Danny ChaiI’m about the worst phone person in the world. I’ve been trying to call Vanderpool for literally months now. Why is it so hard for me to find time to make a simple phone call? No clue.
How much of food is really about taste and how much of it is about other things? I guess I’m talking mostly about cost. A lot of times, price is only loosely related to taste. I was reading this article about lobster and New England, and there was a time when lobster was so plentiful it was a working man’s food, cheap sustenance. Now, in relation, it’s way more expensive, and definitely not workingman’s cuisine. It didn’t change the way it tasted, didn’t suddenly taste better over the years, it just got more rare and based solely on that, its status changed.
Same thing in Japan with whale. Was a time, whale was a cheapo snack. Now, it’s an expensive delicacy. For reasons that have nothing to do with taste.
When I was in Korea, I was reading about rice and there was something similar with that. White rice used to be upper class food. The peasants ate barley or something like that. Now, it’s not exactly the opposite, but yeah, if you’re poor you just eat white rice, and the more well to do eat the more expensive healthy stuff like barley bap, something like that.
Anyway, yeah, cuisine is weird like that. Its value is based on rarity, not taste, and that kind of makes sense, but kind of not. Personally I like to spend money on food strictly in accordance with taste. But maybe that’s impossible to do.