My memories of Nana, my paternal grandmother, are vivid. She taught me the proper way to place a single slice of lox on top of a bagel smeared with cream cheese. The trick was to spread the lox out so thinly with the back of a fork that you could see the hole of the bagel and the white of the cheese through it. Lox was a true luxury food in the 1950s and not to be eaten lightly. Nana’s emphasis on frugality was, I now understand, the psychological residue of her experience of multiple life crises – immigration from Poland to San Francisco in the early 20th century, the 1906 earthquake, World War I, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, and World War II.

The book American Foodie does not accept the fact that people are foodies without psychoanalyzing its every facet. It delves into detail about America’s current food obsession and whether food can compare with fine art. Some people think food is to millennials what music was to the baby boomers of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Millennials are now more concerned with health and mistrusting of big brand foods and government. I think the food revolution represents our larger intention of questioning everything. 

Unlike the dancing, singing and sewing on other reality shows, we barely get to see, let alone taste, the food from ‘Top Chef,’ so we can’t apply our personal preferences. Sautéed scallops with banana foam sounds unappetizing, so despite head judge Tom Colicchio assuring us that this is the best thing he’s ever tasted, there’s no connection to the end result.