Is Fancy Food Accessible?
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2024
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What do Gourmet Makes (of Bon Appetit infamy), Josh Weissman's But Better, and Buzzfeed's Worth It have in common? Intentionally or not, they perpetuate the idea that expensive food is the same as fancy/gourmet food, but is that true? In this video, Melissa explores the reasons why we tie wealth and worth together and accidentally summarizes the plot of Ratatouille.
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Taha
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CREDITS
Produced by Melissa Fernandes
Video Editing by Zannah Perrins
Motion Design by Sabrina Cruz
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RECOMMENDED READING
How Snobbery Helped Take The Spice Out Of European Cooking by Maanvi Singh
Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction
01:13 Research Montage
01:35 Why is Wealth Tied to Fanciness
04:45 Sabrina has Macaron Nightmares
06:39 Another Approach to Fancy
08:40 Let's Get Cooking!
11:10 Conclusion
13:38 Keeping the Lights On
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Welcome to the joke under the fold! This one made Melissa laugh at 4am... she really needs sleep.
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Hope y'all enjoyed that video! What's the best food you've ever had? Was it also ridonkulously expensive? Reply below!
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First
One of the fanciest foods I’ve ever had was a salad with nuts I had at a really nice restaurant, I mean it didn’t have any crazy Ingredients and the price wasn’t exorbitant , but the whole experience and ambiance of the restaurant is what made it fancy to me
Best food I ever had was Siem Reap from a Thai place near me called Diep. Honestly my best food memory is digging into that stuff while rain softly patters on my bedroom window.
I don't remember anything in particular, but for me a lot of Mexican cuisine is the best, and not a lot of it is expensive for the areas I have lived in, the southwest and PNW.
Went to a super exclusive italian restaurant & had what I think of as the best meal I've had. Funnily enough, it consisted of very expensive versions of very cheap food, gnocchi & bread pudding. Spent about $75 for a plate of potato pasta and bread. Was so good that after I ate it my fave foods are gnocchi and bread pudding. I've since gone gluten free and can no longer eat either ),:
I hope I’m not the only one, but I’ve noticed Meliza has gotten a lot more comfortable being on camera and honestly? I’m all for it
Yess!! I helped with the edit on this one and I'm so excited for y'all to see Melissa the way I see her: an absolute weirdo.
@@answerinprogress I think I speak for all 319K of us when I say we wouldn’t have it any other way :)
Yeah seeing her the first time was kind of awkward tbh. But now she's way more confident and really fits the channels
I lLOVE Melissa's personality. 10/10 would befriend (ok lets be honest. all 3 of you guys are AMAZING)
I'm watching these in reverse video-length order (don't question my madness...) so, I haven't seen much Taha yet. But, I'm enjoying the heck out of this, and Melissa is adorkable and entertaining.
It's interesting how the film ratatouille explores this topic. The name lending ratatouille that is prepared in the end is made of simple ingredients but still "fancy" because it was made masterfully (in taste & appearance). It still belongs in the fancy restaurant but is still special because it rekindles memories.
French food is more how you do it than what is in it. That's pretty much what Cordon Bleu is : ingredients you can get everywhere, but that needs some degree of technique to do well
There is a continental restaurant about 45 minutes from my place, the first time I went there I took a little bit of everything just to try… And then I found out they made ratatouille! Let’s just say after three plates full… I think they stopped bringing it out LMAO
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 idea that ingredients don't matter is really USA interpretation of french food. French people maybe do not talk about ingridients that much but if you walk around grocery stores in France you'll see that they do have a lot stores with very good ingredients to make good meals from. In contrast if you just cross borders to Germany it's already harder to obtain same quality of ingredients as Germans are a lot more price oriented and they'll rather pick onion that is cheaper than onion that taste better. Better french restaurants really don't use your average superstore ingredients. Any meal is just combination of technique plus vegetables, cheese, meat, oil, spices. And you can get very far just by picking better quality primary ingredients. Especially the vegetables, spices and meat in your regular superstore are usually sub par as ingredients for good meal as they are optimized for shelf and not for the taste. To get good cut of meat you need to go to decent butcher, to get decent fish you need market that sells fresh fish, and to get good vegetables you need to have access to certain suppliers that sell vegetables that taste good as opposed to vegetables that have been bread to to sit long time in shelf as opposed to taste good. What ingredients you pick and use is no less important than the technique - if you don't start with the good ingredients then techqniue alone is not going to carry it.
