Yes, Mexican cuisine and its boom are everywhere: on television programs that explore village kitchens, in reality cooking show franchises adapted to Mexican idiosyncrasies, in gastronomy sections of newspapers, on internet portals, in the controversial lists of the world’s best restaurants, in documentaries produced with high production values by streaming platforms... even in the habit that now seems so normal—going out to discover a new place to eat—when dining out as a pastime is relatively recent in history. If we add to this the rise of Mexican haute cuisine and the processes of patrimonialization (and why not, folklorization, which it is currently experiencing), we find ourselves at a crossroads where gastronomy is lived as an entire lifestyle.
We have already mentioned that today chefs are elevated to the rank of rock stars, opinion leaders, and even social transformers. With proper nuances, in a certain sense, these kinds of enthronements may have some justification. However, from my point of view, there is a fine line between being a food lover (in all its expressions, from “high” gastronomy to home cooking) and the gastronomic movement that now turns many into snobs. Traditionally, a snob is someone who imitates the opinions, ways of life, tastes, and other mannerisms of the class they consider superior, whether intellectually, culturally, or even economically. In gastronomy, I constantly encounter snobs: people who apparently have never eaten a broth in a market, much less a village mole. But if this mole is prepared by the latest trending chef, with the price raised to the tenth power, in the restaurant where one goes to see and be seen, then it seems mole is the greatest gastronomic discovery of the century. You can insert any popular dish from a village’s culinary tradition into this example. Some voices in favor of this aspect will say: this is the only way to legitimize the culinary movement in the eyes of the world. And it’s not that we are against haute cuisine—on the contrary: we believe that the kitchen and food belong to everyone, both those who prepare it and those who eat it. But the point is not to forget that these culinary traditions generally arise from the most popular expressions, from a people who make the most of their natural resources to create delicious dishes. The risk of legitimizing cuisine through the appropriation of popular expressions—turning a taco into something inaccessible for everyone—is that, at some point, it could become inaccessible to all. It may sound like pure Marxism, but it’s not.
As the great philosopher Fernando Savater pointed out: in this world of gastrolatry, “the pleasure of eating has become a kind of religion, art, something sublime, so that all the kitsch of life is projected onto a bowl of soup.” It is, then, a kind of snobbish idolatry, with which many even claim the title of gastrolatras. Savater’s statements became even more controversial when he said that no chef could be compared to Leonardo da Vinci. Form your own opinion; the point here is not to debate whether a chef’s work is art or not.
The point is that, from a more socio-historical perspective, a true food lover is able to appreciate the quality of a dish by considering the entire context in which it is tasted: from a sweaty taco at a street stall to the most sophisticated dish at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Because a true food lover does not distinguish between how expensive or cheap a dish may be; they distinguish between flavors, technical values of the preparation, textures, aromas, and seasonings. Understanding and remembering that many of today’s culinary manifestations originate from the humblest strata, but that haute cuisine, with all its savoir faire, can explore these dishes in different dimensions, is already an internalization of the true food lover.
Originally published in El Economista
Twitter: @Lilllie_ML
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— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.