I don’t think I’m a snob in general. For instance, in the area of wines, where snobbery runs rampant, I know something about wines and can appreciate really good ones, but I’m also interested in experimenting with promising wines in the lower price ranges and often find good values there which I stick with for a long time as everyday drinking wines.
I’m very particular about sushi (and sashimi) but that’s not snobbery, it’s practicality. Sushi is an area where high quality not only matters a lot, it’s absolutely critical. So is the presentation and the right blend of ingredients. I’d never buy sushi from a supermarket, for example. Most of that is either “California style” (meaning it’s not sushi at all) or it’s salmon, which no self-respecting sushi chef would touch with a ten-foot chopstick. I also avoid low-end sushi restaurants. The ones I consider acceptable I can barely afford, but I’ll settle for a great sushi bar once a year rather than crap sushi every week!
Also my car. It’s almost 20 years old, but it’s as reliable as sunrise. It definitely does NOT attract envious glances and definitely does NOT attract chicks. Ask me if I care! It starts, and gets me to where I want to go. And it even still looks fairly decent for its age. Somewhat like me.
Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Elgar, Walton, Bartok, Brahms, Chopin… (I realize most of this falls outside the musicologist’s traditional and formal definition of the Classical Period, which would be I guess about 1750-1820 – speaking more broadly here at the moment.)
I think a real snob wouldn’t drink Guiness unless they were in Ireland and would know that overwhelming bitterness in IPAs is at least 10 years out of date.
I guess I’m a beer snob, but certainly not as much as I used to be. I used to avoid all the mass market stuff, but now am fine with Mill/Bud/whatever. They’re not tasty, but not offensive and fine for sitting on a patio and thinking about the conversation and not what you’re drinking.
Bourbon snob. I would call myself a coffee snob too, but I don’t know enough about it. I just know that I hate the coffee at my old job and at my parents’ house. I’m probably in the same vein with visual entertainment too. I couldn’t tell you what techniques go into certain shots, but I like a smaller percentage of things I see than most of the people I know.
We have been eating the heck out of them lately! Sugarbee apples are a natural mutation caused by bees cross pollinating. Those little bees really knew what they were doing. Very sweet with a honey flavor. There is a small bee on every produce sticker. Try em.
Absolutely and I doubt if he really sees it that way, but he’s never responded to anything of Mozart I’ve tried to get him to like, of which there is much heavenly beauty. (Still, often with Mozart, I tend to think like Emperor Franz Josef: “too many notes.”)
Wow. Looking through these posts, I’m not sure if I’m a snob about anything. I am perfectly happy with mediocre stuff as long as it fulfils its purpose. There are plenty of things I don’t like and will avoid when I can, but what I subsequently gravitate towards is far from the elite quality version, it’s usually the ‘favourably reviewed but not too expensive’ version.
I must confess, Mozart never resonated with me, either. Then again, I tend not to like any Classical era stuff. Baroque I like; Romantic I like, Impressionist, Contemporary, whatever. I love Beethoven, but more his early Romantic era works. Mozart? No matter how much I listened to him or how many pieces of his I played, he just never clicked with my tastes.
I guess I’m an espresso snob. I can’t stand the swill served at Starbucks and most other chains, and sadly too many mom and pop coffee houses don’t know how to make a decent shot either.
I even disdain my own espresso attempts, as I can only make a godshot about 1 in 5 attempts.
Fortunately the small chain not too far from my home (Colectivo) succeeds in making godshots over 90% of the time. And their ristrettos are truly heavenly!
If I were to be a snob about something it might be field training bird dogs. Even though I concede that electric collars are very effective and in the right hands don’t damage a dog I still prefer some of the older methods that involve lots of time and walking. It just feels purer and more artistic to me.
And I guess I would also throw in food presentation. Even when I am alone I like a nice presentation.
A check cord and a pinch collar can do a lot of good work, as can a whoa post. But an e-collar can do a lot of fine tuning when it’s time to turn the dog loose. But the greatest part of the training is instilling the commands at the end of a check cord - that’s where the dog learns what the command means. The e-collar only works for reinforcing the commands that have already been taught.
As a humorous aside, spending some time cleaning up the property today, I ran across my old fiberglass “backing dog” that I used to set up to teach dogs to honor a point. Ah, the days before my eyesight went to hell.
I’m going to somewhat disagree on the sushi thing. Of course, not that the good stuff isn’t amazing, and isn’t absolutely the better option if you can afford it, but that sushi is, like the sandwich, a dish of more or less humble origins.
It’s, in the words of Wikipedia, a “townsman” class food, for non-Samurai/aristocrats, and thus should be accessible to all walks of life. Meaning that while grocery store sushi is not, and should not be considered the pinnacle of the art, it should be seen as a fair representation OF the art.
Being a snob about it is fine, again, personal preferences about what you can tolerate is what this thread is all about.
Having said that though, I mostly agree with @DCnDC and @DrDeth - I generally find that less is more when it comes to sushi, and Americans as a whole, tend to think the opposite. When I see maki with three ingredients, a topping, and one or two alternating sauces, I’m pretty sure I’m going to miss any individual flavors, which I often believe is the point - no one can tell the quality of the ingredients with so many.