For me fancy means attention to detail. Look at how James Hoffmann makes coffee. Some of the coffee I buy is expensive, but most is less than a 1lb Starbucks bag, yet much higher quality. Everything from how the farmers are treated to how my water tastes to what might I use goes into consideration. That’s fancy. PB&J made from jam I got from the farm down the road, pb from a jar that lists two ingredients: organic peanuts and salt, and bread made by a baker at the weekend market. That’s fancy. It doesn’t need to be overly elaborate or impossible or get
Same. It can be purely about cost but the attention to detail is *usually* what justifies the cost. There are of course things where it is simply expensive because they can charge that much, but I would put that in the territory of a scam.
I may get hate for this but with most things there's diminishing returns when you get to a certain price point and even then some expensive things are only popular because of class messaging, not their value. Like wine or chocolate.
A really expensive wine is mostly going to be valuable in that it supports traditional wine making, not that the product is inherently better. Not that a cheap $0.70 chocolate bar is going to taste just as good as a $5-10 specialty chocolate bar, but one that is $100? I sincerely doubt it would be much better than a mass produced lindt chocolate bar, for example.
You're likely just going out of your way to make it unaffordable to all but a certain market at that point. Also, if you simply like milk chocolate because it's incredibly sweet, you may not like that specialty chocolate bar that has 2x as much cacao. Same with wine, expensive wine will have more tannins, which may taste *worse* to some.
love this comment
Love this
time is money
To me, the ultimate BP&J is actually a nice piece of toasted whole wheat bread, almond butter, and a local jam. Always a good time.
"You'll probably notice in my shopping cart, there aren't many fresh, green vegetables"
It's Canada, in December, and you're on a budget. We get it.
This reminds me that I have kale to harvest.
@@curiousKuro16 Daily reminder to harvest your kale
@@curiousKuro16 oops! weekly reminder to harvest your kale!
@@MattTheSpratt Thank you! This genuinely made me smile [even though its like midnight right now.]
@@curiousKuro16 I hope you've harvested your kale by now.
Ooh we get Sabrina AND Friends? Quite the Christmas gift I must say.
I love the exploratory kind of tone for this video, but it’s not rambling or disorganized. So gooooood!
One food that I think will never stop being "fancy" is fugu/blowfish, given you need a specially trained chef to not kill you when they make it. With that being said, it's kind of bland lol
It could easily stop being fancy actually. People have cultivated non toxic fugu, making most of that traning essentially worthless in theory. However it has not caught on due to people loosing interest in the dish when it's the non toxic version, however non fancy fugu already technically exists
Totally agree with the availability point. Here in Mexico city there or always fresh, cheap ingredients. And not only that but there are these establishments called "molinos" where you can take anything and they grind it for you in these massive mills. So all those fancy purées are widely available here. We also consider most fancy food ridiculously snobbish since there is great food just about everywhere at a decent price.
When you live in the True North (strong and free). Fresh veggies and fruit can be kinda gross in the winter because they have to travel from far done south. Unless they come from greenhouses but then they can cost more (some don't like tomatoes weirdly????) So we rely a lot on frozen or canned. (Mostly frozen in my household).
I went to Mexico City for 2 days and stayed for a year, mostly because of the food.
This is super fascinating. Even though I’ve had super expensive food and wine, the best bottle of wine I’ve ever had was like $20 bucks. I would love to read those original manuscripts. Y’all are the best best best. 💖
...is 20 bucks not fancy wine?
What bottle was it? Is it really that good
Strong opinion here, but I'm gonna have to say it. Trace > Sabrina 🥺
@@gewurzgurke4964 as the video says, “what is fancy anyway?” Napa Valley wine is 🤩
@@tikayscake2416 I’ve had MANY nice bottles of Napa wine IN Napa with the bottlers and wow they are fantastic
As an indigenous person, I appreciated the way colonisation was discussed in this video - but I also liked it for all the other reasons people have mentioned. Thanks for your effort and happy holidays.
part of the issue with British food is also that many of the stereotypes come from the second world war and the aftermath (until 1954), when we were under rationing and so bland foods were often all that was available
I've been to Coventry some time ago and had some fish and chips with mashed peas in just some random pub. And, oh boi! Those mashed peas! It was glorious.
