Monsieur, qu’est-ce que tu veux manger?
I despise the term foodie. You may have heard it before, it’s that of-the-moment word used to describe everyone from four star chefs and food bloggers (even those explaining how to make stir-fried tofu) to people that like to cook at home and watch Top Chef. Back in the ’90s we didn’t seem to have such an insipid term, of course we didn’t have as much of a love of everything food related then, either. At the house of my childhood, with it’s wonderfully overflowing bookcases of classic cookbooks (think: The Joy of Cooking, The Moosewood Cookbook, The Silver Palette Cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, etc.), the word gourmet was the only term I ever learned for those people that truly love to cook and eat. And, lets be honest, gourmet never seemed to be the proper term for a thirteen year old boy trying (and failing) to make puff pastry by hand in July. The word still fits me like an oversize suit tailored for a French aristocrat, perhaps one made for the the likes of Curnonsky.
Before I get to the Chinese language bit I must confess my absolute love of restaurant reviews, which is how I got started writing this post in the first place. There was a time, about the time of that puff pastry debacle, when I loved to eat out. There’s a spectacle to eating out at a nice restaurant, much like going to see a great play on opening night. There’s an excitement to it, people look good, the table is clean and bright, everyone is nice to you, and you don’t really know how everything will turn out until the end of the show. I just loved it. I’m still reminded of those days when I read this blog.
Since my days as a teenager dining snob and wannabe French chef (I was way too messy to even be trying to achieve such a status), my thoughts have changed. College taught me, in no uncertain terms, how expensive it can be to dine out when your parents aren’t paying and I also discovered that when you come home after months spent far away you really don’t want a break from your mother’s cooking, you want it night after night. Living in a dorm, then in off-campus housing, and finally in Chinese apartments my idea of what makes for a good home cooked meal also changed from my younger days, now all I want is something flavorful and easy that uses cheap ingredients in smart ways. Even though these days I really don’t eat out much, unless it’s a special meal, I still love to read restaurant reviews. I love to read about food, it’s anendlessly enjoyable pastime. Unfortunately, this habit has often put in in contact with the dreaded f-word I just mentioned.
With the rise of the internet I am no longer limited to the New York Times dining section when I look for reviews to read. I can read and even listen (podcasts!) to restaurant reviews all the time now, and I do. My Google Reader list of food blogs and the like is over 30 deep right now and will no doubt only grow. For the record (and in my opinion), the best restaurant reviews are: the New Yorker’s Tables for Two (you can pop them like candy), Jonathan Gold’s spoken reviews on the Good Eats podcast (he does great written reviews for the LA Weekly as well), and anything coming out of the New York Times. A quick note about the Times. While Frank Bruni, the eponymous example of what a restaurant critic should be, may be no longer writing reviews (check out this great dinner conversation with him on Eater) I know that the paper will continue its tradition of great food writing. By the way, this is only the top of my list, but I didn’t write this post to recommend places to read restaurant reviews so let’s move on.
The other day, while I was wasting time at work by reading reviews of restaurants that I will never get to visit, I came upon the term foodie in a review. As I said earlier, I really dislike this term (this book bothers me to no end) and as it turns out I’m not alone in my feelings. Sitting at my desk I began to think about the other offerings there are in the English language for a person that loves to cook and eat: gourmand, gastronome, gourmet, epicurean, epicure, cook, etc. But then it hit me that I don’t live in an English speaking country. I had never bothered to figure out what terms Chinese people use to describe folks like me and the gourmands and chefs I look up to. So I quickly opened up my Chinese dictionary and clicked over to some online dictionaries to see what I could dig up that would do the job without sounding so damn cutesy. As is often the case with Chinese food related vocabulary, the offerings were far more extensive than what you would find in any European language, even French.
The words I discovered basically fall into two categories: people who have discerning taste in food and gluttons. The words for glutton being far more interesting linguistically. One of the things that I find fascinating about the Chinese language is the way its words can be very practical and formulaic but can also be highly poetic and grounded in stories from China’s history. An example of the former category includes words such as the first on this list, 美食家, which as a math equation would read: beautiful + food + expert. That’s easy enough to understand. On the other end of the spectrum are words that are highly poetic, metaphorical and/or related to China’s past. One word I recently learned in this vein stands for solar eclipse, 日食, which comes out as “eating the sun.” While all this diversity can make one feel that learning the language is an insurmountable task, lets not even talk about the characters, it also means that there will always be a new and interesting part of the language for you to learn no matter how long you live. And that’s comforting knowledge my friends. So here it is, how to say gourmand in Chinese:
