The increasing presence of online food reviews is alienating our personal connection with what we eat. I believe that the commoditization of food is leading to the death of food culture, or at least what has been in the past. But of course, food is almost the universal basic commodity; food costs money, and everyone needs to eat. There has been, however, with the advent of social media, a change in attitude towards what we eat and our opinions on it.
Our thought patterns and associations have always been affected by the media that we have consumed. This current period of time is no different. But over the past decade, the formula has shifted. Companies have a more limited time than ever to grab your attention, and I believe that has rubbed off on food culture. If we think about food that is at the centre of internet food culture, we find many foods that appeal to the two sensory stimulations delivered through a phone: sight and sound. The crunch of fried chicken and crispy fries, the bright purple color of Ube-flavored items, the bright green and ASMR crackle noises that appear when cracking open a bar of Dubai chocolate. No doubt, foods like fried chicken and Ube have been popular with many people long before social media, but it would be naive to assume that they have not been given added momentum due to their perfect compatibility with social media algorithms.
This, of course, leads into thinking about the kind of food we seek out, the vocabulary we use to describe it, and how it has been influenced by short-form content. Things like cheese pulls, or the sounds of crunchy food. These are sensations that appeal to our sight and sound, not significantly to taste. It shows that how we view and hear food has evolved to become almost equally as important as how it tastes, and I wonder if this is a symptom of the “TikTokification” of food. As more and more business see success by creating this viral food, however short lived that success may be, more and more new businesses will pop up with this business model. Create something that looks good in a reel, market it well, print money. The impact this has on the quality and taste of what we eat as a whole is yet to be seen.
Then you have what is on the other side of the camera, the creators. Food content is huge on every short-form platform, and it makes it so easy to spot how one-note and amalgamated food culture has become. A creator finds a new restaurant (which has probably been created to attract virality), then hundreds of others flock to the restaurant to create similar video ordering the same food items, with small permutations and “unique” spins on the content format. Through the power of repetitive exposure, the new viral food is planted into the minds of viewers so that they develop a craving for something that they have never tasted.
Often, these food reviewers end with a score, or some type of a ranking. This is not something unique to food, but is something I find to be particularly detrimental to food culture. The free market has its way of separating good products from bad ones; people buy the good ones, people don’t buy the bad ones. In recent times, the internet review has become the quantifiable embodiment of that phenomenon. People might pass up on the local coffee shop to go to one further away because of the high number of reviews, then they get there and wait in line for an hour for a table while the local café loses business and eventually shuts down. This is the nature of capitalism by design.
Don’t get me wrong, it makes complete sense to seek out the best tasting food, or the best deal in town, but I think by assigning numbers to quantify our experience, we’ve lost a lot of what makes food special. We’ve treated food too much like a product and not enough like an experience, as sustenance, the story of food.
This brings me to what started this train of thought in the first place. Altoona pizza, an unorthodox type of pizza unique to the city of Altoona, Pennsylvania. Its made up of a Sicilian style dough, topped with a slice of salami, bell pepper and (perhaps criminally) a slice of American cheese. Most of the comments on the reel I learned about it on were brutal, but I couldn’t stop thinking to myself, despite its unappealing nature to most, Altoona Pizza has fed its town for years, through its beginnings as a railway town, and its decline. It holds an important piece of history to the residents of Altoona.
The same way, most of the food people eat at home, cooked by family, probably won’t win any Michelin stars, and if most people started restaurants at home, they probably wouldn’t receive the greatest reviews, but they are unique to the people cooking and eating them in a way that no one else would understand. Most of our memories are connected to sights and sounds, but food is a unique way to relive our lives through smell and taste. It also serves as fuel, and sastiates hunger. In the bigger picture, the Cha Siu shop at Wu Kai Sha station probably wouldn’t bring people from all over Hong Kong, but it served its community well, and it kept me fed on tough nights when I struggled with homesickness while trying to finish my IB coursework. It was always available, and always cheap, and for that it deserves a lot of respect.
Eating out is often seen as a treat, a luxury, but for a lot of people who work long hours, or who may work while going to school, or live in dormitories and are physically unable to cook, eating out may be their only option, and it has been that way for a lot of history post-Industrial Revolution. This is where places that serve cheap, warm food at every hour prove to be extremely important for their communities.
This brings me to my final talking point. Traveling to new places and trying new food from local businesses is now easier than it has ever been, and I think that has made us forget that not everything is ‘for’ us. Sometimes a restaurant or a dish exists for a specific community in a specific context, and its priority might not be tasting the best, or appearing in an outsider’s Instagram post. It’s not there for the scrutiny and judgment of others, it is there to feed its community. Every food and restaurant has a story, and I think we should all be adapting an ‘anti-review’ mentality was we travel and eat. While we may enjoy some things and not others, I think its important to understand and respect the context a food exists in, and appreciate the story that it tells.
