Talking to themselves: food commentators, food snobbery and market reality

Offers a preliminary examination of the nature of food snobbery. However, any psychological evaluation of the concept of snobbery is eschewed in favour of discussion that locates professional food commentary in a market context. By understanding the narrow targeting of professional food commentary, it is simultaneously possible to illuminate the extent to which such commentary arises essentially as a function of journalistic rather than culinary or gastronomic values. In taking this approach, the intention is not to stereotype food journalism which, in some areas of commentary on food, exhibits a reflexive quality, but rather to emphasize that, contra relativist approaches to the study of taste (reflected in aphoristic expressions such as “each to his own taste”), journalistic commentary on food can be seen to be a phenomenon which, in fact, distorts public perceptions of the nature of food markets, especially in the context of dining out.