Elite Authenticity is an examination of how food discourse has evolved to legitimize food, cuisine, and restaurants for the upper classes by the means of carefully structured rhetoric. This study uses both critical discourse analysis and social semiotics to show the reader an intersection between food actuality and how it is presented. Most of the data is collected from The New York Times (NYT): modern food column reviews, Instagram posts, and the digital and physical spaces of restaurants acclaimed by the NYT. The author analyses each data set for evidence of the five strategies identified within the research design: historicity, simplicity, lowbrow appreciation, pioneer spirit, and locality/sustainability.
The strategy of historicity is defined as ‘a focus on origin (or provenance) of both ingredients … and of people’, and is the most familiar strategy for proving authenticity. Beyond the cultural identity of a chef, the reader may see the sense of origin preserved in an unchanged menu or location. The author identifies historicity notably in chapters 3 and 4, which examine data from the NYT Instagram account. A history is established to authenticate a torte that was made popular within the source itself (‘most requested @NYTCooking recipe ever’) and to devalue foods that have fallen out of popularity, using the notorious #tbt hashtag.
Simplicity and lowbrow appreciation rhetoric are repeatedly observed in discourse around food that has undergone elevation. They seem at odds: simplicity downplays the effort put into making exceptional food special, and lowbrow appreciation ramps up a food that is common. Simplicity is used wordlessly in the staging of food for Instagram posts, and on the websites and menus of restaurants. Mapes classifies this type of food staging as a ‘performance of verisimilitude’ wherein the work of creating the food is invisible to the viewer. For an elite audience, these strategies reward diners for choosing to experience ‘otherness’ by acts of omnivorous eating.
Pioneer spirit defines a chef who has made a journey out of the cuisine they represent. The author interviewed a chef or owner of four restaurants in Brooklyn, each of whom remark upon their perseverance or their goals to make some unknown food known. In the interview with chef Ben Cohen, he mentions dropping out of law school to open his delicatessen ‘just sort of haphazardly’. Mapes identifies the narrative of his bold move into a food career as a perfect representation of pioneer spirit.
The rhetoric of locality and sustainability prioritizes the origin of food over transparency of labor; choosing local adds value to the food and to the consumers who choose it. Discourse focusing on locality contains the ‘disavowal of privilege’ practice shown in the chapter 6 case study, a dinnertime conversation. A dinner offering described as ‘North Carolina white sided shrimp’ meets appreciation and derision. While the participants distance themselves from the value of locality, Mapes highlights how the dismissal of food privilege has become everyday. Readers of Elite Authenticity can feel that this is ‘the right kind of’ elitism: uncomfortable to dismiss but hard to ignore.
