Close Reading the Culinary Culture War

To begin, I’ll own up to a nasty vice I have: cooking magazines. I subscribe to a ton—some good (Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur), some just shiny ad rags hawking outlandishly expensive designer kitchen baubles and “authentic” $3,500 per person international cooking trips that contain just enough decent recipes to keep my attention. A “Letter to the Editor” in the January issue of Gourmet caught my attention, and I was pleased to find another reader’s pithy retort in this month’s issue. From January:

For those of us who are not enamored of the culture and cuisine of the southern part of the United States, the January 2008 issue was one for the recycle bin. I went from page to page and not once did I crimp a corner to remind me to go back and savor a recipe or an article. Marianne W., Rolling Hills, CA

I particularly like the reply, from Cate M., San Antonio:

I read with interest Californian Marianne W.’s letter concerning the January 2008 issue of Gourmet. In it, she expressed that she is “not enamored” of either the culture or the cuisine of the South. I am tempted to say that I am not enamored of the consumerism, superficiality, and pollution found in Southern California, but instead I will just say, bless her heart.

I love the response—well-deserved and very apt (and so Texan). But I’d like to look a little more at M-Dub from the 310. First, for some background about Rolling Hills, CA: the city’s website states that “Rolling Hills is a private, gated community located atop the scenic hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula”. Got it. For those of you unfamiliar with Palos Verdes, here are some quick facts: median family income of $133,563, 78% White, 12% Asian, 3% Hispanic, less than 1% African-American, currently nine homes for sale in the city; the cheapest will set you back $1.98 million. So that’s where she’s coming from. Here’s what she could have written:

I’m not a fan of Southern cuisine, so I was a little disappointed that the whole January issue was devoted to it. I hope that in the future you decide to have at least some variety of recipes and articles in your themed issues.

But she didn’t. The opening of her letter is rather striking (for those of us), as it serves to create a sense of invisible majority behind her coming statements. No me’s, I’s, or one’s here; it is a strongly implied plural for which she speaks. Further, the author is “not enamored of” Southern cooking, and specifically adds Southern culture to the cuisine. Slightly anachronistic usage aside, the tone seems intended to imbue her prose with an air of heightened discourse (not unlike the present writing, granted), clearly with an eye to capitalize on the phrase’s ability to privilege her in the discursive hierarchy. That she calls out the culture as well as the food is particularly telling. My favorite part of her little epistle is “the southern part of the United States”. Not the South, the Southeast, Southern cooking (or, perish the thought, Southern cuisine)—the southern “part”. By being only a “part”, it is reduced to lacking a sense of regional cultural autonomy, diminished in stature. I would posit that she wouldn’t elect to use “the northwestern area of the country” rather than the “Pacific Northwest”. Rounding out the subtly haughty California missive, she does not pass up the opportunity to brandish her moral superiority and contempt once more: she doesn’t just throw the magazine out, she recycles it.

This is all slightly tongue-in-cheek, but does speak to real issues regarding the class divide. My hunch is that Marianne self-identifies as a liberal and as such, considers those red states in the “southern part of the United States” to be backwards and unsophisticated in comparison to the southern part of California. Of course, this is a wealthy R+6 congressional district, so I may be off on that, and I may be giving her too much credit by not bringing up the obvious racial implications of all of this. In any event, I thought it was an interesting exchange from a strange source.