I was reading Bourdain’s new book Medium Raw and it brought up something very interesting in food culture. In the dystopian world of SR how often do we hear that the ultra wealthy eat ‘real’ food while we get by on soy caf and krill burgers(do you really want to eat something from those toxic waters?) but Bourdain raises a very interesting point, that all too often the very rich are not eating any better than we mortals do, in fact they often eat worse but don’t know any better. At the very least they pay a heck of a lot more for the exact same thing we eat.

I won’t quote directly from Bourdain because I respect him but he hits this theme a couple of times. In the chapter meat he talks about the ubiquitous hamburger and the problems that it has gone through. What is a stable of cook out and greasy spoons became yuppified with such brand names as the Kobe-burger, probably made from meat that never went near Japan which would be an absolute waste of real Kobe beef, and now after many chefs have had their way the new concept brought out by the Minetta Tavern- the classic burger of just grilled beef on a bun with lettuce and a slice of tomato, for only $26. He says it is a very good burger (Just add lots of swear words for how good and you’ll know how Bourdain feels about it) but what burger is truly worth $26? It isn’t but the rich will pay for it.

Pushing the mark a little more in his chapter “The Rich eat differently than you and me” he writes about a place in the Caribbean where the rich and shameless get together to make catty comments, be seen and tell each other they are wonderful and the surgery makes them look days younger. Bourdain goes into detail about the crowd and no I didn’t steal any of his descriptions but I couldn’t help but think of SR fat cats .The top dog club got away with serving a poor quality lentil soup for $38. A peasant dish that cost the chef pennies to make but they’re told it’s wonderful. It’s in the place of the moment and they’re told it’s authentic and they don’t question. And like the emperor’s new clothes no one dares to think about questioning it. A fool and his money is soon parted. Probably with a nice tip added on.

So this raises the question in SR do the wealthy really eat better or is that a sign of people who really know what they’re doing as opposed to the posers and climbers and can runners actually have fun finding authentic food as a part of the role playing? Digging oysters in Puget sound yup saw those boats come in? A road side BBQ place in Tennessee-all the riggers stop here, A greasy spoon in Manhattan, I sear this Ed is better than the luxury burger I had in MSG last night and so on. Personally I’ve had gastronomic delights in one of Boston’s finest places and eaten well at a road side clam place in Plymouth and actually remember having more fun in Plymouth, even if they did have John Alden Burgers and Pilgrim fries on the menu.

I expect like now there is a mixed lot. Some who want to feel they are having something lesser mortals can only dream of will pay 30 bucks for a badly cooked burger and oversalted fries. Some mega wealthy will drive their 20 year old beat up pickup truck to the local BBQ joint wearing work cloths that came from the same place mechanics use and eat there because its the best BBQ around. And plenty inbetween.

Sounds about right from what I've seen. My work takes me from various restaurant to restaurant, not to eat but to work in their kitchens. I've seen the entire gambit run, and from my experience the places that are considered gourmet and upscale tend to have more issues with cleanliness and sanitation then chain restaurants and such. Chain "family" restaurants tend to be real bad though.

But sanitation aside, yes, I've seen them serve extremely cheap food at country clubs and restaurants the President of the United States might dine, and then charge $20-$30 what it might cost elsewhere. $34 Ruben? Yep, seen it. The meat came in the same kind of box as a mom & pop's I was in earlier that day.

I think what it comes down to is nobody really knows what they're eating when they don't prepare it themselves. I've stopped eating out so much, that's for certain.

Don't forget cyber. The rich who actually enjoy eating will get a taste booster and you won't fool them with low quality stuff.

there's no reason to think the guys Boudain is writing about in 2010 have naythnig wrong with them but they're told it's gormet and like the emeror's new clothes, no one of the silicon geeks wants to call it for fear of standing out from the crowd. They've all said it's good, if ou say it's crap, you're saying they don't know what they are talking about, and no one wants to open that can of worms.

I mean you ever buy a $5 cup of coffee at Starbucks? You can get a poerfectly good cup at diners for what? $1-1.50 Is the Starbucks coffee really that much better? but you pay for it.

