Pepin's Chowhound Manifesto

From Jacques Pepin's Washington Post op-ed on eggs

The ham and eggs of the corner diner can be as superb as the caviar omelet of Michelin’s most touted triple-starred restaurant.

I never thought I’d see the day when Jaques Pepin would be caught publicly saying something like this. Jesus, he sounds like me, circa 1997. At that time, as was true for decades prior, such heresy would have marked you as a lunatic. Believe me, I know.

Many readers will have no idea what I'm even talking about. It's been forgotten that until fairly recently restaurants without linen napkins, or serving cuisines other than the handful deemed "serious" by tastemakers like Pepin, were gastronomic outcasts to be ignored or else described with dripping condescension ("These wonderfully inexpensive little 'ethnic' places" - thus is literally the entire world tossed casually into a 'miscellaneous' drawer - "offer surprisingly tasty quick fill-ups for those without the refinement or funds to enjoy proper dining").

Always "little" places. "Grandma" places. "Greasy spoons". "Holes in walls". Restaurants that couldn't cough up cash for shmancy digs represented a whole other ilk - dare I say class? It was 100% snobbery, with nothing to do with food or quality.

People don't think like this anymore - the preceding two paragraphs will seem alien to anyone under 30 - because a couple generations of food writers fought tenaciously to bash through long-standing gates of snobbery painstakingly maintained by the likes of Pepin, who needed to justify their premium branding as they fed and/or informed status-seeking "gourmets" and foodies.

Those guys were always in on their own con. They privately winked at people like me - and ate like people like me - while publicly scowling at our lack of refinement. Now you've seen the truth revealed.


I like and respect Pepin and his work. He was far from the most egregious of the old guard of snobs, periodically expressing delight for the "lusty rustic fare yadda yadda of the provinces" (always with a touch of condescension to preserve the elevation of his own position). He was not an utter French chauvinist, sometimes cursorily covering other cuisines.

But he made such moves only after tides had turned, when it was not only safe but lucrative to do so. And, to my knowledge, he never before went as far as this corner diner quote, which comes 25 years too late (frankly, I could have used some cover from someone as established as Pepin back then).