I'll never mock British cuisine ever again.
Nah, Italy was under rationing too after WWII. British food is just bad
@@iafozzac
No, Italians just perfected the art of taking few ingredients, being very precise and thoughtful in their usage to create amazing dishes from comparatively little/inexpensive ingredients.
But Italians didn't learn all that just in the WW2 aftermath, there were many poor places the decades before we well. Italians were already used to the beauty of simplicity, while Britons just weren't before WW2.
@@worlds1qwopfan93
Both cuisine accomplish different things and have arose from very different cultural circumstances and availability of ingredients.
@@worlds1qwopfan93 And tomatoes, basil, pasta...
I'm pretty sure the definition of fancy is "being on the fast lane, from LA to Tokyo.
u already know
Can’t you taste this gold?
I don't know when it was changed, but I really like that the name is now "Sabrina and Friends" and you're including them more in your videos 😊🥰
This kind of topic always makes me think about how, for instance, lobster used to be seen as a much lower tier of food than it is now.
It's really wild to see how social stigma and schemas and all that influence how we interact with the world if we don't spend some time thinking about the things we do, say, and believe. And how poorly we're equipped to do that critical thinking.
But it also makes me think about how I will always choose a cheeseburger over steak.
I was randomly thinking the other day, will future generations marvel that tuna were once so plentiful that it was food for poor people and processed for cat food?
the janitor at my elementary school lived in the maritimes when he was a kid and in like 5th or 6th grade he told us about how he used to pack lobster sandwiches for school every day cuz he wasnt very well off- we were AMAZED at the idea that people would pick on him for having LOBSTER SANDWICHES in his lunchbag lmaoo
One complication:
Food which takes a long time to prepare even though using the cheapest ingredient, costs more in labour, and therefore ends up expensive anyway.
I think the main thing that defines "Fancy" is difficulty to access or rarity. I think what made machaca fancy in your mind was how rarely you had it or access to it. The rarity creates the high prices and the "superior" perception. Same with spices. When only the rich had access to them, it was "fancy". Once everyone could get it, the prestige around it was lost.
The amount of work that is put into these videos is insANE. All the research, editing, animating, filming, etc. is super top notch! I love every single video you guys put out. Ya'll are super underrated, so I just wanted to say WE APPRECIATE YOU. Thanks for always putting out such amazing content!
It actually made me really sad when you said that people yell at you when Sabrina is not in the video. I love your videos and I love how much thought and effort you put into them. From one brown girl to the other, love you Melissa!
I'd suggest you look into Adam Ragusea's videos, he makes a lot of delicious food and mostly with fairly cheap ingredients, often with very limited tools/kitchenware
i took your suggestion and looked into his videos. i am now a fan - great recommendation!
@@djradost6524 I especially love his "wtf is this" videos, they're a bit food science, a bit history, a bit cooking advice :D
Wait... so you're telling me matcha and macaron aren't Fancy™?! I'm on team Melissa here!
But seriously, I'm loving these videos and this channel. Y'all really make nerdiness feel like a superpower and I'm here for every moment of it! :)
So basically, you want what you can’t get
That and what your shown you can't get/shown in a positive light, it's hard to get tripe in most of the UK now but you don't consider it fancy
@@jacobarcher1097
Raw tripe is discomforting to look at.
I feel silly but the "& Friends" makes me feel much better 😂😂😂
Good to know Sabrina has connections to Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Phoebe, and Monica
I'm 2 minutes in and there is too much truth I love it.
This applies to every video in this channel and I'm here for it
SortedFood has a series where they have their two chefs and three normal dudes taste test pretentious ingredients and they are actually a really good discussion of what counts as “pretentious”. Entertaining but not just reactions to the taste of the food.
"Who is clipping their toe nails?" Love that!