I think its kinda a sliding scale. There's the 'rich' and 'powerful' that eat what they think is real food and pay out the nose for it. Then there are the godawfuluberrich and uberpowerful that have the resources and inclination to do a 'quality control' check to see they're really getting their money's worth.

In regards to the excellent Mr Bourdain, if I were really rich and really interested in the quality of my food, rather than being catty and snobbish about it, you'd hire someone like Bourdain to check out the quality of the crap you're actually eating to see if its high quality.

I'm a middle class dude, I know what kinda food I like, but I don't know if its the best quality, I am unsure I'd be able to tell the difference between a steak I normally eat, and a "Um yeah, this steak cost me 300 bucks". Make me a millionaire suddenly, but that doesn't mean my ability to discern quality has magically gotten any better.

Basically, I'm concerned with the crap vs ok/good checkmark on my food, rather than the ok/good vs omgorgasm.

I think you are trying to mix two very loosely related topics. The examples you give are about restaurants. SR describes what people eat everyday.

In SR it's not a matter of the rich getting the same thing at a premium price, they are actually getting a different product all together.

I joked about the difference in cost of artificial flavouring in one of my stories...

What the rich have is more ACCESS and CHOICE than the poor. At the bottom, you have the bums on the street eating unflavoured NutraSoy. At the top, you can have NutraSoy with however much flavouring you want if you're in a hurry, or nuke up some pizza if you're less so.

In the end, the folks that are higher up are usually too busy to eat better, as they have to fight hard to keep their position, but that's a different discussion.

Since when does respecting someone mean you don't quote them?

This actually came up with my last character creation. My guy was a professional game hunter out of the Salish-Sidhe Council, a member of the Cascade Ork tribe. It seems entirely reasonable to me to assume that with the SSC forcing the lands back into a natural state, that they get things like fresh vegetables and farmed meat. They might not be running the kind of factory farms that are profitable today, but I don't see any reason that a First Nations kid wouldn't grow up on bacon and eggs.

When he came to the sprawl, that was his biggest bit of culture shock - how awful the food is, and how much people will price-gauge for real stuff. He took it for granted that you could crack open a jar of peppers to throw on your eggs in the morning. Hell, eggs aren't a luxury, they're a by-product of doing your chores! Eat 'em before they go funny, gotta stay ahead of the chickens!

But with all of the agricultural land ceded back to the NAN, and the NAN being unwilling to use the semi-toxic farming techniques developed in the 20th century...yeah, I can definitely see how real food might get scarce in the sprawl.



As to Snowy's original question, I suspect that the reason the rich don't eat better then the poor in 21st century America is that we all have it so good, food-wise. As soon as we start to see scarcity, or meat shoots to $50 a pound, I think the class divide is going to start producing some very tangible differences in how the other half lives.

makes me think about the number of city kids that turn vegetarian after visiting a butchers place.

Heston: Listen to me chummer, you gotta tell em. Soylent green is people! We gotta stop them, some how!
Ghoul: People you say? Waiter, one soylent green please.

You know... you bring up an interesting point, though.

See, I can totally see the rich being the ones eating "real" food as a status symbol, and just to be able to say "I can eat real beef whenever I want". I mean, the dystopian world that is SR has said that soy and krill are the standard foodstuff because everything else is so expensive. But it seems to me that its expensive because the agrocorps make sure its expensive, because they know that people buy the hype and status just as much as they buy what supposedly tastes better.

I remember a while back that Gourmet magazine did a blind taste-testing of several types of Vodkas at a posh, very hip and expensive bar in NYC. Most of the people, who SWORE that they would only drink Grey Goose or some other "Super Premium" brand ended up picking plain old Smirnoff as the best. Same with wine. A noted wine magazine got several wine critics together and poured several types of unlabeled bottles for them, only telling them the varietal (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, etc.), where it was from, and the price. The deception, though, was that they were giving them a glass of "$150 a bottle Pinot Noir from Napa County", and later a "$12 bottle of Pinot Noir from the Central Valley". Except it was the same wine. The critics raved over what they thought were the expensive bottles, and assigned all of the negatives to the "cheaper" ones in almost every single case.

