The Gourmets Are All Dead. Oregon Gourmets Are Called "Foodies" Because of Their Remarkable Bad Taste

Oregon Gourmets Are Called "Foodies" Because of Their Remarkable Bad Taste Why Does Such a Grotesque Word Persist in the Local News Print and Figure in so Many Local Food Stories? Lex Loeb Contributor Network Yuppie was a grotesque word that Originated in the Chicago Tribune newspaper by a now discredited columnist. The word was sort of a Marxist socialist slur used to define a class of young upwardly mobile people who exhibited wasteful behavior that raised the ire of print media journalists in their desire to define proper social context in their lens of political correctness. The word Yuppie went national and has had a long life cycle in the press till the present day when the old Yuppies are now so middle age or beyond that the word is practically going extinct even if it does now appear in the colloquial dictionary. Some people wished they had never even heard or read the word in the first place and its later derivatives that included, Yuppies, Guppies and Puppies.The Original meaning was young bourgeois sell outs to capitalism. Now that the Yupping is almost dead someone, perhaps here in Portland Oregon , came up with the word "Foodies" to replace what might have used to be the word gourmet. The world was possibly first seen in Willamette Week a weekly free semi-counter culture free weekly newspaper/ magazine in the Portland Area. The context was something of a slur used to describe the local wannabe gourmets who frequented an ever increasing number of trendy moderate to expensive local restaurants catering to people with questionable good taste. Of course good taste in gourmet food went the way of modern and later contemporary art where any basic standards are non existent, An anything goes attitude in gourmet food preparation and presentation became the name of the high end restaurant in Portland Oregon. What makes the word "Foodie" so grotesque is that it is a slur on the type of customer most sought after by the higher end trendy restaurants and other food purveyors. It brings to mind the notion that at best they are getting added value for the slop they are willing to eat because a chef has spent a good deal of time playing with the food as opposed to just having prepared it. Foodies are the dupes taken by food con-artists naive as to pay more than food is worth in our Oregon socialist collective where good taste in food is really politically correct. In the Portland cable series on the IFC network the writers honed in directlyon the foodie foodism with their skit about a chicken on a chicken dinner plate having the proper identification papers while the same people concerned about the upbringing of the chicken and it's free ranging had their baby chained to a bicycle rack while they were inside a café. Concern about the origins of food Anne whether it is organic and ethical food certainly take pate off the menu of most of the local gourmets but does that debase them to the level of foodies? The French Gourmet associations would not give their seal of approval to the typical Oregon gourmet but instead of calling them "Foodies" the French just make a farting noise with their lips to describe almost anything considered American Culture. Portland had a cultural revolution in restaurant trends that created communal seating in some restaurants rather than separate tables and this might have had some national influence.Some restaurants relocate their dining rooms to farms and fields or even to slaughter houses to give diners a sense of where their food is coming from. If one can't get a reservation one might have to have an invitation to join in these intense Foodie orgies. The cost is no where near midtown Manhattan restaurant prices but the quality is also not nearly as often as highly rated. There are a certain number of national or world wide top rated restaurants in Portland but most of them certainly don't knowingly cater to Foodies. Anyone who even looks like a Foodie making a reservation won't get one and if they have a reservation and they walk in the door and flash a foodie club credit card they are not likely to make it to the table. Gourmets can be easily enough fooled by sticking any kind of food in a melted down pound of butter because virtually anything tastes better with too much butter. Foodies must be even less sophisticated about high quality food because they are concerned with not just the way the food is played with before cooking it but how it was treated from birth. There is no way that sweetbreads served at some of Portland's finest restaurants can be considered ethical on planet foodie and yet they do also appear at more moderately priced restaurants. If one wanted to create from scratch the ultimate foodie emporium what would the restaurant look like? According to the latest trends it would be a 5 star food cart restaurant in 1960s or 70s RV Travel trailer. The food would be moderately expensive in the $18- $35 dollar a plate range, there would be communal seating. If they had steak it would be glazed with carpenter ants and organic honey and grilled over a hemp seed fire. More likely it would be billy goat and not steak because steaks are unethical . Everything on the menu would be some sort of culinary fusion with Mexican sushi and Chinese beur blanc. There is just faking it to have quality foodie fare. Portland has discovered the prix fixe menu which often gives the chef more latitude in finding foods that no ordinary person would willingly eat unless forced to except for the foodies of course. All those prix fixe Menes say " No Substitutions Under Any Circumstances" You will be eating your brains and califlower or else. Foodies shut your mouths and eat. Can they do actually do that? If ever there was a word in the print media to be eaten digested and flushed down the toilet it has to be the word Foodie. . Close