6:20 ... That's my definition as well, mostly. "Fancy" food is food that requires a very high skill level to make.
the accesibility factor really hit me when i was visiting another country and the bananas i usually buy for 10 cents were like a dollar, to me it was so ridiculous but it did make me realize that a luxury is subjective
One thing I realized while watching this was that after I became vegetarian, foods like prime rib no longer seemed fancy to me, fancy meat dishes lost their value because I have no need or want for them.
Cordon bleu is basically the epitome of fancy, the symbol of High Cuisine, but it's made of relatively easy to get materials.
It took me some time to understand that what makes cordon bleu fancy is not the material, but how it's made. I participated in a few cooking courses before the pandemic, and there was an important place put on presentation.
For me, that's really the core of a fancy meal.
I've been saying this for forever, even as a college student I've been able to eat great meals bc I make almost all of my meals. It does kinda ruin going out to eat with friends though bc I realize that usually what I get I could make for half the price and exactly how I want it
who animated this I got lost and amazed at how seamless this was
Fancy in my mind is usually the creativity (ex being unlikely combination of ingredients example being lavender shortbread or grilled Gouda cheese sandwich with smoked apples and fig jam on it) and the skill behind the dish.
Im always happy to see Sabrina, but im loving getting to know you guys. Keep making these awesome episodes however you want. ❤
4:28 BRO WHAT I LOVE ALL OF YOU I'M SO SORRY PEOPLE ARE COMPLAINING BECAUSE I LOVE ANSWER IN PROGRESS THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR WORK AND RESEARCH THAT YOU DO
I love all the videos we get from the channel; super informative and interesting
Could either of you make a video on how food artists make everything look super fancy?
I think you captured the essence of what's fancy quite well: just spread a puree with the back of a spoon and leave lots of empty space on the plate.
gold adds literally nothing to any food.
It adds the exaggerated swagger of a black teen
Well it adds gold
maybe a stomach ache
Just discovered this channel, it is simply genius and brilliant. The editing/ the graphics so cleverly/beautifully done and you bring up interesting points. I am going to binge-watch your other videos now looking forward to that.
My perception of fancy is French food, mainly because I've never had French food and there aren't any good French restaurants where I live
Yes, it's called Mexican food.
I've unfortunately moved to a place with not much Mexican food and that just makes it even more fancy.
My dad always brings up that 'Mexicans laugh at us making things like tacos because that's what poor people eat'
I can't help but think 'it tastes good, who cares?'
@@ArloMathis oh that's not why we laugh, we laugh because American tacos are terrible. Ethan Chlebowski has some great videos on authentic Mexican food that's still super cheap (if you know where to get your ingredients) but has a more authentic flavour, highly recommended.
@@petrelli231 Sure, that's fair. Though even the 'terrible' variant doesn't need gatekeeping. If the person making/eating it likes it, what does it matter?
@@ArloMathis fair enough
I love Sabrina's videos so much, but I'm definitely loving what you're bringing to the table
For me, fancy food is defined by a few things
1. *Eating experience*
The visual presentation, how involved you are with the process,..
2. *Complexity & Depth of flavor*
Can you really dive into the flavors/will you be rewarded?
3. *Balance & Attention to Detail*
Balance between flavors and consistencies, overall satisfaction and impressive craftsmanship.
Fancy food isn't necessarily better or worse, it's a different way of approaching cooking and eating imo.
Matcha is the tea used in tea ceremonies in Japan and is traditionally grown in special conditions. Combined with some other related things I won't go into detail on, I don't think the perception of matcha as fancy is that weird, just a bit outdated. Or rather there even is still fancy matcha(usually called ceremonial grade).
I also feel like mentioning that though my perception of fancy is wealth related, I also don't consider fancy to equal good. There's some garbage food or otherwise lacking food that I would call "fancy". It also makes me think of nobles in the past sometimes having to learn to eat disgusting food because for parties they would often show off wealth by using as much of some expensive ingredients as possible. and since the goal was not "good" food but "fancy" food well ...
This made me think of when pineapples were rare in Europe and people would show them off at parties for months.
Wow this was such a fun concept to explore and Melissa did such a amazing job with this video! 💗 it also gave me great food for thought (no pun intended) on what i find to be fancy food and what influenced that for me.