So, here's what I think:

"Real" Food, at least in the Metroplexes, is expensive because of ultra-inflated prices, but JUST AFFORDABLE ENOUGH that an average wage-slave family could splurge on a "low quality" steak dinner every now and then. Meanwhile, the local posh steakhouse buys the exact same steak, prepared in the exact same way, and charges the rich and beautiful 6x or more. Why? Because its the place they're going to, with the beautiful aloof Maitre'D and the reservations you need to have a month in advance to get.

On the other hand... there are probably "Gourmet" Soy and Krill restaurants. Soy is probably hyped like wine to the rich, with subtle "flavor profiles" based on who grew it and where, paired with "Celebrity Chefs trained on the cutting edge of molecular gastronomy" to coax all the very best flavors out of it, mixed with rare herbs and spices from exotic places in the world. I'm sure most of it is total bullshit, but the rich and beautiful will lap it up.

The irony is that the masses eat soy and krill, altered by additives and techniques to resemble other foods. And this is the food of the masses. Yet today, chefs like Homaro Cantu in Chicago and Feran Adria in Spain (who's restaurant El Bulli is called the greatest restaurant in the world) use those exact same techniques and command praise and high prices. Amazing how today's gourmet is tomorrow's peasant food, and vice-versa.

reminds me of this: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Car_Warriors

A couple of years ago, Snow Fox hosted a small New Year's Eve party that had taste testing different brands of champgne and 'sparkling wine.' The most popular of the night was a french Moet but the #2 far an away was Korbel that goes for about $12-14 a bottle.

I think her point is that the rich might not really be getting stuff that is too much better, but think that they are because there is a high price tag attached to it.

I asked her about that too. She said "It's a new book, I don't want to give people the good stuff and detract from sales."

Which is primarily a difference between old money and new money. The ones who work thier way up to that level might eat the $30 burger with friends every once in awhile, but they're day to day burger is still going to be the $5 one that is just as good or better.

I actually just ate dessert at Brennan's last night, so I can appreciate this (Only went there specifically for the red room. I'm definitely a cheapscate.)

Was the champagne good? Yes. I could have identified it compared to a $12 bottle of champagne, but I doubt I would have identified it from a $40 bottle. (Yes, I know it's not actually 'champagne'.) So I certainly realized I was paying a 50% markup on atmosphere, namebrand and having a delightful waiter in a suit. It's the same with shoes. Do you think a $200 pair of nikes makes me run faster than a $20 pair of k-mart specials?

Now certainly, in Shadowrun the big difference is 90% of the western population is now right around or below the poverty line, and I don't think Snow Fox is arguing against that. However, if you contrast the food between the middle class and the upper class, it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that, in many ways, the only difference will be the price. Even accepting that the upper class will have access to 'real' food more often, I question how often they would take advantage of it. Much of our best food is food of poor people. Lobster, oysters and caviar, for instance, or anything cajun. I expect the same thing with soy. The thing about soy is that it has little or no inherent flavor - it is flavored precisely to the tastes of the customer. In theory, you can make a hamburger from it that tastes mnore like hamburger than hamburger. Just like right now Brennan's has a specialty salad made up mostly of iceberg, and sells water which, chemically, is in every way identical to the 'house water', so I would also expect them to sell soy-based food with house flavorings.

You mean that lots of cuisine *used* to be poor food. It goes in cycles, and the price changes mean that poor people can't afford it anymore.

See I go with 'real' food being not affordable at all. Your average wage slave buys "premium" soy products, now with advanced texture treatments and colouring so real you'd swear you were crunching on a real carrot, but real food simply isn't an option, and the futher you go down the economic curve the more bland and less flavour the soy gets.

Today we see a lot of false premium stuff going on, but it requires a lot of marketing to get people to pay a lot more for marginal improvements in quality and create these artificial price gaps. My take is that in the future that is SR however, the ubiquitousness of soy products and the experience Corps have producing and working with it, make it easier for a corporation to ACTUALLY alter the quality of your fake food, than it is to try and convince you through marketing. The con is that it doesn't cost any more to produce premium soy products than the regular stuff in the first place.

'Real' food is solely for the rich. It usually isn't 'better' than premium soy products, and at the lower end is the kind of stuff we simply wouldn't accept by modern standards, but it's a status thing - "See this piece of gristle, it's HUGE, won't find that in some fake soy steak, no sir, that's how you know it's a REAL steak, you could chew on this thing for hours, I tell you those poor bastards don't know what they're missing."