As I come back home a year older each time, the slow realization dawns on my that I probably won't spend any significant amount of my formative moments in the city where I was born. Moving a lot in my early adulthood so far has made me think a lot about a sense of place and belonging. I have mostly felt no need to draw my sense of belonging from any given place. I've always sort of identified with and held some sort of camaraderie with wherever I was, Hong Kong, Portland, we will see how St. Louis shapes up. But that got me thinking about the difference between ending up somewhere, choosing a place, and a place choosing you. Choosing these places always felt a little bit hollow. I had no connection to Hong Kong before moving there when I was 16, same with Portland at 18. Of course, I have many memories and key moments associated with those cities now, but it almost felt too convenient. As if I was picking a city without the struggle, I could take the city for the good things and not have to deal with the bad, because I chose it after all. Almost like a transplant moving to New York, when does a city truly become part of you, or rather when do you become part of it? And now this brings me back to KL. The fibers of my being are undoubtably woven into this city and its surrounding areas, and it leaves a bit of an empty, yearning feeling knowing that my place here, at least for now, is only temporary and fleeting. The city where my father would bus to work, then college, then home, in his journey to educate himself and support his family, the streets and buildings where my family worked, the places my mother went to school, it feels as though there is a layer of separation between me and it. I know I will always have a connection to it, but it sometimes feels like I don't, or can't uphold my part. But then again, is it really that important? Every place I have lived in has had something of note to teach me, things for me to bring back. I perhaps am romanticizing this period of my life as if it is more significant than any period of my life that will come after. I will always have a connection to KL, and I will always have a place here, and the city will always have a place for me.
I've had this phrase reoccuring in my head a few times tonight, I'm not entirely sure how much of a cliche it is. It arrived as sort of the final piece of a puzzle I've been working through over the past few weeks. My mind has been turbulent with frustration and unresolved, almost undirected emotion (mainly anger) about certain friendships, and how they had evolved. To me, they read almost as betrayal, connections that had faded or changed over time, but not exactly died. In some ways, a piece of rope hanging on by a thread is more depressing than one that has just been severed. It felt as though I had been watching one of my favorite plants rot in my own backyard for months, but didn't realize until it had wilted and died on the ground. I searched within myself and got lost with various dead ends; I soon found myself questioning if there was truly a valid friendship to begin with. Of course, if I cared enough to where it was causing me this much anger then surely there was something to begin with that was worth it. Then I landed on something, what was it I truly wanted? Not in an abstract idea or through iterable words, but rather what did I want in a moment to truly believe that this friendship was alive? And how did it make me feel? That was the lightbulb moment. All I truly wanted was to be grabbed and pulled into a hug and be told: "I understand". For a moment without judgement, or explanation. And that was the spark to begin with. The comfort of knowing that you can get into your emotions without hours of exposition, or explaining your actions and having the thought and emotion process already be understood. Small things that take time, but make you feel at ease. That was truly the feeling that I missed, from multiple relationships. It is of course difficult to differentiate between what you have lost or has changed, and what which was never there to begin with; but for the sake of my sanity and security, as well as some valid assumptions, I feel safe to assume that I have friends that at some point knew me almost as well as I knew myself. It's nice to have people walking along the same path as you, but eventually paths diverge, and that is w here the trouble comes. When you've gotten used to holding the hands of the people you share this part of your journey with, you being associating things with them with the very idea of walking the journey that you are on. The texture of their hands, the sounds of their voices, the jokes they make; but of course none of these things are inherent to yourself and your journey. It is easy to forget that. And so when your paths begin to diverge, it can almost feel like you are losing a part of yourself as your distance grows. This is something that will always be tough, but will always be real. Distance is natural. It is also natural to want to hold on to relationships through distance. However, there is a key difference between walking the same path as someone, and just viewing it through a perspective. In other words, keeping up with their journey in a virtual way (I'm insinuating long-distance friendhips here) will never truly get you the perspective of walking alongside them, and knowing the ins and outs of their journey. And that is okay. You can't always be there in that capacity for someone, and they will find others who can. That does not remove the impact you have had on them, nor the impact they have had on you, it is all just time and space. Paths diverging doesn't mean they won't cross again, and distance doesn't mean distance forever. Sometimes I tend to be dramatic about small changes, but I truly think that it is because I value the friends I have made a lot, and I can be insecure. This is something that will probably happen a lot more in the future, and accepting change is a big part of growing up. Accepting people for who they have become due to their life journey (assuming you still want to be friends with them of course). I love my friends.
