F is for Feeding
and for February to come
I’m a sucker for maximalism, don’t get me wrong. If someone described me as a generous person, I’d be elated. I will always make a (much) larger quantity than needed when cooking for friends; another slice of pie? Please be my guest. But when did food forget about feeding?
It’s been a good few years now that this trend has started to grow, in popularity and in physical scale and I’ll admit I was originally seduced. A mini sculpture made out of butter, sign me up! But, as food design has become more mainstream, I’m starting to be revolted by the extravagance of it all.
I was just sitting at the end of my work day with colleagues and clients, listening to someone explain how these types of events work. You may get a brief, a colour scheme or pattern and then you must design a menu with this in mind. Polka dots was the example that she used. An interesting enough concept, but in nature, weren’t polka dots, on ladybirds for instance, used to ward off predators? “Do not eat me” it means. This evolution of fashion into food has become inedible.
A discussion with a friend about a recent “exhibition” by the Queen of this style of “cooking”, was reassuring to me. I’m not the only one confused about why we are encouraging this grotesque indulgence in culinary design. The exhibition in question was for a Fashion Week event, of course, and involved huge balls studded with potatoes (skin on) and tomatoes (out of season). Firstly, it didn’t evoke an appetite and secondly, to what avail? Would it not have been possible to recreate these shapes and styles using papier mâché if the look was the most important factor? Sveva Guedroitz, aforementioned pal and very talented chef, put it simply:
“In a world where we’re constantly reminded that the world is ending and that waste is participating to that issue, I find it ironic that we are wasting this much food just for the sake of a name, for the sake of aesthetics and to ‘represent’ a brand. I also find it disrespectful for people who actually make good food. We’re spending so much energy and money to promote people who actually know nothing about food and are just using it as a tool (for marketing).
I have participated in events like these, for work, usually ignorant to what I am signing up for when agreeing to help behind the scenes of an “event”, and therefore have been privy to how they run. Having had the curtain drawn back on the production of events such as these means that I feel legitimate to criticise with conviction. I’ve constructed Christmas trees with hundreds of madeleines, I’ve decorated metre-long pavlovas and sadly after all the pain-staking attention to detail, no-one eats the fucking cakes.*
There is usually, from experience, a team assembled to watch the set-up and to check that the Artistic Direction is being followed suitably. This tends to mean, a headset and clipboard ensuring that there are enough pomegranate seeds on the cake and the height of the meringue is Pisa-worthy.
These beautiful installations, and I am in no way undermining their ingenuity, beauty, and all the hard work, are just undeniably wasteful. We are all guilty of the occasional food waste at home, not remembering to freeze something before it goes out of date. But, the difference here is the intention. The elaborate design and minutiae of planning that makes up a design event, the buying of ingredients, the measuring of the string on which we are hanging scamorza (?!). Everything is purposeful and we all know, back of house and behind the scenes, that this food will not be eaten.
A gluttonous plague is upon our fashion houses and I don’t feel like it is slowing down.
The buck doesn’t stop with these design events, it extends into the whole explosion of food media. The popularisation of food video content and Instagram food creators. I love watching these videos, one pan dinners, one shot content of a quick weeknight supper. I’ll take ten. But I wonder how many times that recipe has been tested, how many reshoots one video must take before the final version is Adobe-cut, copied and pasted to the Internet. I loathe to think that any of this food gets thrown away but it’d be naive to believe every morsel of every test meal gets eaten before the next is launched.
There are a few creators I follow who are actively trying to push back against this and I applaud them, as it can’t be the easiest to go against the viral grain. Justine Doiron from @justine_snacks is currently doing a series on how to finish all of her store cupboard ingredients before rushing to buy the next lot. Our most wholesome family favourite Julius Roberts (who has just launched his own Substack), is cooking for his farming family in his greenhouse and in between feeding his cade lambs and fencing his fields, I don’t believe he is reshooting his videos. Claire Thomson from @5oclockapron shoots her videos in the early morning to eat with her family at lunchtime, so that we can be inspired for our supper. (An impressively quick turnaround here.) And finally Balbosté, the lauded culinary design genii, after their recent event with Longchamp donated all food and produce to Refugee Food (555 meals!).
It can be an unsatisfactory job, that is for sure, a constant updating of Instagram reels, posting and never having that moment of recognition, but where the frustration comes, for me, is how the concentration of food media is depreciating the work of chefs themselves. There is not one job more worthy than another, but being asked to work for free (it has happened too many times to count) or to make an aesthetic display and being told that the taste doesn’t matter (again too many times), makes me anxious that the real reason we cook is going out of fashion. When did we forget that food is about feeding?
In a moment where a viral post on Instagram can get you a cross-continent book deal and vulgar British Vogue column, the world and his wife are publishing a cookbook and I don’t yet see a plateau incoming. At risk of sounding as bitter as a melon, let us try consuming less constant content and consuming more good food.
Shopping list for you
Too short a clip but on repeat quand meme
My new kitchen shoes but I imagine them being cool in all walks of life
A spoon to make you look more talented whilst plating
Julien Pham talking sense on what looks like the Line 2
Anyone in New York, follow Lucky Dinner Club for v cool events
Good graffiti to finish (I’m in my Mad Men era)
*I can’t talk for all events because I don’t want to get sued (?)
Great topic Tori. Chefs should not be creating food that is not to be eaten. That is not right.