High quality real food is the domain of the MEGA rich. That's how I treat it anyway, it a simple thing that helps to illustrate the difference between the distopian future and now when a character says "I'm going to splurge and buy some real bacon and eggs for breakfast" and you reply with "Sorry, I don't think there are any 5 star restaurants open at 6am". Not to mention the joy of a simple description of genuine high quality food they're eating sending the players into ultra paranoid mode, trying to figure out if Mr. J is a Big 10 CEO, or if they're just stuck inside a UV host.

I seem to recall SR4 fluff saying soy and krill were being phased out due to widespread soy allergies cropping up in metahumanity after the blitz of the 50's and 60's. Companies such as Natural Vat, whoever took over Monsanto(lol) and the Azzies have genegineered foods to increase output and make things tasty.

The whole soy thing is a bit silly, especially if you go with the vastly reduced population figures Shadowrun gave us in editions past (I don't know if they've changed that in SR4). If you can feed 6 billion people with "real" food today, you can feed 3 billion just as well in the Sixth World. "Soy everything" also gets a little old after a while. It seems to be a joke that got out of control and became a "setting fact".

Which is when you get really cheap, and serve up the "I Can't Believe It's Not NutraSoy"!

I remember a certain bit of fluff in Bug City about the QuickMeat (Or something similar) company making cows that grew to full size in just several months. They also have the worst working conditions in the city, but whatcha gonna do?

There is a second component, which is where the real cost is. The food may not be substantially different but the venues they eat it in are staffed by hospitality personell with good references, lots of experience and advanced training. The venues themselves are lavishly or properly thematiclt adorned, and the rest of the clientle is screened to insure that the loud and obnoxious are only present if they are significantly more rich than the rest of the rich clientele. In SR this means Meta-Human Chefs (not Auto Cooks) Nicely groomed Human or Elven Servers, Maitre'D's, Hosts etc. They may be eating Soy from the same Ares Mega Farm in Iowa but they aren't eating it from an auto-vat at Stuffer Shack, they are eating it off fine China in a posh dining room with a view of Puget Sound.

Inside a climate controlled building, so they don't have the smell of Puget Sound to boot.

Needless to say any of the employees at one of these fine establishments would make an excellent contact, depending on the venue a connection rating in the 3-4 range isn't unreasonable if say the server is on a first name basis with the Mayor, Corporate Execs, or major Organized Crime players.

That is how SF's mind works. She regualrly has contacts like "executive chef" at one place and "Wine stewart" at another. She is never happy with 'waitress' or 'bar tender'

I don't see it that way though. Real food should exist outside of 5 start restaurants, its just more expensive and the average wage slave can't afford to eat it all the time. I imagine certain restaurants and stores, once you get out of the low quality discount places, would start to offer real food as premium items. Even going by the Companion lifestyle breakdown, a middle class person splurges on real food every once in awhile.

Eat flash-steaks, apparently.

Like a Saucier?

Yes and please do not get her started.

In some cases though, I realize I can tell the difference between quality. Oddly it comes to certain types of alcohol. Beer is pretty much beer, there's differences in quality obviously, but the good stuff doesn't cost much more than the cheap stuff.

Sake. I've had the cheap stuff, and I've noticed yes there is a difference between the 10-15 dollar bottles and the 30+ ones.

Tequila, same thing. I've had the 'was that tequila or was that listerine?' cheap stuff, and the 'wait...that was tequila? that was beautiful' 100 dollar + stuff.

This thread reminded me of this Tomorrow.

Never drank beer out of a 2 Litre bottle I see...

The difference between a 3 dollar steak and a 12 dollar one is the cut of the meat on the same animal. It definitely does make a difference. Some cuts are just plain nasty as a steak ,but delicious in chilly or soup where it is cooked for a long time. The best cut by far is filet mignon, I have heard its texture is very different because the mussel does virtually no work the whole lifespan of the cow. It is a very small part of a very large animal. People even eat it sliced thin and raw.

