Kamal Ghorui
Why gastronomic puritanism doesn’t work
Mon Dieu! France, the Mecca of haute cuisine, is undergoing a gastronomic counterrevolution – rise of fast food chains. The hottest food joint in elegant Paris today, is a takeout that serves chicken tenders, over rice.
Queues are long, and the buzz is on. Exit fine dining, pretty or elegant restaurants, celebrity chefs. Bring on Gen-Z, influencer-driven, no-nonsense eateries.
Shocking fact: more than half of French restaurants’ annual revenue is generated by fast food. Naturellement , gastronomic puritans in la France are exclaiming sacré bleu!
But can haute cuisine truly be firewalled from fast food? It hasn’t worked out like that anywhere.
From Japan to Peru, China to Morocco, fine culinary arts have had to share space with cheap fast food. More so after the advent of industrialisation, when meal times – from preparation to consumption – shrank. And that’s okay.
India is a great example, where high and popular cuisines happily co-exist, sometimes inspiring each other. The shahi tukda went from royal kitchens where it was made with clotted cream, to its street avatar: bread fried in ghee .
The popular biryani evolved from royal Persian pilaf .
None of this diminished Indian culinary diversity & tradition. So, the humble vada pav is as sought after as the exquisite-but-labour-intensive ker sangri .
True, slow food scores on nutritional value. But fast food is about convenience. There’s no need for them to be mutually exclusive, just for the sake of gastronomic puritanism. Bon Appétit!
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