Pretentious Food and Pretentious Marketing

Good riddance. Someone has finally plucked up the courage to mock the overhyped obsession with fine dining.

Pretentious Food

http://sg.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/pretentious-food-041458451.html

Makansutra – 16 hours agoPork xiao long bao nestled on a grated dark chocolaty-and-coffee-like sand with chocolate-coated foie gras ice …

Text and images by KF Seetoh

I know for a fact that food is never about class nor fashion. It’s about pure pleasure. Sure, there are some cultural and even religious tones behind what we eat and there is a food chain, but, can food ever  be pretentious? The Oxford Dictionary says pretentious is “trying to impress by pretending to be more important or better than one actually is.” Chefs and their army of strategists and public relation soldiers come up with all sorts of creations, additions, fusion and confusions, branding them modern and progressive,  just so their creations are at the top of your food chain (btw, what does progressive taste like). When it does not fall under any of the above categories, just add truffle oils and foie gras or top it with two-head abalones, then say the foodie world does not understand your food and ask the PR engine to organise a press conference. Don’t get me wrong, but making good food “gooder” through clever cosmetics with turbo-charged ingredients, often works but sometimes, it’s an overkill.

So can some food be of a higher order?  Can cooking bak kut teh with Mediterranean sea salt, Japanese garlic and kuro buta (black pig) ribs elevate its status to a $25 bowl of prestige and out of its original blue collar status. Let me try wearing the food whisperer’s hat  and share with you just what some of these “greater “ dishes  think they really are.

Little Dragon Buns with grass fed foie gras, or xiao loong pao with stuff and goose liver. I’ve seen them in a few menus here and in the region and what they really want to do is justify their $25 price tag, instead of the usual $2.50. It comes plated on fine bone china and waiting staff that always asks you “how’s everything”. It does enhance the taste and experience but it’s akin to an obasan-like Japanese car done over with a Porsche AMG body kit.

Soups in test tubes served on a bed of ice – a celebrity restaurant in one of the integrated resorts offer this and it is really food for the eyes – eye candy, if you must. They insert  a rack of cold sweet, sour, savoury, spicy and salty soups over crushed ice bed to prime and awaken the palate. If you like eating with your eyes, then this one was created for you.

Fried noodles with fancy abalone and branded lobsters – if the abalone and lobsters (with whatever passports they carry, whether Maine or Australia) heightens the “oomph” department, then it is really the work of the heavens, because it is made by them. It should not mask nor distract from the quality of the noodles. In short, it’s still fried noodles, good or bad.

Naming a sauce as a “reduction”. To begin with, actual reductions are very time consuming and not environment friendly. Pouring some red wine over  herb concoctions and simmering it for a couple of minutes is not a red wine reduction, even if it’s over prime beef. Better to drink the wine and have the beef done to your liking with just salt and pepper.

Black truffles pizza – like netball players in Manolo Blahnik shoes – the ladies may look stunning …

Dripping truffle oil or white truffle shavings over anything. When the salad, soup, pasta or steak seems a tad simple, uninspiring and trifle, send in the truffles. It will transform and upgrade  the basic aglio olio pasta from the humdrum section of the menu to the prime favourites column. Just add $10 more for the white truffle oil infused pasta. Well, wearing expensive perfume does not make you a classier or better person.

Food for the eyes- the Japanese had always been at the top of this game. They plate stuff in a way that makes you want to eat it. Just check out how they layer a platter of sashimi or prepare maki rolls before our eyes. Then there are chefs who present food like they would do art in an exhibition, like a sculpture. It makes you want to take pictures and have delightful conversations with your companion.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not insinuating all restaurants and fine dining are the offsprings of charlatans. Certain restaurants are just trying too hard to be bracketed into the category of fine dining (read: pay us more to eat simple food you can get elsewhere. Muahaha), while others are truly deserving of the 'fine dining' status.

It's true a piece of premium Wagyu beef, grained-fed and massaged for 365 days, can taste much better than the minced meat of Quarter Pounders from your beloved MacDonalds'. It's true some Japanese restuarants serves great ramen and some "Western" restaurants serve truly succulent meat and a delectable combination of vegetables, sauces, condiments and garnishings that are more than the sum of its parts.

I applaud such fine food that deserves its price, but some restaurants and marketers are just out to rip your hard earned money off your pockets with nothing spectacular or deserving more attention than your humble and pocket-friendly hawker food.

My favourite line in the article above is this: "it’s akin to an obasan-like Japanese car done over with a Porsche AMG body kit.". A premium exterior does little to boost the puny horse power of a run-of-the-mill engine; if it does boost anything, the makeover just boosts your ego. Folks, lifting your ego is just the marketers' favourite gym activity!

Tagging premium brands like Porsche that we associate with speed, is no different from the bicycles I've seen that sport racing bike body kits. (I will attempt to take photos of them). It is disgusting how people try to sell them, citing "premium quality" just by the appealing aesthetics, despite the less than premium cycling experience a much cheaper bicycle can provide, more than adequately.

The truth is, the word "premium" is often misused in today's consumer products, whether it's food or gadgets.

We hear of laptops sporting "premium" speakers from Harmon Kardon or Altec Lansing. Baffling it is, but it's brain-bogging how consumers are bluffed by the presence of a brand name - slapping a famous brand don't make a product better. Most of these laptops with "premium speakers" can't produce a fraction of the quality of real premium audio speakers; they don't even come within a whisker of Creative speakers.

That said, we need to differentiate between brands and targeted audience. Even well-known brands of audio stuff like Sony produce products of varying degrees of quality. Otherwise, why do certain headphones from the Japanese electronics giant cost as little as $20 while others cost $200? Simple.

A $20 headphone is for the casual listener who may just be happy to hear familiar tunes while a $200 well-engineered headphone provides a well-defined sound stage, coupled with audio separation, natural sound and terrific balance between the highs, mids and lows.  

Tech toys aside, I can think of two other restaurants that are out to market inferior food products, like those in the article, at exquisite prices. A certain restaurant claims an American style dining experience, with iconic symbols and a repetition of a famous city's name prominently displayed in the restaurant, but the restaurant merely serves microwaved food.

We can probably get the same stuff from our neighbourhood NTUC Fairprice. Throw in an oven to the pushcart, we can enjoy the same food in our humble kitchen while singing to The Star Spangled Banner.

Another restaurant, located in Orchard Road, serves pork ribs that don't taste much different from the Char Siew Rice I can get from most neighbourhood stalls at one-tenth of the price. The only difference is in the oh-so-liberating experience of cutting a large rib to pieces la a butcher. Would you seriously pay $20 for that?

As creative as the money-minded marketers and crafty businessmen can get, the extent they stretch to get your money is limitless.

The question is, just when is too much marketing dross, in the form of a pretentious facade that hides a product's true value, too gross? I suppose, when an overhyped product, stripped of its misleading shell, can be rivalled in quality by another product at around one-tenth of its value, the product is too pretentious, obscenely overpriced and overvalued.

More updates to come... if I'm free. =P

Disclaimer: I'm not a foodie or a food connoisseur. I'm not able to give you the best food recommendations or have the best taste buds to tell you what's excellent and what's just very good. I can only spot similarities between simple food and simple food with a makeover that doesn't do much to change the taste, and some tactics used to market consumer IT products.