The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
What are you watching these days?
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on December 11, 2020, 09:05:53 pm ---The only time we had fish after that was when we went out to a local Arthur Treature's Fish & Chips restaurant.
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OMG! :o That's a name I haven't heard in years on years. Are those places still around?
Does anybody (besides me) know who Arthur Treacher was? (Without googling, I mean.)
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on December 11, 2020, 09:38:35 pm ---I don't think Americans in general were very sophisticated eaters in general. Thank goodness for Julia Child and Alice Waters!
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I wonder what sort of influence they've actually had, and with whom. I mean, if you were watching Julia Child, you were watching PBS, so weren't you already sort of sophisticated? Or did they teach people who were already sophisticated how to eat sophisticated?
???
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2020, 10:19:58 pm ---I wonder what sort of influence they've actually had, and with whom. I mean, if you were watching Julia Child, you were watching PBS, so weren't you already sort of sophisticated? Or did they teach people who were already sophisticated how to eat sophisticated?
???
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I think it was spillover. I rarely watch PBS, would never attempt a Julia Child recipe, have never read anything Alice Waters wrote or said (aside from a quote here or there). But I think they affected the culture overall and it changed what chefs made and what foodies valued and what became fashionable and inspired other celebrity chefs and food writers and gradually trickled down to regular people like me.
I became a "food writer" in the mid-'80s, which is to say I was a lifestyle writer and part of my job was to write a weekly food piece. I didn't know much about cooking, so I wrote more cultural food things, like what people made at their vacation cabins. I wrote something about cabbage, I remember. I got free cookbooks like the Silver Palate Cookbook, which provided the vinaigrette recipe I use to this day.
I can't remember any other food stories I wrote in that job, except that once I wrote something with the word "puke" in the first paragraph (I don't remember the overall topic) and a reader called to complain that it had made him sick.
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2020, 10:19:58 pm ---I wonder what sort of influence they've actually had, and with whom. I mean, if you were watching Julia Child, you were watching PBS, so weren't you already sort of sophisticated? Or did they teach people who were already sophisticated how to eat sophisticated?
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Very clever of you to weave all these musings together into a post that brings us back to what we are (or were) watching! No, I missed the chance to watch PBS when I was young. I was already off in college when it was established in 1969, away from home and with no television. I'm trying to think when it was that I had a television again. Probably not until 1983 when I was married. Even then, I hardly ever watched until my children came along in 1988. Then PBS's Barney the dinosaur became part of my daily life! I did watch "The Galloping Gourmet" a couple of times, a couple of Martha Stewart specials, but the first time I saw "Julia Child" on TV, it was Dan Akroyd on SNL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSxv6IGBgFQ
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2020, 10:15:29 pm ---OMG! :o That's a name I haven't heard in years on years. Are those places still around?
Does anybody (besides me) know who Arthur Treacher was? (Without googling, I mean.)
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I don't think there are stand-alone restaurants anymore, but as I understand it, they've kinda been taken over by Nathan's Famous. Anywhere that sells Nathan's Famous hot dogs and such, you should see a menu of Arthur Treacher's seafood.
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