by Keith Talent
I can’t stand the word foodie. It’s overly simplistic and calculatedly lowbrow so as to offset the pretension of calling someone a “gourmet”. It’s sort of a Rachel Ray vs. Paul Bocuse question, really (neither of whom accurately represent my interests in topics culinary). We need a substitute, something in between, something that conveys the enthusiastic spirit of a good and curious diner, without sounding like it was coined by an ESL grade two class…
I asked a Chinese friend how the usually clever Chinese language dealt with this, he said the closest equivalent was to call someone an “eater”. I’m not so sure that is much of an improvement over foodie. “Gastronome” doesn’t have the heavy, self-important overtones as “gourmet”, but a gastronome wouldn’t search out the best burger or be intimately familiar with the heady days back when Taco Bell still had its 99 cent menu (still slightly too over the top). I do like the made up “gastronaut”. Kind of techy, modern, and Google only returns 383,000 hits so it’s still a brand new baby “meme” in internet terms. Then again, identifying yourself with a made up word is pretty dorky, twelve-sided die geeky even.
The excellent-in-everything-but-title Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie (shown on PBS) seemingly co-opted the term. Every time I watch I wonder if they’d given any thought to an equivalent alternative word, but went with foodie anyways, or if they used the term to appeal to a wider potential audience. “Foodie” was already popular back in the early nineties - I remember being at a friends bachelor party, and having a unemployed millwright scream over the Guns ‘N Roses asking if I was a foodie, too, while cramming single dollar bills into the dancer’s G-string. (Hmmm, Urban Diner as personal catharsis generator - have we uncovered the cause of my dislike of the word? Someone ask Dr. Melfi.)
Really, I’ve no good suggestions. Anyone else identify themselves with a term that doesn’t make one cringe to utter? And while you’re considering that question, feel free to take a pop quiz to see if you are indeed a foodie, because reading a site completely devoted to food and dining isn’t proof enough. For the record I got two wrong, one was pure blind ignorance, and one was an itchy submit finger, I’ve eaten in the restaurant I picked, which I recognize isn’t in the city I selected. If you don’t break into the thirties, you should probably hand in your UDF decoder ring.
