Episode Notes:

In this episode of Unpretentious Eats, we explore what makes food and drink “pretentious” and how marketing, exclusivity, and perception play a role. From luxury items like caviar and foie gras to the overhyped status of Cabernet Sauvignon, we break down five popular foods that have been inflated in price and status. The focus? Offering simple, unpretentious alternatives that are just as satisfying. Join us for a fun, lighthearted look at how we can enjoy great food without the fuss!

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Transcript

Welcome to Unpretentious Eats, the place for tasting life through food, wine, and spirits, where you’ll be joining me, your host, Alyssa Van Oostel, as we explore the many ways that food and drink connect us and affect our lives.

Hello, and welcome back to Unpretentious Eats. I’m so glad you’re joining me for episode three of my podcast. First, I want to dive into some exciting news from the world of wine and spirits here in the US.

There’s a lot happening on that front, and I think you’re going to find it very interesting. But the real topic of today’s episode is something I’ve been really eager to talk about, and that is my personal take on what makes food and drink pretentious. Now, I’ve put together a list of five food and drink items.

Yes, just five, don’t worry. That I think definitely fall into the pretentious category. I’m excited to share them with you, and more importantly, I’m excited to offer up some unpretentious alternatives.

Now, here’s the thing. My point of this list isn’t to make you hate any of these products. I happen to enjoy all of them.

Yes, I enjoy all of them. My point is to show that the price versus the quality and the demand for them does not make sense. And that despite what social media might be telling you, being able to consume any of these items does not make you any more interesting or any more culturally advanced than someone else.

It’s just a reminder that we can all enjoy great food and drink without feeling like we need to sell a kidney to afford it. But before we get into that, if you’re enjoying this podcast so far, please make sure to hit the follow button. It helps so much.

And hey, if you’re feeling generous, I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts in a review. Also, feel free to check out Unpretentious Eats on the website or connect with me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you.

All right, let’s get started.

Now, before we get into the pretentiousness of certain foods, let’s talk about something that’s been making waves in the wine and spirits world recently. In Mississippi, there’s some exciting legislation, thanks to state senator Jeremy England, making its way through the Senate Finance Committee. It’s a bill that would allow Mississippians to order wine from out of state wineries.

This is a pretty big deal. Mississippi is one of only three states that doesn’t allow direct to consumer shipments of wine. That means that people in Mississippi can’t join a wine club or even have wine shipped to them after visiting a winery out of state.

But hopefully, soon, they’ll be able to get wine delivered right to their door. I have a colleague that is very excited about this. But here’s the piece of news I found really exciting.

At the recent Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento, California, there is a consensus among industry leaders and wine professionals. They’re ready to drop the pomp and circumstance that surrounds wine and take it down from its pedestal. They want to focus on making good wine accessible to everyone, especially younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials, who have been made to feel excluded by all the pretentiousness.

This made me very excited because I love wine, and I loved working in Napa. I wish more people my age and younger could understand that love and enjoy it with me. But I understand, because I too felt out of place sometimes when everything was only about how much something cost, how many points it got in an outdated and honestly kind of rigged system, and an outdated sense of superiority.

Wine should be a way to bring everyone together, and not a way to tear us apart. Now that we’re finished with that little news update, let’s talk about pretentiousness itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we define it.

The dictionary defines pretentiousness as attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, and culture than is actually possessed. Furthermore, pretentiousness is actually a type of pride. It’s an inflated sense of self-worth that leads people to make excessive, and often unwarranted claims about their importance or sophistication.

Now, pride can also be authentic. When you’re genuinely proud of something you’ve achieved, or a culture you come from, that is not being pretentious. Food and drink that are celebrated because of their longstanding traditions, and how they brought a culture together, that’s pride.

Pretentiousness is just overcompensating for what you lack in character, or not being interesting for that matter, and using items like food and drink that nobody else can obtain or afford, and trying to bolster your image. In today’s economy, we’ve seen how things have become so expensive. Marketing and overpriced goods have made it so hard for anyone to enjoy simple pleasures, like fresh local food.

Now, even buying something homemade, seasonal, or from the farmer’s market, can make you seem pretentious. But there is a big difference between something costing a certain amount of money because there is an increased level of quality or labor involved, and something being inflated in price because of shallow importance thrust upon it, that it’s purposely made in small amounts just to make it absurdly expensive and therefore exclusive, or something that is now supposedly exclusive only because it was over consumed and can no longer be obtained easily in the wild where it was once abundant. With this in mind, let’s now get to the fun part.

Let’s get into my list and break down the five food and drink items that, in my opinion, have been made overly pretentious, and also just some unpretentious alternatives that are just as delicious and satisfying. Now, for this first item, I asked several people for their opinions and it was an overwhelming yes to its pretentiousness. We’re going to talk about caviar.

Now, fish eggs, or what we call caviar, were once considered a waste product from the fish that it came from. Now, mankind has consumed fish eggs from many different species, but when it comes to caviar, it’s primarily sturgeon. Believe it or not, in Russia, it was actually a free source of protein for the poor for a very long time.

