As of September ‘23, TheFoodieStudies started an open initiative: a Gastronomical book club or, as
and I renamed it, “A book club for hungry and thirsty minds”.Collectively, they decided to update from #barbarians to #fisheristas for the occasion.
The group usually met at 7 p.m. (Brussels/Madrid time). The Foodie Studies Reading Club started with the food writer M.F.K. Fisher, author of books such as Gastronomical Me and How to Cook a Wolf that have marked several generations of food journalists.
The club was guided by Lakshmi Aguirre, and several colleagues from The Foodie Studies who have reread her work this past summer participated, such
, and podcaster Jorge Díez.I always feel a pinch of envy for those who were alive before WW2 broke all hope and built a world spinning fast on its turbo-capitalistic engine.
I dream of a golden age where the affluent few are also the intelligent and erudite few.
Admittedly, I feel an apocalyptic sense of the end of the world in seeing that lately, the richer you are or aspire to be, the most fucking stupid you need to be.
And let me tell you, understanding blockchain or being a super social media marketing ace is not a symptom of higher thinking.
Quite the opposite.
These people cannot think or talk and are people I vehemently would not want to have to sit at a table I am in. I do eschew social gatherings, especially those where many of the usual foodie crowd would gather.
Culinary gatherings, gastronomic conventions, congresses, open-air food festivals—you name it. If I meet excited “foodies,” I will likely not be there to be met.
The more I age, the less tolerant I am towards stupid and small talk, and I crave meaningful conversations instead. The ones one cannot have in a crowd of over-excited and picture-prone “foodies”, gastro-photographers making a living, and the ever-growing plethora of Instagram-socialites of food.
You know.
So whenever I need to fathom a social occasion, I try as hard as I can to sit with the few who will bring the conversation to a lovely and lively point. The Fishers, the Olney, and the Childs were not significantly different.
And if you want to read a bit more about Fisher, Cris wrote about her in a magistral way a couple of months ago:
#fisheristas and readers now see their doings through their eyes, and we see a portrait of simple-not-so-simple dining gatherings, at-home cooking, and restaurant outings.
None of them for the pictures.
All of them for the story to tell.
All of them for the pleasure, this yes, of combining food, wine, and meaningful, light, friendly, or intellectual conversation.
What I take out from Fisher is that the table is meaningful.
The service also.
The food can be good, excellent, or mediocre: it does not matter ultimately because what sticks to the memories and comes across the world is a story of life, love and food in equal measure.
And you see it now.
For me, the permanence of these writings is due not only to the absolute quality of their prose but also to the narrated story.
Life, in more or less transparency.
For Fisher, the table is a pretext; the texts describe it, but the context is what matters.
But this is not the only author that sparks interest. As our professor and writer
wrote for Tapas Magazine, “Novels leave a good taste in the mouth”.Reading Murakami means entering with both feet into Japanese gastronomy, and Japanese meaning to gastronomy: we are what we eat, sure, but we also are HOW we eat.
And that is equally important.
There are many of us in what we write, even when we do not write about us.
Many of us leave lingering on our plates when discussing gastronomy. Like a bit of food, we go on the plate because we are too full and satiated.
One of the most important lessons I have learned during my gastronomy studies with outstanding contemporary writers is that our voice matters.
Because we have one unique, peculiar sometimes, but surely non-replaceable way of seeing reality - and that is a treasure that we must cherish at all costs, caressing it softly with our mastering of perfect words and sentences.
To master this, we have to exercise.
Every voice matters.
You should subscribe to all of these writers and follow their endeavours.
As many migrate to Substack and other writing and publishing platforms, the world feels slightly lonelier on Instagram, filled with reels but increasingly devoid of content.
Some ideas, in various languages (because, my reader, being polyglots in Europe is sexy and is quite the norm, too):
Thank you so much for including me!
Ahoy! Thanks for the double mention 😄