The other area people spend money on with meat is how the animal was treated and what it was fed. In America we subsidize corn to make it artificially cheap, and because it is cheap it goes into everything. One of the main places it goes is into animal feed. Corn is good for pigs, and when processed it is probably good for chickens but it is bad for cows. They have a very specialized digestion with multiple stomachs. They eat the grass and bacteria breaks down and feeds off the cellulose, then the cow digests the bacteria. Corn makes them very sick, even with specialized feed they need to use antibiotics just to keep the animals alive. The meat industry's over use of antibiotics is one of the things contributing to producing antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. I know multiple people that get grass fed beef mostly because of a morality thing, but also they don't want to eat the chemicals. OR the hormones. They need to go through a lot to get it too. They know a farmer by name that sells grass fed beef, they call him up like once a year for a quarter side of beef, he drives into town, and they have this clandestine meeting in the back of a Wallmart with a cooler. But that's just what you have to do if you don't live in the country. Oh and I guess you could pay through the nose at some specialty butcher but I actually don't know of a place that does that. I guess it's probably supposed to taste better too. I could see an animal picking up the flavor of what it eats it's whole life. And for example if a cow eats onions it's milk tastes like onions.

People also pay for fee range beef. That I guess is one level better in terms of quality and morality. It is probably also grass fed at that point (except for maybe in the winter). I could see the texture being different but I have not had enough free range or grass fed steak to know the difference.

The other thing that people pay for is aged beef. It is hung up an left to basically dry out some. Sometimes for a couple months. This concentrates the flavors as the meat dehydrates slowly. This is why steak in a good steak hows is so stupendously expensive.

But you usually don't get that in a steak house. Any chain steak house and a great many other restaurants as well get steak pre-grilled and flash frozen. I kid you not. They just heat it up. Saves on time and also they can control the cooking. Looks medium rare but still cooked enough to kill off salmonella. Salmonella does kill people, especially kids, which is a tragedy, and even when it does not kill you it is very hard on your kidneys and liver and can shut them down or permanently damage them. Outback steak house tastes purity good so I would not turn it down but I also don't pay to go to places like that. If I know how to cook it better I don't see a point in spending 20 bucks to eat it in a restaurant.

I eat cheap meat and not a lot of it. Probably has added hormones in it. Probably came from a sick cow or chicken that was treated horribly, raised by people that were paid horribly, slaughtered by people that were paid horribly and work in horrible conditions but the meat tastes good and I'm not rich.

In another topic there was a discussion about "what was in the bag" of expensive stolen loot. It was probably a cut of free rang grass fed organic filet mignon beef. In the 2070's the price would probably be outlandish.

Filet mignon is the diamond of beef - Grossly overpriced.

The difference between a 12 dollar steak and a 30 dollar steak isn't just the cut - it's the grade of meat. USDA grades have a lot to do with where a cow goes when it's slaughtered. Prime cuts are sold to high-end establishments. Choice and Select grades - the ones you and I get 99% of the time - go to steakhouses, grocery stores, and the like. Certain 'classes' of beef, such as Black Angus, Hereford, or Kobe only suggest how the cow was raised and some can fetch a higher price. You or I rarely will get a Hereford or Kobe sample simply due to price. I could get a Kobe beef burger, but those are bloody expensive.

Ironically, Select cuts are the lowest food-grade quality, yet it's the 93% fat free hamburger you see in the market which tends to be the more expensive version.

The rich eat Prime beef - Sure, your filet mignon, high quality roasts and Kobe porterhouses. They get the highest grade of ingreedients prepared by the highest trained chefs. I'm going to call shennanigans on the precooked steaks in steakhouses claim - If this was the case, then they wouldn't be asking me how I want said steak cooked and we would not have the health department regulations on the cooking of meat and poultry that we do today.

I think its mostly justified in game due to the fact that, though wars and disease and other catastrophe, many of the industrialized nations ended up with so little workable land that they had to switch over to what was cheapest to produce in bulk.

There are some exceptions, however. I would imagine that in Aztlan, many of the poor actually subsist on the same "real" food that they do today.

And yet you can get the $100+ stuff at a dive bar in the state of Jalisco for a few hundred pesos a glass, if that.

