tl;dr everyone should take “Food and the Social Order” with Professor Ferguson

What do you think you talk about when you talk about food? Do you even know what you should be talking about when you talk about food? Bwog didn’t know either, so we sent hungry correspondent Ross Chapman to get answers.  

A crowd with a median age of somewhere around 60 gathered in the East Gallery of Buell Hall, home of the Columbia Maison Française, to hear a talk about culinary conversations. Air France and Culinary Historians of New York (CHNY) hosted Columbia professor of sociology Priscilla Ferguson (GSAS ’64 & ’67 (French)) as she gave a lecture loquaciously titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Food.” Also included in the night was the presentation of CHNY’s Amelia Award, which honors significant contribution to culinary history. CHNY Chair Cathy Kaufman introduced the event and advertised Professor Ferguson’s new book, Word of Mouth, before bringing the speaker on stage.

Ferguson’s lecture, also called “Food Talk” by the speakers, focused on Haute (pronounced like “oat” because of French!) Food, a culinary movement and perspective that disdains convention and praises creativity and incongruity. The defining characteristic of Haute Food is its novelty. Filling a chocolate with nuts or raspberry was once rare and new, but is now old hat. (Ferguson praised Mondel Chocolates for staying true to these culinary staples). Now, the Haute Food chefs who want to stand out fill chocolate with wasabi and cheese. The combination of unusual and ordinary ingredients is one way to effect “Hautification.” A normal and plainly prepared hamburger paired with foie gras (as one NYC chef dared to do) would be Haute. Putting a traditionally luxurious food in a mundane location (here’s looking at you, McLobster) would be Haute. The goal is sometimes not to make the best tasting meal. “Are you even supposed to like them?” asked Ferguson about some items on a four-hour long tasting menu. Some chefs would say, “I really don’t care.” The goal is to be new and artistic.

The reaction to the Haute Food movement has been variable. Food critics (and readers of those critiques) have had a terrible time devising a good way to objectively grade food in a movement that promotes individuality. This has led to a decreased importance on stars and a greater weight on the text of reviews and the reader’s relationship with an individual critic. In American culture, the deformalization of public events has led to a clash with fancy dining. Some restaurants have learned to deal with the “smart casual” dress code (and some gourmet chefs in food trucks don’t care if customers wear anything at all), while others thrust sport jackets onto casually dressed patrons. The fascination that comes with the development of new culinary techniques has led to tables popping up in the middle of kitchens and television cameras gravitating towards celebrity chefs. “Today,” Ferguson explained, “cooking is part of the meal” much more than it once was. And a sort of jadedness has come over the eating public. While 1970’s French critics had no idea what to say about Japanese food, some college students today make it a weekly staple of their diet.

With all of this talk about Haute Food, it’s easy to forget that it’s not the only thing going on in the modern culinary world. If everything was unfamiliar and new, Haute Food would be indistinguishable from a meal at John Jay. Ferguson used brisket as an example of a food resistant to the Haute movement. Nobody would want an Haute brisket. It’s an inherently non-Haute dish by the definition of its ingredients and preparation. No matter how much work Haute Food chefs may do, brisket will never be wrested away from the public, vernacular sphere. Professor Ferguson ended her speech with an anti-Haute Food statement. The Haute Food movement places value on bites, not meals, and therefore distorts the original social arenas of food. The swirling competitiveness of Haute Cuisine, she hopes, will die down and leave an enriched but more traditional food culture in its place.

Ferguson was behind the podium for about 35 minutes, and at the end of it, the audience felt more educated about Haute Food and how it expresses itself in our culture. But we were left with a strong question at the end: what do we really talk about when we talk about food? The lecture was pretty engaging, although it was a bit intimidating to someone with very little experience with Haute Food. There was a pretty significant assumption of knowledge for this talk. When Ferguson gave an anecdote about an American restaurateur in France improperly constructing a cheese plate, the chuckles from the audience felt alienating, at best. The lecture had trouble attacking the question at the core of its name; it seemed to talk about food and food alone. Ferguson claimed at the beginning of the lecture that “culinary practices… are key to the way we live our lives” and that Haute Food “speaks to a new set of cultural relationships,” but she never did much to expand these ideas during her short talk.

After Professor Ferguson took some questions (some of which were honestly less questions and more opinions) and stepped off the stage, Cathy Kaufman came back on the stage to present the Amelia Award of CHNY. The prize is named after Amilia Simmons, the author of the first American cookbook in 1796. The seventh presentation of the Amelia Award was given to Nach Waxman, proprietor of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a New York City bookstore that caters to hardcore professional chefs and home cooks alike. He is also the co-author of The Chef Says…, a collection of quotations from chefs about their works and lives. He has also been a judge of food and books about food for years. In his acceptance speech, he reiterated that “cooking… is dependent on a lot more than the ingredients we choose.” He used the example of “bagel culture:” when, how, and with what other foods we eat them all contribute to our idea of bagels (which we feel very strongly about). He urged the audience to consider these factors in every food to gain a better understanding of the world around us.

Photo via Culinary Historians of New York