An Introduction to Foodie Culture So You Can Write Foodie Novels By MJ Post
Let’s welcome back monthly columnist MJ Post as she shares with us “An Introduction to Foodie Culture So You Can Write Foodie Novels,” the second in her series. Enjoy!
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“A foodie is a person who is very, very, very interested in food.” — Ann Barr and Paul Levy, 1984, New York Times
I’m interested in food — because I need it for survival, for energy, for mood — you know, all the usual reasons. But food is my entertainment as well. In my last column I talked about the rise of food TV and about food novels, too.
That I should be entertained by food is startlingly ironic, because I’ve been a miserably picky eater since childhood, when I used to do things like smuggle unwanted vegetables in my pocket to flush down the toilet when I was later excused from the dinner table.
Yep. MJ is pretty crazy, yo, but you knew that, right? #nuttyastwofruitcakes #readonigetevencrazier
Picky eater aside, food IS entertaining. (Are you a foodie?)
Food is about personality and passion and pride and place, about individual taste, about trend, about discovery. It’s about variety.
And the variety of experience you can have is infinite.
I’m writing this series to tell you about what’s involved in writing fiction about food. To do that, I want to introduce you to the culture of FOODIES, who will make good characters for your food fiction.
If you study foodies to understand what they do, or if you even decide to be one, you will get loads of ideas for plot and characterization, not to mention setting (hello restaurants!) and recipes for people in your story to prepare and eat.
Foodies
FOODIES are people who consider exploring the realm of food to be their principal source of entertainment and pleasure in life. (Warning: some people in the culinary realm don’t like the term.)
I don’t quite qualify, because of that picky eater issue mentioned earlier, but I do enjoy learning about restaurants and ingredients, I like to try new places and brands frequently, enjoys studying food advertising and packaging, I love the thrills (and totally cheer) during TV food competitions, I find certain celebrity chefs sexy (and others REALLY NOT sexy), and I’ve generally spent a lot of time reading recipes, studying up on ingredients, and watching The Food Network. Whew!
Check out this photo shared with me by my annoying bald coworker, taken during his trip to the Czech Republic with his lovely wife from their evening spent at a restaurant. (Image credit: Matt Posner, December 2018).
Did you ever think you’d see a meal like that? Eight meats including duck and wild boar, plus some grilled vegetables and French fries?
Okay, it’s probably a heart attack in the making unless you share it in a group of highly carnivorous friends, but how inventive a combination, and how interesting the plating is!
By the way, here’s the restaurant: http://www.uzlatehohada.cz/cz/.
RESTAURANTS ARE ONE SOURCE OF EXCITEMENT FOR FOODIES.
Restaurants are one source of excitement for foodies. Both their perennial favorites, where they can try out the latest special, and new spaces that offer potential surprises in dish, flavor, and decor can give a foodie (or foodie couple, or foodie social circle) a rewarding week-end or vacation.
Some restaurants get their reputations for food quality. If you have money to spend, look for the ones with Michelin stars, as those are the most admired restaurants in the world (and they sometimes need to be booked far in advance).
If you are on a more modest budget, just ask around or check the local media reviews. You can also try to find a food blogger in your area who will tell you where to go and where to avoid. Of course, your taste may not match that of a reviewer, but restaurants you will enjoy can be anywhere.
I’ve also learned that restaurants will find YOU if you hashtag their cuisine in a public post on Instagram.
So if you have a public account and you post a picture of sashimi with hashtags like #japanesefood #japaneserestaurant #bestsushi #bestsashimi and #foodiesof<yourhometown>, restaurants will start following you and hope you follow back.
You can also click on those hashtags and see who else is using them to find restaurants that way.
Some of them may suck, of course, but being a foodie is about trying new things and taking risks to get the good rewards.
Some restaurants are about unusual dining experiences. I think that Czech restaurant above might be that kind of place.
Here are a some cool and seriously strange examples.
- There’s a chain of restaurants worldwide, Dans Le Noir, which serve you food in total darkness. You have to sign a release indemnifying the place against injury before being seated. (Sadly for me, the one in NYC is now closed.)