Growing up i felt that certain fast food was fancy in a way bc of when my classmate’s parents would bring them pizza and burgers for lunch and i was eating the school provided lunches bc my parents could never afford to bring me food-they were working and ofc why would they pay for lunches when i could eat for free or bring my own leftovers for lunch. I was a scholarship student at a private religious middle school and i’m still realizing how much the difference i felt from back then influenced how i still view fancy food 😂
This video has amazing writing, pace, editing, animation, everything
I had seen a few vids from the channel but this one got me to subscribe
Thumbs up and comment for the algorithm. That bland british food joke was 10/10
This is SO GOOD! So well produced &melissa is such a great presenter!
The quality of the illustrations when you explain is great !
I stumbled across this channel a few days ago and I've been binging your guy's videos while doing some work, and when Sabrina said Pacific Mall I instantly love you guys more because you guys are Canadian!
The editing in this video is so good! Those graphics were sweeet
Love this! I think redefining what food I felt was fancy was what led me to becoming a major foodie and home chef. When I make things from scratch, use home grown (or local) produce, and take the time to plan out a meal and test recipes is when it feels the 'fanciest' to me. Or just use some garnish.
For me the quality of the ingredient is also attached to the fanciness factor. Like, an organic, cage-free egg makes a fancier dish than a convencional one... A fish caught that day will make a fancier dish than a frozen one... Etc
Great video! I think what I like about the Gourmet Makes show is that, Claire shows us how a fastfood-ized food/food that is manufactured in big scale like chocolate, pizza, etc. would have been made in the original way it was made before companies used industrial-scale machines and before they cut corners in whatever aspect of cooking (like substituting or diluting ingredients). So I dont see it as merely substituting ingredients. Fancy, to me, is a combination of technique, high quality of ingredients (locally produced or imported using the best preservation technology can offer), and the way both of these make sense.
I love everything about this video but especially the graphics and animation!
this is FASCINATING and not smth I’ve thought of much before (probably bc i just don’t care about food). thank you for such a well done video !!
Ever since I started getting free meal kit samples I feel SO fancy.
Great video! Although one aspect that I think was relevant to explore when you were talking about what makes food fancy are beyond the ingredients, but also the tools needed to make it. For example, where I live food processors are something pretty much only rich people buy, so food that requires it tends to get seen as fancier
What an interesting video! I love how you dived into how our idea of "fancy food" is really complicated. It's interesting because it's a function of availability + time to make + skill to make, but there are so many things going on under the surface, too. For instance, deep fried foods are time consuming, messy, and require a skill that most people don't cultivate to make, but we still don't consider them fancy, usually. Classism, racism, and fatphobia get all mixed up in our feelings about fried food that keeps them from being fancy unless they're in small portions with fancy sauces on the side.
To me, fancy food is a mix of well thought out ingredients (not necessarily expensive ingredients, but a dish that tells you "all of this is on purpose so you can enjoy every bite"), that tastes really good, in a setting that makes me feel comfortable and entertained, with lovely company, and (most importantly) it feels like a gift to be experiencing it. The tag might be real cheap in the end, or very expensive, but the whole thing feels like magic. That is fancy to me.
this might be my favourite video so far it's just that good
To me, I think fanciness comes from how many steps or how long it took/how hard it is to prepare the food and then finally how it is presented.
Fancy food for me was always anything imported. I remember when Walmart came to the country and we ate Great Value frozen pizza for the first time, we all thought it was fancy af
I think one of the biggest factors that goes into "fanciness" is how the food is plated. The more attention, time, and/or detail put into a dish, the more special it will seem - and the area where this is most apparent is how the food is staged. Everything from the dishware used, the lighting used where you're eating, how the food is set out on the plate, and what foods are used together make a really big impact on how you experience eating. When Melissa completed her dish, she made sure to use a nice plate and to put the food on it in a way that looked really aesthetically pleasing (like something you'd get in a restaurant), and I'm sure that played a big role in making it feel fancy!
