I love food. I think about food constantly; I eat too much food; I spend a huge amount of time scheming how to consume more food and not gain weight. My days revolve around food, meaning I go to kebab shops and watch the chicken spin around on a tray. Sometimes when somebody boring is talking to me I zone out and imagine him or her saying food food food food food food. Food food? Food! Food food food! Or that he’s a giant talking pork shoulder.
But, all that being said, I am NOT a Foodie. And I will never be—despite me writing this whilst in post-12-course food coma.
What is a foodie? In short, kind of a dickface. In long, a foodie is someone not in the F&B industry but who identifies him or herself with food and identifies it loudly and often.
Foodies love to tell you what they ate in excruciating detail. The more complex the better, with bonus foodie points if they can use the following words: “reduction,” “deconstructed,” “sous-vide,” “foam,” “carpaccio.”* Worse, of course, are the pictures. Typified in the brilliant Tumblr “Pictures of Asians Taking Pictures of Food,” foodies love to document everything they consume for the sole purpose of Facebook or Instagram. To a foodie there is no better compliment than “OMG that looks amazing. I wanted to eat there!” In short, foodie culture is not about the experience but the expression of it to others. Does a meal exist, if it hasn’t been “liked”?
Unfortunately, Hong Kong foodie culture is on the rise like a post-apocalyptic zombie virus, with a slew of new New York-style brasseries, “updated twists” on whatever, and the global rise in modern Chinese cuisine. Hong Kong people love to, love to brag; we Chinese love to eat; and foodies are the natural marriage of the two. With the Michelin guys seemingly going insane and giving everyone in Hong Kong a star or three, the brag-worthy choices have exploded exponentially. Before we needed to head to Macau for something worth telling our friends about; now it’s a one-week waiting list and a trip to Central.
Hong Kong foodies fall into two different categories: straightforward brags, and this-is-so-niche braggarts. The nice hotels and shopping malls house the top-end restaurant experiences locals and bankers crave. There are white tablecloths, gentlemen in bow ties, and dishes that are arranged just-so. Hop into Caprice any night and you’ll notice one couple enjoying their meal—and 35 others documenting it on some of the most offensively named food blogs you can imagine. “John Yee’s Food Yee blog” etc. Get it?