.)
posted by seyirci at 11:05 AM on September 15, 2014


Do people gather in very large groups at restaurants, then?

Sometimes, but it's always a total nightmare, so I avoid it whenever possible.

if you go to people's houses, they try to guilt you into doing the dishes

As with so many gripes in this thread, the solution is to get better friends. On the other hand, I always offer to help out when I go to someone's place, so if your friends have to guilt you into it, maybe the advice applies to them instead of you...
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:12 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Good restaurant food is literally handmade every day by artisans and slightly different every time, so it's not really that surprising that hipsters would be into it.
posted by Small Dollar at 12:13 PM on September 15 [+] [!]

This is so wrong its not even funny.

Good restaurant food comes out like a machine - perfect and exactly to the chef's specifications every time. It comes out so perfect every time that nearly every customer believes that they have a unique dish in front of them. The only variation in this form is from the DNA differentiation and lifestyle choices by that particular ingredient (Your chicken was into Urban Parkour? Oh, how Bolshevik.) These differences are nearly indistinguishable. The bigger differences are caused by this: the chef may at a whim, change those specifications and fly into a rage that would make Gordon Ramsay himself blush because you aren't producing to the new specifications. Sometimes this is referred to as a 'Daily Menu' sometimes this is just an evening where you say 'Yes, Chef!' and keep your head down.

But I can see why a hipster would want his meal to be unique and authentic - almost to the point where they would will something so completely not the case to be the case - to be an Ironic foodie.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:18 AM on September 15, 2014


And if you go to people's houses, they try to guilt you into doing the dishes (aka, the most sucky of all parts) so they can pretend to be good people by doing the thing they (inexplicably but whatever) like while foisting the mess and grossness of food cleaning on others

I suspect if you let your friends know your sentiments they will quickly stop bothering you with invitations.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Good restaurant food is literally handmade every day by artisans ...

Also your food was likely made by an alcoholic or drug addict who at some point will have to strongly consider rehab. It may feel like the work of an artisan, but its the work of someone more likely with mental illness and sharp knives. If you can't color in the lines - there's no place for you in high end restaurants.

It was likely overseen by someone who was an artisan who may or may not also have any combination of the above maladies...
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:24 AM on September 15, 2014


You are missing the point. I like restaurants so I don't have to choose between supporting messy hobbies by doing gross things or enjoying my friends. At restaurants, we all win! They don't have to do the dishes. I don't have to do the dishes. Yay!
posted by dame at 11:26 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


The article seems to assume that every Young Hipster Dining Experience is the same as his, namely, $25 dinners six nights a week. Which yeah, if you're cash-strapped, you don't probably do. But the hipsteriest thing for hipsters to hip about in my city is tacos, which cost about 2 bucks a piece, and frankly a 4 dollar dinner is usually way more cost effective for me than anything I could cook.

Oh yeah and the last time I "entertained" at home it cost me almost $200. Or, the equivalent of four to six actual restaurant meals out. Not rushing to do that again, for sure.
posted by like_a_friend at 11:45 AM on September 15, 2014


Do people gather in very large groups at restaurants, then? Except when I lived in the maybe 175-square-foot place, I don't think I've lived anywhere where I couldn't entertain three or four friends.
Yes? I mean, maybe not very large groups, but groups larger than four, which is the maximum number of people who fit around the table in my current 600-square-foot apartment. The last time I went out to eat with friends there were seven of us by my count, which is definitely more people than I could comfortably feed in my apartment. I could do it, but people would be sitting on the couch awkwardly balancing a plate in their laps, and that doesn't sound like a ton of fun.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:28 PM on September 15, 2014


I enjoy cooking as a process but love eating at restaurants because the quality of the food is so much higher than I could achieve on my own (and frequently cheaper, to be honest). I am probably an insufferable foodie by many of y'all's standards (live in NYC, have a list of places I want to eat--granted, probably cheaper than what's talked about in the article), but since I have to eat multiple times a day I may as well get as much enjoyment/excitement out of it as I can. I know there are a lot of icky factors about eating at trendy restaurants, but every time someone snarks about the trendiness of restaurants, I'm reminded of the part in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown where Snoopy is singing about how great suppertime is and Charlie Brown tells him to cut it out and Snoopy says, "So what's wrong with making mealtime a joyous occasion?" Nothing, in my opinion.
posted by ferret branca at 12:43 PM on September 15, 2014


You spent $200 on taco ingredients? I can make a bean rice and cheese taco for under 0$0.50 a person with everyone getting 3 kickass tacos. Did you feed 400 people? Or are you comparing that with a meal that would have cost a few grand to cater, ignoring that there are ways to feed large numbers of people for a lot less than $200. Apples and oranges also a differ in food cost.
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:59 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


They said nothing about $200 tacos. They said that having a dinner party cost them $200.
posted by Windigo at 2:32 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I could totally throw a $200 dinner party without having it look particularly costly - good ingredients from the co-op, enough reasonable wine for a mid-sized group, good coffee for afters. I can remember spending north of $100 on a dinner party for five in richer days. (Admittedly, the last time I had a big group over for dinner we made radically inauthentic yet tasty tamales and the total cost was probably under fifteen dollars.)

The thing is, I hate being at restaurants with a large group. In your own house, you can walk around and talk to different people, you can choose the music and the volume, you can escape to the kitchen as needed and the whole group is predictable - you know that you've got two toddlers and one guy who just cannot shut up about Richard Rorty and you plan accordingly, rather than deal with random noisy people at the restaurant.

With three or four people, you can sit close together and hear each other talk. With a big group at a big table, I might barely get to talk to half the people, and that seems like a drag.
posted by Frowner at 2:43 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


You spent $200 on taco ingredients? I can make a bean rice and cheese taco for under 0$0.50 a person

No. To prepare a non-taco, dinner-at-someone's-house quality meal, with wine and dessert, for six of my friends ended up costing about $200. (if I threw a party and served everyone three meatless tacos with no booze my friends would never speak to me again. And in my opinion, they'd be right.)

Whereas when my six friends and I go out to dinner we will likely go to a tacqueria or a tamale joint or some such and end up spending like 10 bucks apiece on food and a beer.

The point was, which of these things is ACTUALLY more reasonable for the "young and cash-strapped" referenced in the FPP. If I went out for tacos and beers with my friends every day for a week, I still would not spend as much as it would cost for us all to have ONE meal at my house.
posted by like_a_friend at 9:28 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


I still don't understand why you'd compare a multi course meal with wine to a trip to a taco joint.
The times where I would meet friends for tacos were also the times I'd invite them to my place for a giant bowl of spaghetti. My restaurant expenses and in home hosting have both increases with my budget. I mean, it's no big deal and you seem to have higher standards for in home hosting. I just think that's a you thing rather than a thing you can assume for most people.
Other than that, I do agree his feelings on what cash strapped diners can afford are way off.
posted by Omnomnom at 12:09 AM on September 17, 2014


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