Hacking Class

Question: What are the essential elements needed to make a good dining experience?

I guess fine dining looks a little like a Renaissance painting.

I’m very enamoured by stories of escaping class struggle. There’s a reason why “A Star Is Born” has been remade four times. It’s a narrative we so desperately want to believe. Believing that there’s a way out sustains us.

This is me in Paris two Christmases ago. I lived with a proud, patriotic French family of academics, intellectuals, and businesspeople. The dinner consisted of duck liver, kangaroo, oysters, deer and other foods that belong in a Dr. Seuss book but were symbolic of French tradition and aristocracy. Like Madeline Chapman, this was my first and only fine-dining experience. Similarly, I never really felt like I belonged there. It just felt like I was watching. 1

Can you hack class? In England, pretending to be rich is commonplace, because actually escaping from the rigid class system is impossible. During the Depression, my great-grandmother worked as a bartender while reading books on etiquette and how to be a “proper lady”. Why would you need that information if you work in a bar? Because the myth of escaping class struggle exists as long as capitalism does.

I actually don’t know what “good dining” is. I still feel like an imposter in upper-class circles, even though the reason my ancestors came to NZ was so that I might have the opportunity to inhabit those circles. To me, dining is just a routine. The French dinner was the first time in my life I’d seen food symbolise something else. Food is supposed to be humble, honest, righteous. But here I saw my everyday ritual twisted to reflect aristocracy and power. It was strange and surreal and I realised that maybe I’d just never get it because to get it would be to hack class, and that can only exist in movies. 

My French correspondante and I caught in a moment of resemblance. “The richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke. Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.” 2

1. Chapman, Madeleine, and Simon Wilson. “The Critic and the Rookie Go to The Grove, One of Auckland’s Fanciest Restaurants.” The Spinoff. December 08, 2017. Accessed May 23, 2019. https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/08-12-2017/the-critic-and-the-rookie-dining-out-at-one-of-aucklands-most-expensive-restaurants/.
2. Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again), New York, 1975, pp.100-1.