food culture shock

Listening to the class’ food adventures from over the weekend it became increasingly clear, as Dr.’s Schwartz and Underwood pointed out, that here in New Orleans we having a thriving food culture and a strong local food ethic. It is in our culture as southern Louisianans (or adoptive southern Louisianans) to value our local seafood and produce harvests, we tend to eat by the seasons, oysters and oranges in winter, crawfish and strawberries in summer. This value for food has, I feel, lent itself well to the business for alternative food stores like Whole Foods, New Orleans being one of the first sites of the company’s expansion, because these stores also tend to value selling local harvests and flavorful organic foods rather than processed “junk”. It’s easy to become a bit of a food snob here. Rather than opting for a lot of chain restaurant and convenient store goodies we are attracted to the goods at our local restaurants and pursue gourmet tastes. Perhaps this is why when I moved from New Orleans to Saint Louis last year I was faced with a complete food culture shock. Gone were the ambiences of local mom and pops. Instead, we’d drive to hit up the local Steak and Shake, or the McDonalds a block away from that, or the intimidating Taco Bell/Pizza Hut hybrid, a popular option for those with the late night munchies. Being from New Orleans, I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten fast food, and I have to admit, I was probably a little snobby about it. I definitely felt like a food snob. Even when I did try to eat out with my mom at the local restaurants I yearned for that heavy southern spice that permeates the food here, no matter what style. Before moving to Saint Louis I had never really been faced with the concept of going out and receiving a “bland” meal. I had never thought about a restaurant being a hit or miss experience because, at least in my experience, when you go out, even if it’s not what you expected, it’s usually still pretty good. But alas, in Saint Louis fast food is the best bet if you’re on a budget, which we all were. So I ate it. And it was good… Well, good enough. I only felt a little bit like a sellout. It’s great to be able to eat with some greater consciousness of where your food is coming from, to have some refined taste for seasonal delicacies like tomatoes and strawberries, crawfish, oysters, and crab, but out there in the real world, the big bleak Midwest, it’s just not “the jam” to have a strict food ethic. My mom is a vegan so my house was always the Whole Foods house and nobody liked to go there for snacks. I was raised eating foods lower on the processed spectrum, veggies and organic wheat pasta. I never realized the pretension. I don’t blame anyone for not being into celery and rye crackers; they all wanted Cheetos. Which is fine, but I like hummus and celery.