Food and Footage

Book Review of, “ The United States of Arugula: How we Became a Gourmet Nation” from the Journal for the Study of Food and Society (2006)

The revolution in American cuisine spawned similar literary revolutions in food writing. Food history, food memoirs and all manner of food literature have heightened the place of importance food occupies in collective American culture. David Kamp’s, “The United States of Arugula: How we Became a Gourmet Nation,” is an attempt to solidify the story of America’s gastronomical growth over the past 50 years. The familiar formula for American food non-fiction is to take a specific focus within the food revolution and spin it out through interviews, memoir, and of course, plenty of recipes. While this model has proven to be commercially successful, Kamp endeavors to encompass the overall progress of American gourmet culture without becoming mired in one central food figure or particular food trend. The story of “Arugula” benefits from its breadth of characters—including everyone from Julia Child to Moosewood Cookbook’s Mollie Katzen, and from the lively pace Kamp sets as he zigzags from the grand opening of Dean and Delucca’s in So Ho to Bill Niman’s pork ranch in Bolinas, California.

Kamp also eschews the politics of food culture in favor of a more general cheerleader-like approach towards America’s food progress. Without hesitation, Kamp declares, “Food is one area of American life where things just continue to improve. If we’re cooking at home, we have a greater breadth and higher quality of ingredients available to us. If we’re dining out, we have more options open to us, and a greater likelihood than ever that we’ll get a good meal, no matter what the price point.” (xi) While he mentions contentious issues facing American food culture—rising obesity levels, depletion of resources, poor quality school lunches, and the organic versus non-organic argument—Kamp steps very lightly in these arenas, preferring to focus on the idea that ‘the big companies need to be engaged, not excommunicated, if there is to be further progress in America’s food revolution.” (pp.358) His unwillingness to engage these issues further, preferring to view America as a giant supermarket with an ever expanding gourmet food counter, comes off as overly simplistic at best, irresponsible at worst.

Partly, this lack of engagement is due to the fact Kamp lays out the “nation” of “Arugula” as two very active coasts with a wide expanse of willing consumers in between. New York City and California are the key players in this story, and while they figure prominently into any account of the gourmandizing of America’s palette, reading The United States of Arugula, often felt like a gossipy jaunt through the bedrooms of Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Craig Claiborne and James Beard rather than a real discussion of the changes in American eating habits, which include less intriguing places like Iowa and Indiana and impoverished cities like Baltimore, or Buffalo.

Kamp demonizes Taco Bell, “which has the audacity to base an advertising campaign on the catchphrase “I’m full! A state achieved by eating a half-pound, 99-cent beige log of quasi-Mexican food product.” Despite harshly criticizing Taco Bell, possibly the only condemnation about food in the entire book, Kamp withholds criticism from most major food corporations. He applauds Starbucks for offering decent, low-cost coffee and credits McDonalds for offering $6-dollar garden salads and $9-dollar Niman Ranch pork burritos through their Chipotle chain of restaurants.

The incongruity here is not primarily a matter of taste—Niman Ranch pork is tastier than “quasi-Mexican food product” The real difference is still a matter of class and wealth. By failing to see the necessity of a 99-cent burrito, Kamp skews the portrait of American food life, swapping low-income food habits for low end ones.

While the high-end food world may be wealthier in ingredients and techniques, it’s only slightly less elitist than it was in 1958. The only real change we’ve seen is in mid-range, middle class food habits, where, thanks to Chipotle, we now have one more over priced, mediocre choice for lunch.

Though the book is not really aimed at an academic audience, it is an enjoyable read for any student of food primarily because Kamp’s writing is more lyrical than typical popular food writing. Good writing aside, what Kamp proposes in his introduction, namely a book about “how food in America got better, and how it hopped the fence from the ghettos of home economics and snobby gourmandism to the expansive realm of popular culture,”(xv) he fails to deliver. His emphasis on celebrity chefs and high-end dining alienates readers like myself, who believe the greatness of American food is to be found among the small taquerias, road-side chicken shacks, and strip-mall Thai restaurants that dot our nation.