“Something important happened to my former profession in 2007. I’m still unsure what, exactly — but there was a shift, the world of food tilting on its axis,” Anthony Bourdain wrote in the Times last weekend. Among the changes he notes: Jonathan Gold’s Pulitzer prize; the rise of Top Chef; the end of Mario Batali’s and Emeril Lagasse’s shows on the Food Network; food bloggers gaining traction; and the way Ratatouille got professional kitchens right. But 2007 was also the year chefs got respect, Bourdain writes. “Chefs were now trusted enough to persuade customers to try what they themselves loved to eat. Hence the hooves and snouts and oily little fishes that increasingly popped up on menus. This trend alone made up for the bad — a momentum that will, I hope, carry us through the tough times of the present.”
Foodie Nation [NYT]
