I’m a bit amused at how TV shows can alter what people eat. Sometimes, it’s a brief fad for something, but today, I saw an ad for Red Lobster that made me realize the show Deadliest Catch has had an effect on menus.
Right now, they’re advertising Crabfest, featuring bairdi crab. Not long ago, they would have been promoting it with the generic term snow crab, which is used commercially as a catch-all for Alaskan bairdi, tanner and opilio. But, by now, enough people have seen the show to have at least heard of bairdi that they can be featured on a mass-market restaurant’s menu.
I think the Food Network and some of its higher-rated shows made a big change to how people eat and shop. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t think so. As the network grew, we became more selective and demanding- and apparently more Italian.
Before Food TV, people around here ate Sargento Parmesan, or maybe even the stuff in the green can, and they liked it! Suddenly, somewhere in the '90’s, everyone had to have Reggiano. Along the same lines, prosciutto, extra virgin olive oil, and balsamic vinegar? More than 2 kinds of olives? Maybe in Italian communities, but not in the Jewel down the street.
ETA: Health-focused shows like Dr. Oz were probably behind the kale and quinoa explosions a few years back. I guarantee if that guy says enough times that something is a miracle food, people are going to start asking about it. Which I guess is the one good thing about that show.
Huh. Haven’t watched more than a couple episodes of that show, and I did not know snow crab was a catch-all term for 3 varieties of crab. Thanks for my new fact of the day!
Kale’s been around (barely) … but I have often wondered if someone in Des Moines, Iowa or Pocatello, Idaho could have purchased quinoa at a non-specialty grocery, say, in 1980?
Was it even easy to find back then in places like NY and LA?
Hell, you couldn’t find orzo, or bulgur wheat, or steel-cut oats, in mainline American groceries then. I doubt you’d have been able to find quinoa even in the specialty stores.
I dunno, I think that it’s the immigrants, and maybe refugees in particular, since the end of the Vietnam war that have expanded America’s palate. They brought their cuisine to their neighborhoods in large cities, and the popularity grew, and ultimately got more popularized and distributed by TV.
Is it ironic that one of my favorite ethnic foods, Ethiopian, was brought here by refugees from starvation?
While there is some truth to immigrants expanding cuisine, I think there is still a different approach to it today than there was in the past.
In the first half of the 1900’s, most immigrant food was “dumbed down” to what Americans expected. Boy-ar-dee (Boiardi in the original spelling) is NOT Italian food, not even to Italians in America, but it was made by a real Italian immigrant catering to domestic American tastes. Quite a few “traditional” Chinese dishes have never been served in China. Tex-Mex food largely combined the South’s love of gravy with the ingredients and flavors of Mexico.
The dumbing down hasn’t stopped entirely, but there is now a sizable contingent of people who want higher-quality, more-traditional foods, even (perhaps especially) if those are challenging to their existing palate. This quest for authentic ethnic cuisine does strike me as a new thing (if by “new” we allow for it to have been growing over at least 30 years).
Kale was always in grandma’s garden, but never in stores.
I doubt that people in Iowa would have been able to find it then. Even now, In the larger stores the middle of Wisconsin and Illinois (outside Chicago/Milwaukee/Madison) I could only find it in an Uncle Ben’s or similar blend with rice, until I hit the “natural foods” aisle. Same with farro, which is my nominee for Next Big Thing.
Ahhh, the good old days. Needless to say, I think kale and quinoa are Abomination Unto Nuggan. Horrible, horrible stuff that is only food if you are a hipster doofus or a brainwashed tool of the Food Network.
*Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called “wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk.”
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or… hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy… precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
It’s not dumbing down, and it’s a bit insulting to frame it like that. It’s adapting something to local tastes, and it happens pretty much anywhere. Would you call it dumbing down how all the various fast food places tweak their menus in Japan to have various options that would be thought of bizarre if served in the original American locations?
Good point. I know plenty of people who drank cosmos but never watched Sex and the City, for example, or latched on to the recent whisky trend without ever seeing Mad Men. Just because you don’t watch the show doesn’t mean things don’t show up in your market or restaurant and catch your eye.