- If you want to go weirder, and who doesn’t? — there’s a Taiwan-based chain of restaurants called Modern Toilet because of the shape of the serving dishes and furniture.
- Probably the most fascinatingly unusual restaurant in the U.S. is Alinea, a super-upscale Chicago eatery by Modernist Cuisine pioneer Grant Achatz, where you will be brought some of the most memorably prepared and complex dishes in a marathon four-hour meal. (Grant Achatz is the idol of one of the competitors in my novel Chef Showdown.) Look up Achatz on TV shows for examples. He’s that kind of chef who can transform food into balloons and threads and cubes and things that smoke and steam. Out of my price range, but cool to learn about. #tightlybudgetedMJ
These are a few examples of gimmicky restaurants. Finding more examples shouldn’t be hard at all.
FOODIES AREN’T ONLY RESTAURANT-GOERS, HOWEVER.
Foodies aren’t only restaurant-goers, however. They also like to cook at home. They scour the Internet and food magazines for new ingredients and unusual recipes.
They get deep into cuisines they want to learn about and stock their kitchens with ingredients and specialized equipment to prepare them.
What better use of a weekend afternoon than to try out a new cooking method or utensil?
Home-cooking foodies spend extra time looking at fresh ingredients and may haunt farmer’s markets and organic grocery stores. They scoff at packaged foods. (#MJscoffs #scoffscoff #humph)
As an English teacher, sometimes I assign my students to try new restaurants and review them. I even sometimes assign them to cook new recipes with their families and document the process with photos and a written report. They really seem to enjoy doing it. I may have started some on the path of becoming foodies (or even food writers.) Hope so!
RESOURCES FOR THE FOODIE
There are lots of media, including cooking shows, magazines, Facebook groups, Instagram personalities, and blogs for the home-cooking foodie.
Explore and see what you can come up with. Start with the ones on TV or any local celebrity chefs, click on hashtags, and go from there.
Remember that infinite variety I was talking about it?
After a few steps in that direction, you’ll find yourself on a high-speed escalator to foodie media saturation. Promise!
The late Anthony Bourdain (my own idol in some ways) spoke to Smithsonian.com in 2014 about foodie culture.
“We’re just catching on…. We are changing societally, and our values are changing…. Now, you go right to dinner and you talk about the dinner you had last week and the dinner you’re going to have next week, while you’re taking pictures of the dinner you’re having now.”
Bourdain says in the interview that the foodie culture is about envy, about making other people feel bad that your food is more fabulous, but I (MJ) don’t look at it that way.
I look at sharing food pictures as a means of sharing local culture both where I live and where I visit, of communicating something pleasant and provocative with others, as a way of meeting people and making friends of the social media variety, and as a sort of introduction of myself and my taste to those who don’t know me as an author.
So are you a foodie? Share your pictures and recipes and fave restaurants with me at my Instagram @MJPostAuthor.
A lot of this article has been about being a foodie — which is almost synonymous with being curious and adventurous. I shouldn’t forget, though, that this is a writing column, and so you’re probably thinking. how does this foodie life tie back in to writing a food novel?
You have certainly realized already that living life as a foodie will set you up nicely with material to write about.
That includes the experiences of traveling and experiencing new places where food is, which can be both revelatory and disastrous.
It also includes meeting lots of interesting people, some attractive, some terrifying, some fascinating, some tumultuous.
The sharing of meals, both with loved ones and strangers, can be tense or joyous, dynamic or soothing.
These events and stories become the stories of your life, and, when put through the filter of novelistic skill, they trigger the stories of your characters’ lives.
Write on!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MJ Post (pseudonym) is a Brooklyn high school teacher and writer from Queens, NY. Educated in the South with an attitude straight out of Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, MJ writes contemporary new adult romance and romantic comedy with a multi-regional flavor. MJ is happily married.
MJ’s work includes five romance novellas with Mysti Parker, one solo romance novel, and under her real name, five novels and two nonfiction books as well as miscellaneous other collections.
MJ’s novel Chef Showdown: A Romance, two young chefs fall in love while competing on a reality TV cooking show under the watchful eye of the toughest judge imaginable. It will make you hungry for some love and some great food.
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/MJ-Post/e/B074HX7TJK/
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