Food isn’t just what we eat: it’s layered with cultural connections, so its subjective value can be more than just cost.
There is a marked difference between the value of ‘elite’ and everyman food. The former, like Wilson and Chapman’s trip to The Grove, is delicious because of objective quality, but the latter, like KFC, is delicious because of its cultural connotations – it may be a nostalgic or comfort food – and the people you eat it with. Chapman explains “food that can be eaten with the whole family…is often the preferred choice.” Food doesn’t need to be expensive to be wonderful (“a celebration of crap”), and the parallel readings illustrate that Chapman found KFC just as delicious as Wilson found The Grove, because it was part of her family’s culture (“big families or…brown families”). Similarly, personal reviews are just as valued as official ones. It really all comes down to personal subjectivity.
If this is true, then the value of food, or any art, isn’t necessarily the quality of the dish. A similar problem occurs throughout the art world. In my Art History class, we discussed how museum art can appear elite or inaccessible to most people. In the instance of artists like Jeff Koons, whose ‘Rabbit’ sold for $91 million, there might even be an Emperor’s New Clothes effect going on. Many people complain they ‘don’t get’ art, and that these sorts of prices are ridiculous. The problem is, they don’t realise that there isn’t anything to ‘get’ – art is subjective, and just like liking KFC, there is no wrong answer to preference.
References:
The food critic and the rookie head to KFC; The critic and the rookie go to The Grove, one of Auckland’s fanciest restaurants. From The Spinoff, by Simon Wilson & Madeleine Chapman.
The critic and the rookie go to The Grove, one of Auckland’s fanciest restaurants
What a great blog, food is definitely full of connections and memories which shape how we experience it. At the end of the day preference is preference, and it’s interesting how this is shaped by our unique backgrounds and experiences. The sociality involved in eating food seems to a be a key indicator around forming positive connections which explains why traditional foods sometimes hold greater emotional weight as they are often eaten at special occasions when more of a family are together than usual.