Christopher Borrelli is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a part-time food writer, and a blogger for the Tribune's food blog The Stew, and he's totally sick of you "insistent" and "unhinged" foodies. And in the interest of worldwide sanity, he has bravely issued a "plea for calm." He quotes Amanda Hesser and Anthony Bourdain; he cites the foodie-skewering episode of South Park and David Letterman's rants about Cupcake Wars as evidence of a backlash.
He admits that he's part of the problem. Well, "Not a huge part; I only occasionally write about food." But he does it professionally and gets paid for it. Therefore, he's a food writer. But a food writer who finds himself "fatigued" by the "food-knowledge-as-competition thing, the fetishizing of 'Top Chef,' the debates over home sous-vide machines, the Twitter wars between chefs, farm-to-table dinners, lardcore, whoopie pies, raw milk, bitters."
Which is amusing because he writes for a food blog that does Top Chef recaps and exit interviews and talks about all those things that "exhaust" him so very much. Borrelli himself has a rich archive of self-indulgent foodie-bait blog posts — he's written about food trucks jumping the shark, the "worst named restaurants in America," $12 cups of coffee, and White Castle-scented candles.
Citing food writer Michael Pollan, he writes: "Pollan is a terrific writer and thinker, but, as with the food scene itself, a lack of self-awareness and privilege creeps in that veers toward self-parody." (That sentence maybe needs editing; some might suggest Pollan has plenty of privilege.)
Is he suggesting that his food-blogging coworkers also lack "self-awareness" and are privileged because they participate in and encourage these misbehaving foodies? Is he (gasp) talking shit about his coworkers? And since he knows he's part of the problem, will he do his part and stop food blogging now? Because if anything reeks of "elitism and hypocrisy and silliness," it's a blogger complaining about other bloggers.
· Foodie Fatigue [Tribune]
· All Foodie Coverage on Eater [-E-]