Its interesting... in South America they consider Filet Mignon to be a lesser cut... I've heard a Brazillian say that it was suitable only for ground beef. On the other hand, they place great value on a cut they call "Picahna", or the sirloin cap. We don't get it in the US because of the way we butcher meat here, it gets divided up into several different sirloin cuts.

The Prime/Choice/Select has a lot to do with the "marbling" or intramuscular fat content of the beef, with Prime being the greatest amount. This mostly has to do with both the breed of cattle and their diet.

BTW, "Kobe" indicates both how the cattle was raised AND the breed (Wagyu). Also, Japan does not allow export of Kobe beef at all. What we get here in the states is American-raised Wagyu cattle. While the meat has a higher fat content, it pales in comparison to the stuff you can get in Japan. I know. I lived there for two years and occasionally would drop the huge sum to get it because it was OMG AMAZING. And Kobe burgers are mostly a marketing scam, as they are taking the non-fatty portions of the meat and grinding them up. After all, the whole point of Kobe is the fat content that makes it melt in your mouth tender. They're not going to waste the good stuff on burgers (when they can make much more on steaks), and no one will buy a super fatty-burger, no matter what it is.

Tsh, I will. Do you know how tender those burgers are?

But yes. Merely changing the cut will turn a normally horrible piece of meat into something a five-star restaraunt would serve you.

And yes. I've had American Kobe beef before, and I wasn't impressed. I have had prime cuts at upscale restaraunts, and lemme tell you - THAT is a fine steak.

I actually heard this from a friend's bother who works in a five star restaurant. But I searched and found corroboration.

There were other quotes but this one is the best.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/outback-steakhouse-national-city


Ask next time you go. They might lie but I doubt it. And this is from a STEAK house if you think Applebees is cooking all their dishes lol no. A lot of the food dishes and sides come pre-cooked. It is fairly standard for some things even in small independent restaurant to have a few items that come pre-made. That artichoke dip appetizer, pre-made. The chilly probably comes in a "boil in bag" a plastic bag filled with chilly that you throw in a pot of boiling water.


but your asking for medium rare or more done.
Here is how they do it.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5415883.html


Personally I don't really mind I am not really snobby enough to care. I just care about how it tastes and it better taste like what I am paying for.



I don't really know what the stuff tastes like, it may all be hype, but I know some parts of the cut aren't very good. The "chain" is the tail end of the cut (the part facing the head I think). It is part of the tenderloin. So some parts might go into hamburger. Also it has "silver skin" (thick white reflective connective tissue) along one side of its length that must be removed and is tricky to cut off.

The ultra mega wealthy don't eat beef.

They hire mercenaries and big game hunters to seek out and kill the rarest, most dangerous paranormal critters, then have very expensive chefs turn it into steak.





-karma

I realize that most non-meat stuff is gonna be premade, but I still have a bit of a problem with places with higher quality than Applebees getting precooked meat, unless it's breaded to be fried.

That does explain why I never see openings for cooks at chains like that, or why any of my pals who went through culinary school never end up at one of those places.

Book never written:

How to Cook Dragon
(And other mythological dishes)

Alamais: How To Serve Dragon. See, brother, the lower races have learned their place!
Lofwyr: ...

They already do.
Explorer's club. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icHMAwhkURs...feature=channel

Eating Rotten shark (it is what it sounds like) is another fun watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbYqznD0R5M

F.Y.I. cockroach tastes like shrimp. They are not all that far apart on the evolutionary tree.

Ogre: "You know that chines place down the street? Their vegetarian stir fry contains free meat!"

Also roasted rat is supposed to smell and taste awful. Origin of the phrase "I smell a rat". Or as my German teacher was telling. The German version is more polite. Because you don't want to make someone who is so unfortunate to eat rat feel bad you say "I smell a roast." IT makes sense because you are in that case not making an accusation of foul play you are just pointing out the bad smell. He was a young man during WWII and has since passed on. It may have been just a bit of slang the people he knew used.

Also burning human flesh is supposed to smell like burning rat and both are supposed to taste awful. It makes sense because we both eat the same food and all the food we eat has so much flavor.

So it might be politic for when your ghoul team mate is doing his thing to say "I smell a roast."

Mushisushi.