But as people with money started to elevate it to a delicacy, the price and demand crept up and eventually overfishing of sturgeon to satisfy the never-ending demand from Russia and soon the world’s wealthiest led to the massively inflated price you see today. This inflated image of luxury can be seen in the emergence of things like Sotarga Bianco, caviar made from rare albino sturgeon and mixed with 22 karat gold flakes. It cost $113,630 per kilogram or roughly $3,250 per ounce.

Which is just ridiculous. It’s still fish eggs and if the fish is that rare, why are you killing it? Now, here’s the thing.

I love caviar and I’m not saying you can’t indulge in it once in a while. But you can’t deny the pretentiousness of an item that costs more than most people’s cars for an ounce of fish eggs mixed with gold flakes. So, if you do like caviar or you are curious to try it, there is another alternative.

You could try Sustainably California Farmed and Produced Zara Nikolai Caviar. Now, this product is still not cheap. Remember, unpretentious does not mean cheap.

But, it is more manageable and more realistic to pay $100 to $420 for a sustainably produced and amazing quality product. Than paying $113,000. All because it’s made from a fish that is very rare, and mixing its eggs with 22 karat gold flakes.

Don’t let the shallow opinions of somebody who can’t authenticate their own happiness without spending money let you think that this inflated price is worth it. It’s still just fish eggs. Next up is something I’m sure all New Englanders are going to hate me for.

It’s lobster. Did you know that lobster used to be called the cockroach of the sea? Sounds super appetizing when you call it that, doesn’t it?

It’s funny because it used to be considered poor people’s food. Why? Because it was plentiful, easy to catch, and it was a bottom dweller that would literally eat anything off the ocean floor, including garbage.

But just like what was seen with caviar, over time chefs to the wealthy discovered that if you cooked lobster fresh, aka boiling them alive, lobster actually tastes pretty good. And eventually it became a luxury item. Fast forward to today, and we have ridiculous price tags due to overfishing.

Sound familiar? But here, I’ll let you in on a little secret. You don’t want to pay $40 to $60 for a lobster?

Just substitute shrimp. They are a related species, and if you were to swap out shrimp in a lobster roll or a lobster pot pie, and not tell anyone, they will not know the difference. That is why it is so important in lobster dishes for them to serve you the whole claw.

That way, you can see the shape of the claw while everything else is chopped up. That’s what tells you it’s lobster. But if that didn’t happen, even the wealthiest would not know.

I mean, in the end, you’re paying a premium for a product that is basically just a vehicle for butter. All right, moving on to something that’s considered super fancy. Foie gras.

This particular item isn’t just a hot topic for being pretentious, but it’s also very controversial. If you are unfamiliar, foie gras is fatty goose liver achieved through the process of gavage or force feeding. It’s seen as a symbol of French gastronomy, but what many people don’t realize is that it’s actually an ancient Egyptian practice.

Anthropologists have found paintings documenting this practice that date back as early as 2500 BC. Eventually, the Romans learned of the practice and loved it. They took it a step further and started to feed their geese and ducks dried figs to help create a sweeter, richer flavor.

But it wasn’t the Romans or Egyptians that brought it to France. No, it was actually the Jewish people who preserved it from almost going extinct after the fall of the Roman Empire and brought the practice with them to Eastern and Western Europe. Now, they weren’t spreading it over steak like you can find at Michelin-starred restaurants.

No, they were actually using it as a cheap substitute for cooking oil since butter, which is more prevalent outside of the Mediterranean, was not permitted by their religious guidelines to cook meat with. This is because one of their dietary restrictions is that they are not allowed to mix dairy with meat. Over time, France’s aristocracy fell in love with the sweet, fatty richness of foie gras and it became a delicacy.

They were actually sending their servants into the ghettos in order to buy it from Jewish people secretly. But in the US, the ethical issues surrounding the force-feeding process have made it extremely difficult to get in the US, driving up the price of foie gras, which can make it seem even more pretentious. I was raised to enjoy liverwurst, so guess what?

I love foie gras. But it is still just liver. If you ethically raise a pig, give it a happy life and a rich diet of corn and figs, not only do you get amazing bacon, but you can enjoy amazing country pâté that is just as delicious, more affordable, and is a treat you won’t have to dwell on the controversial argument of the ethical practice of gavage.

That’s force feeding. Now we’re driving into something that’s near and dear to the hearts of everyone on the West Coast. And for this one, I’m sure I’m going to have an angry mob of hop heads demanding my head.

We’re going to talk about beer. The craft beer seen here and around the world is amazing. But some of the things going on in the industry are a bit ridiculous.

I’m talking about beers that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a bottle, not because of quality, but because it’s purposely made in insanely small amounts and made with insane ingredients just to create an image of rarity. This can be seen in Nail Brewing’s Antarctic Nail Ale. It’s a thousand eight hundred dollars a bottle, simply because it’s made from the water of a melted block of iceberg.