It’s weird that I first came across this channel 5 years ago. I wasn’t even in high school yet
i thought this was a really entertaining and informative video to watch, especially as someone who is extremely interested in food media & the culinary world. i do think an interesting point to add to this topic is why certain ingredients are expensive, and how when people use more expensive ingredients to create more 'fancy' food, it can definitely be a factor of having access to that money but also that generally, good quality ingredients when it comes to sustainability, organic, working conditions, etc are usually more expensive. of course this doesn't mean all expensive ingredients are automatically good quality, but the reason to buy expensive food (in my opinion) is that it is more sustainable and better for the environment, workers and the animal if it's meat.
i think why we associate 'expensive' food with fanciness is because the ingredients used within 'fancy' food (restaurants, etc) are usually better quality and more well-sourced which makes the quality of the product automatically associated with the price, which in turns makes it fancy. because, i don't think expensive food has to be fancy: i don't think ingredients that are well-sourced and sustainable are fancy, and i don't think they should be, but i also think that it's bad that high-quality ingredients which should be the norm are more expensive which means that people don't have access to that kind of food, when should be accissable for the normal, working-class person.
i think a youtube series that adresses this somewhat well (albeit it is from a british, middle-class perspective) is sortedfood's pretentious ingredients series as well as the series where they compare cheap and expensive food, because that really goes into the root of what makes something expensive and what kind of food is worth paying for. because, i think ingredients that are sustainable and well-sourced are extremely important, but because they are associated with a high price tag that makes them seem 'fancy' when they really are just as basic as any other ingredients. they are just humane. and i really don't like how capitalism as well as things being 'expensive' for the normal person meaning that good quality things become 'fancy' and unattainable because they shouldn't be. and i think this ties into a bigger problem of how our sense of quality and prodution has become so cheap that cheap products are the 'norm', when we should be able to afford good quality, long-lasting and ethically made products without being forced to buy what we consider affordable.
good quality costs money: but people should also get paid enough to be able to afford good quality.
The conclusion is the best part with the concept of what is fancy and what's important. Nice ending
This video is so well made, well done!
this video was so fun! also melissa's voice is so soothing melissa please read an audiobook
"European cuisine" lmaooo
*dies laughing in South Slavic while eating ajvar*
Growing up in small town Arkansas, I thought anything that wasn't American or Mexican food was fancy. Calzones, curry, sushi... I even though Chinese takeout was fancy cause I always saw people order it in movies and I didn't really know what takeout was 😂 So yeah. Availability lol.
Great job all around! (Wanted to give a shout out to the illustrator/editor. Really engaging graphics and timing!)
The editing and the graphics in this are *chef's kiss*
I've noticed a lot of the recent Babish videos (the Stump Sohla series) highlight that fanciness comes from skill, not necessarily ingredients.
Great topic, beautiful animation!
I have a recipe for Pan-Fried Cod with Carrot-Ginger Puree that I feel is peak fancy, but it's literally just made with easy and accessible ingredients that I can find at my nearest grocery store.
this is so great! ive found learning to cook kinda emancipatory, which sounds dead douchey, but i mean it in the sense that, like, i feel like i can trust myself with food, like rather than someone else defining what is fancy. like, i have some agency in the situation
Very very cool video, I hadn't thought about availability being the dominant factor. I too wish Babish etc would cover how to get the best out of cheap ingredients
I don't know who's complaining about Taha and Melissa's videos, but you guys are doing great and I love your videos every bit as much as Sabrina's!
Also, love the reference to Ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams.
I love Taste's "Make it fancy" videos because they can only add to the main ingredient but can't replace it.
To me, fancy is less about the ingredients and more about labor - the kinds of dishes I wouldn't make, or would only rarely make, because they're just too much work. Stuff like dolma or home made baklava.
Or foods that are decoratively plated/constructed, where you spend time and energy specifically on aspects that don't actually make much of a difference to the actual dish. Like if you have a piece of cake and serve with some whipped ganache or buttercream vs if you assemble a multilayer, decorated cake with pretty piping and whatever - you're still eating the same thing, but the fanciness is the labor involved.
I just found out about your channel after watching crash course kids, and I love your videos!
Baking class in college has taught me that it often comes down to presentation for fanciness. It takes the longest and is the most time consuming but it matters the most because that's the first and sometimes only first impression someone will get of the item.
Like you can put the best ingredients in something and pour your heart into it but if it looks trash at the end it won't have that fancy vibe and if it does it's probably lessened by the apparence.
I'm newb student so I'm still learning and could be wrong this is just something I've noticed in the pastry world so far.
