Please, Mom and Dad: Just Have a Taste

Interesting read from the NY Times:

Can food, so often portrayed this time of year as the glue that binds a family together, also be the wedge that drives us apart?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/dinin ... ref=dining

Man, did she ever get her head handed to her in the comments. Yow!

I was glad to see the author critiqued in the comments - goodness! Portraying San Antonio as some kind of food backwater? really? and fussing because your dad was not happy that he had to pick up the tab for a $300 meal of pizza?

I am likely around the age of her parents and also find her portrayal of my generation as somehow lacking in taste or only open to tuna noodle casserole really rather bizarre ... our generation learned to cook with Julia on TV and the amazing opening of food sources and options unavailable to most of our parents.

Happily my grown children have better manners as well as good palates.

The author makes some great points, but unfortunately they're buried in some incredibly obnoxious behavior.

Siun wrote:Portraying San Antonio as some kind of food backwater? really?

I've spent a good bit of time in S.A. and as food towns go, it's not good. At all.

I've spent quite a bit of time in SA also. I had the best Mexican breakfast of my life there. The rest of the Mexican food is of the Tex-Mex variety, which is pretty good for what it is (If you like that sub-cuisine). The Alamo Cafe is a good place for Tex-Mex. I am not really keen on the yellow cheese, but I like the Boracho beans they serve. As far as other dining, it is either tourist spots or it seems the locals really like Luby's Cafeterias. There are at least a dozen of them in the city. San Antonio is a lovely town, but I have to agree that it lacks culinary sophistication, but maybe that's part of its charm.

d4v3 wrote:I've spent quite a bit of time in SA also. I had the best Mexican breakfast of my life there. The rest of the Mexican food is of the Tex-Mex variety, which is pretty good for what it is (If you like that sub-cuisine). The Alamo Cafe is a good place for Tex-Mex. I am not really keen on the yellow cheese, but I like the Boracho beans they serve. As far as other dining, it is either tourist spots or it seems the locals really like Luby's Cafeterias. There are at least a dozen of them in the city. San Antonio is a lovely town, but I have to agree that it lacks culinary sophistication, but maybe that's part of its charm.

Agree, some of my most memorable meals have been within a 30 mile radius of San Antonio.

I don't understand why the author feels the need to alienate her parents. It shows a real lack of respect

jlawrence01 wrote:I don't understand why the author feels the need to alienate her parents. It shows a real lack of respect

Because it's an opportunity to show how sophisticated she is, and how much better than her parents she's become.

Most of us grow out of that phase after our teen years, when we've worked a few lousy jobs and realized what our parents did all those long years we were complaining about them.

HI,

When I first began reading this article, I wondered if this was the same gal who wrote 'Single in Chicago.' It wasn't.

For all their success and sophistication, I don't understand why they didn't pick up the $300 pizza bill her Dad was unhappy about. Rather than messing with your parent's sensibilities, treat them.

It would be interesting if this article was written by her parent's perspective like Point-Counterpoint on 60 minutes.

Regards,

I agree with others that her tone is a little too self-congratulatory, and it grates. Getting pissed off at your dad because he wants his bagel toasted or because he's taken aback by $300 for pizza seems pretty petty.

Aside from her personal family stories I also disagree with a lot of the larger points she makes. Attributing changing tastes to a WWII era desire for "affordability and efficiency" seems off point to me. There are loads of other factors that the article completely ignores: the belief in "better living through science" of the 50's, the rise of dual earner households in the 70's and 80's, the industrialization of food production, and the rise of modern marketing and advertising all had a bigger impact than the factors in the article.

I agree with Cathy that it feels a lot like the 'Single in Chicago' piece. Both articles tell you more about the author than they do about the subject they're supposedly writing about.

My parents were depression era babies and lived through the 80's so they saw a lot of food trends and advances. Mom was not a believer of frozen foods but we did eat a lot of canned corn and soup. They were frugal to a fault and hardly ate out. But when I would come home from dates with leftovers-they loved it-especially the Italian and French fare. I would tell her to 'just take a bite' of Mexican or Indian foods and she would opt out. Dad would try a taste and for the most part ate the Mexican food. Now I see the reverse at our house-I am telling our daughters to try and take just a bite of something new. I think the writer comes off smug and all knowing. I think we all know what she is trying to say but her examples and references to her childhood food is very harsh. I would not want to be at her mom's house for holiday dinner after the article was out!

Cathy2 wrote:For all their success and sophistication, I don't understand why they didn't pick up the $300 pizza bill her Dad was unhappy about. Rather than messing with your parent's sensibilities, treat them.

No kidding. Wow. That was one of the most obnoxious, annoying articles on food I've read in a long time. It's just food, not a competition for who is more worldly or has a better palate. That's exactly the reason I hate the word "foodie." For many people, it conjures up that sort of snobby, self-congratulatory personality.

No kidding. Wow. That was one of the most obnoxious, annoying articles on food I've read in a long time. It's just food, not a competition for who is more worldly or has a better palate. That's exactly the reason I hate the word "foodie." For many people, it conjures up that sort of snobby, self-congratulatory personality.

yep
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f= ... =pf+changs

sin wrote:

Binko wrote:No kidding. Wow. That was one of the most obnoxious, annoying articles on food I've read in a long time. It's just food, not a competition for who is more worldly or has a better palate. That's exactly the reason I hate the word "foodie." For many people, it conjures up that sort of snobby, self-congratulatory personality.

yep
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=36036&hilit=pf+changs

On this board, you can find posts to support or deny just about any position.

jesteinf wrote:The author makes some great points, but unfortunately they're buried in some interesitng Malvern Dentist behavior.

Mirroring my sentiments exactly, some good points blinding by ignorance.

I guess bagel toasting drama isn't limited to LTH

My mom was born in China, the daughter of an exiled Cossak Attaman. As a kid she introduced me to exotic food including Pel Meni, oxtail, tongue, beefheart and other things an American kid would not normally eat. I liked it all (well most of it). My favorite childhood sandwich was smoked garlic sausage with horse radish mustard on that really dense Russian rye. My sister, on the other hand, was a white bread, ketchup and bologna kid. When it came to food, she inherited my Dad's DNA. As she grew older, thankfully, her tastes became more sophisticated (my Dad's did not).

Anyhow, I happen to love Luby's. Every time I make it to San Antonio, I make a point of hitting a Luby's cafeteria. The food is anything but sophisticated (unless you count the fruit cocktail and marshmallow "ambrosia"), but the ambience is pure Texas. The last time I was at a Luby's with a friend who was a San Antonio native, we sat at a table with an old guy known for performing rope tricks. He was an eccentric local celebrity (along the lines of the Cub's Ronnie Woo-Woo), and my friend was totally blown away that we actually got to eat at Luby's with the old guy in his sparkling cowboy outfit, complete with ten-gallon hat. The cowboy was obviously suffering from dementia and talked in great detail about a movie he had recently seen with lots of horses. In fact horses seemed to be his favorite (and only) subject. Anyhow, the food was pure cafeteria dreck, but the experience was vintage Texas. We even got a private show of rope tricks, which brought a reverent hush over the strip mall cafeteria followed by a spontaneous outburst of raucous yelping and applause. I wouldn't have missed it for all the $300 pizzas in San Francisco. My parents, had they been there, would have been absolutely mortified.