#i had a second idea for a queen bee drawing with this palette | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dukeofriven · 7 years

Photo

Suuuper gaaaayyyyyy. Anyways, I wanted to say more on why Erina is a festering sack-of-shit garbage person. Firstly, her opinions on food are just objectively wrong. She turns up her nose at ‘common, peasant food’ which is weird on multiple levels: not only can any cook with a modicum of food history be able to explain the extent to which haute cuisine draws upon and is nourished by common peasant traditions (I mean fancy French cuisine itself is nothing but this particular interplay) but there has been a significant trend over the last decade in high cuisine towards rusticism - the locavore movement being perhaps its most visible influence that has bled into the mainstream: the tendency over the last decade-and-change towards deconstructionism of high food culture - both in molecular gastronomy and its diametric opposite in rusticism - is something she seems utterly ignorant of, as though her only experience with food is overpriced French restaurants that cater to the gullible by overloading every plate with a plethora of nonsense. It often seems that she has contempt for simplicity - which seems ridiculous given that her birth culture gave us the elegance of sashimi, a venerable culinary tradition whose masters attempt to perfect the art of serving a single ingredient. Her snobbery towards ‘common’ chefs becomes even more inexplicable given that we are to presume she has some kind of knowledge of great chefs who, as a body, living or dead, come as often from nowhere as from schools if not more so. Redzepi trained as an in-kitchen apprentice. Adrià started as a dishwasher. Keller never went to a school. Massimo trained as a lawyer. Blumenthal worked as a repo man and taught himself cooking at night. THESE ARE SOME OF THE TOP GODDAMN CHEFS IN THE WORLD AND ERINA SHOULD KNOW THIS. Erina’s snobbery is nauseatingly silly - the show needs a Tsundere ice princess because this is fucking anime so Erina is what we get, but contextually it makes no sense. ‘Oh, you cook in a small restaurant?’ SO DID MOST OF THE PEOPLE WITH MICHELIN STARS. I mean her whole goddamn deal is to deny reality based on the fact that this boy from this little kitchen can’t possible cook good food - but the best sushi restaurant in the world, the only one with three Michelin stars, seats ten people and is practically inside a goddamn subway station. If Erina’s argument is that 90s-style haute cuisine was the ne plus ultra of cooking - that any deviation from this was an anathema - then I could accept that as an element of her character, but instead we are given a so-called food ‘expert’ whose mastery is trapped in the 90s and no one else seems to realize this. SECOND: As a writer her otiose critiques make my blood boil. If she was attempting to be the Erik Satie of the culinary world I could give her a pass, but she’s not, so I won’t. We see a couple times that she is more than capable of giving a critique that is actually understandable, but most of the time she would rather speak in pseudo-koans that we’re supposed to take as a really deep understanding of food. But they’re not, because they’re nonsense. Criticism that cannot be comprehended is useless criticism. All Erina does is be cryptically insulting and then act like it’s a public service. Third: Perhaps to a greater degree than any other art form, food is subjective to the consumer. Erina passes judgement as though her word is law - and to be fair, to a certain extent this is true of food critics generally - but Erina’s nonsense of a ‘god tongue’ brings-in a whole new level of absolutism and absurdity. Take salt, for example - there is no way to perfectly salt a meal because everyone’s sodium levels are different. Someone who has spent all day swimming in an ocean is going to have a much higher need of sodium in their food than someone who hasn’t - the body will instinctively respond to the mild sodium deficiency (which is why beach cooks who spent the morning surfing before their shift need to be damn careful while seasoning their dish.) Somewhere around 10% of people find cilantro to taste like soap - always. There is no ‘correct’ amount of cilantro in a dish that won’t taste off to them - they have a fundamentally different palette than other people. Familiarity in youth can breed an appreciation for flavours that might be impossible to learn in adulthood - which is why North American doesn’t do a roaring trade in salmiakki and haute cuisine still hasn’t latched-on to lutefisk (man, what is it with Scandinavia?) That doesn’t even begin to get into shit like allergies - the God Tongue decrees that this is the right amount of peanuts in this dish, enjoy that anaphylactic shock. My point is that, unlike my opinions, there is nothing objectively right with flavours - more-or-less. The whole model of haute cuisine is predicated on certainly truths - quality ingredients, dedication to craft - that I don’t deny, but the idea of a ‘god tongue’ stretches my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point because it doesn’t mean anything. Why would any restaurant give a shit what this haughty supertaster thinks about anything - her gross mutant palette is so hilariously oversensitive it’s pointless to try and satisfy itand- besides: none of their customers will notice the alleged ‘flaws’ because they’re not garbage mutants like her. If she had a ‘God Eye’ and complained that your 100000x100000 pixel image had a single mis-aligned pixel, you probably wouldn’t give a shit because none of your customers are humanly capable of noticing the discrepancy so there’s zero point wasting time and money fixing it. Seeking Erina’s approval would be a waste of any company’s resources: just get a likeable celebrity to sing your praises. Fourth: Erina has fans in the school, which is weird because she’s such a relentless horrible person who is rude and nasty to essentially everyone she meets, and holds shokugeki solely for her own personal enrichment. I would get it is people cheered her as a villain because hey - everyone loves a heel - but instead they hold her in awe... I guess because of her cooking prowess, but prowess didn’t stop people from hating Subaru, another nasty piece of work. People cheer Erina because the narrative needs her to have cachet, but she doesn’t even have ‘mean girl’ charm - the catty queen bee who rules the school even though she’s nasty. She’s not funny, has no sense of humour, no ability to talk to other people - absolutely nothing going for her other than her skills as a chef which, again, didn’t do much for Subaru. Everyone should be showing up to boo Erina - god, it would make her so much more effective if she fed off their hatred and negativity, her ego swelling as she ‘proved’ herself right again and again, spitting in the face of all the haters. Instead we get the super-popular charmless asshat who everyone is gaga for for no discernible reason. In conclusion, Erina Nakiri doesn’t know anything about food and lacks self-awareness of the echo-chamber of her own unjustified snobbery. She’s literal garbage.

#shokugeki no soma #food wars #food wars: shokugeki no souma #erina nakiri #subaru mimasaka #supertaster #cilantro #feran adria #erik satie #massimo bisotti #thomas keller #noma #french laundry #haute cuisine #jiro ono

4 notes · View notes