I'll spend like 30 minutes to an hour making the dough or whatever and then spend what feels like absolutely forever learning and using all the millions of ways I can decorate with it's like a whole nother art form from the baking itself almost
Love seeing Sabrina back!
My family was always big on cooking at home. Anything I tried and really liked, I got obsessed with re-creating. And I tend to like my at-home versions a lot better than the versions I tried at 'fancy restaurants'. I go out to eat (not right now because hello panorama) because I go with people, but I always enjoy food more when its something I made myself.
In my opinion I think what heavily defines whether or not a food is fancy is its novelty to a particular population and the difficulty too acquire as a regular person in that population
You raised some interesting points which I think a lot of people do not consider.
The issue of society influencing our perceptions on the worth of a thing.
The one that worries me the most is
why a brand label makes something worth more than another when it is not down to how good the actual item is. It amazes me
I find it funny how when melissa asked about fancy foods and all I could think was mushrooms and then realized that they are in her BUDGET list so yeah it changes so much from person/place
Great video! I think another element of fanciness is presentation. You could have two meals that are essentially the same but based on presentation (not just the way they're placed on a plate but also how the whole table is set, what condiments and such are available, etc) one could seem way fancier than the other. Also if we look historically there was so much focus on the locality of food, what food was in season AND if food could be grown by anyone. In Ireland before the famine (1845-1949) a fully grown man would eat 20 potatoes a day, because most people either grew potatoes themselves or had easy access to locally grown potatoes (Irish soil and weather is ideal for potato growth). The famine was so brutal because when blight infected all the potatoes, the Irish people had nothing to grow themselves, so when English exports of corn and other starches increased, there was literally nothing to eat (it is also considered a genocide by the English but that's a topic for another day). Obviously these issues are less relevant now, but if a food could be grown locally (say, if your climate was perfect for oranges) it was probably very low on the fanciness scale.
Pre-covid, I was a spoiled restaurant /banquet worker. (Now I actually have to cook for myself! ) My fancy food go to are the small, elegant appetizers
Fancy, for me, is the effort put in to make something aesthetic. This frequently correlates to more expensive, but something like sushi is very much about aesthetics as it is about ingredients. And aesthetics require skill.
"Go to Pacific Mall" -- nearly fell out of my chair at that. Been ages since I've been to P-Mall yooooo
On the topic of availability: we must take into consideration the scale of the businesses behind them.
I think that savory pancakes taste better with buckwheat flour, but market forces and scale of optimization push all-purpose flours as the go-to. You can make beautiful delicious pancakes out of almost any flour.
If I’m a food-tuber trying to convey a specific flavor in a visually distinct way that stands out from my own previous work and that of my peers to appease the great algorithm, the marginal cost of an individual ingredient is usually not a high-ranking factor. Unless you pull an Adam Ragusa and factor into the recipe selection process stuff like number of pans used, cost/availability of ingredients, difficulty of steps, etc. (itself a form of differentiation in the current landscape, see the vegetable soup for example).
When I think 'fancy', I think something that takes a great deal of skill to prepare, not that I don't consider some expensive ingredients fancy - I do - but it's more about the work that goes in to a dish
I can make anything "gourmet" to my self. Just gotta add something to it that's "out of the norm" from making it. So like if I'm making instant ramen, I add some garlic seasonings, butter, some oregano, an extra flavor thing (like those "beef cubes" used in soups), some chicken if I have some leftover, and a package of snack seaweed. Is it traditional? Probably not. Is it good? Heck yes! Just try it sometime. It makes me feel like remy from ratatouille!
Edit: as I was watching this video, I wanted ice cream but we only had sugar free peanut butter ice cream (which I don't like lol) so I mixed it wil some Nutella and crushed some Oreos on top. 10/10 would recommend!
ok but I absolutely adore how the cooking stuff was shot
The peak of fanciness is potato smileys
5:21 YEAH!!! P-Mall! I ALSO remember buying Bootleg DVDs there as a kid!
For example for a lot of people fresh fruits and vegetables can be something fancy but almost every country un the tropic has like a infinite
I live in Brasil, and there are *delicious* fresh fruit and veggies being cultivated and sold no matter the season