And even more ridiculous and actually a little gross will be BrewDog’s The End of History, $1100 a bottle because it’s 55% alcohol and sold shoved down the throat of a real taxidermied squirrel. Eww. And not to throw shade at a brewery that I actually really enjoy, but what about Russian Rivers Bliny the Younger?

You spend hours waiting in line for one glass of this IPA because it’s purposely made once a year to create hype when they already make many amazing beers. So what other purpose could this possibly have other than creating a false sense of exclusivity? I’m not saying any of these breweries don’t deserve your attention, and I’m not saying they don’t make amazing products.

I’m just saying these specific examples take it too far. Remember, pretentiousness is creating an inflated sense of self-worth and importance. That is exactly what these products are doing.

They are trying to inflate the importance of these brands. What is an unpretentious alternative to these items, you might ask? Well, if you ask my hophead fiancé, the answer is going to be La Ganita’s Lil Something IPA.

I’m more of a stout person myself, so I’m going to say New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk. And finally, the last item is something that kills me to say it, and wine snobs everywhere will be cursing my name. Let’s talk about Cabernet Sauvignon.

This one might ruffle some feathers, but hear me out. Cabernet Sauvignon is a crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc native to Bordeaux that became coveted for not only its bold flavors and tannins, but its resilience to bad weather and terrain. Now it would take me an entire episode to fully cover the history of this varietal and how it became the king of grapes.

But for this episode, I’m going to skip to it becoming the most widely planted grape in the world and Napa and Bordeaux’s crown jewel. Wine, like anything else, is subjective, and there are over 10,000 grape varietals that are used to make wine. But because of the inflated importance of Cabernet Sauvignon from these two regions, if you tell someone it’s not your favorite, they act like you just insulted their first born child.

You’ll be topped down to and told you don’t have an experienced enough or developed enough palette, and that it’s just because you’ve only had Cabernets under $100. Listen to me. If you do not like Cabernet Sauvignon, you are not a Philistine.

This pretentiousness around Cab is what has driven the wine industry into a pattern of profit loss and shrinking customer base because they put all their eggs in one basket. If you spend years only talking up one parietal because if you don’t, you won’t make money, then once the magic spell is broken, you have nothing left to fall back on. And because for so long the industry has been able to rely on people’s insecurities about drinking wine and what certain wines mean to them, that basically all wine falls under the category of pretentious now because Napa and Bordeaux have inflated the sense of superiority of only Cabernet Sauvignon.

This is why earlier I said it made me so happy that industry leaders are finally agreeing it’s time to change. Now, this is not a smear campaign against Cabernet Sauvignon. I love and will happily recommend many labels and vintages ranging from affordable to premium that I think are definitely worth it.

But rather, my point is that the market is flooded with cab, and therefore the price is mostly because of good marketing and centuries of pretentiousness. If you want to get out of that Cabernet rut, I highly recommend trying a nice Nebbiolo, or honestly, try some of California’s Roanblends. I think you’ll find yourself quite surprised.

Whew, that was actually kind of painful to say out loud. But there you have it. Five pretentious food and drink items and their unpretentious counterparts.

I shudder to think that someday eggs will be on this list, but hopefully that never happens. If you’re still stuck on the inflated status that consuming some of these items might bring you, maybe it’s time to stop listening to my podcast and instead invest some time in therapy to discuss what’s behind that troubling external locus of control you have. I’m kidding.

I’m kidding. Kind of. Now that that’s done, let’s get into what I am currently obsessed with this week.

Because the Super Bowl was in New Orleans on Sunday, I have been obsessed this past week with making New Orleans style coffee. New Orleans style coffee is this amazing concoction made of coffee brewed with roasted chicory root. This process comes from the French influence on New Orleans during a time when coffee was extremely expensive, and they would half the coffee with chicory root in order to make it last longer.

Sometimes if people were really desperate, they would leave out coffee altogether. But if you’ve ever been to New Orleans and gone to the famous Cafe du Monde and wondered why is this coffee so good? It’s because there’s roasted chicory root in it.

It’s actually really easy to make at home. All you have to do is buy some roasted chicory root, which is very easy to find online. Sometimes you can find it in stores, and leave out one to two teaspoons of your coffee grounds and substitute in the ground chicory root.

You’ll brew your coffee like normal, and what you end up with is a slightly earthier, more intense coffee. This style of coffee is one of the few times that I enjoy actually adding quite a bit of cream and sugar to my coffee, because once you do, it turns into this intense, sweet, creamy, amazing concoction that just brings me so much joy. I even have it before going to bed sometimes.

But if you are unable to travel to the amazing city of New Orleans, this is a great way to bring New Orleans to you. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode of Unpretentious Eats. If you liked today’s episode, please don’t forget to follow, share, and leave a review.

I’ll see you in the next episode where we will continue to explore the world of food and drink without all the fuss. Take care, everyone. Cheers!