From cronut to doughssant: is food hype really such a bad thing?
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Version 0 of 1. For a city that never sleeps, there is not much to do in New York before eight in the morning. At least, this is the explanation I gave friends when they learned I had lined up outside Dominique Ansel Bakery from 6am till 8am in the hope of eating a cronut, the croissant doughnut hybrid developed by the’s bakery namesake auteur. It seemed ridiculous that I’d visit an epicentre of culture and spend two hours jostling strangers in the hope of eating an object smaller than my fist. I wasn’t even that likely to be delighted by the cronut – too sugary for the morning, and probably too cakey, too. I can do croissants; doughnuts are borderline. I definitely didn’t do it through any fault of New York, where you have a lot of choices if you’re early to rise. The stoop of my AirBnB apartment was haunted by a lovely junkie whose life story I was slowly gleaning, one day at a time (central plot points: he liked tequila, but not so much his wife). The truth is, I ate the cronut because I’d bought into the hype. It was claimed as a “masterpiece” by the Village Voice, was selling for $100 on Craigslist, and was already being copied back in Melbourne under trademark-averting names (awkwardly: the doughssant). My trip just happened to coincide with the planet going briefly cronuts, when probably we should be worrying about solving inequality or eradicating various strains of flesh-eating disease. But is food hype really such a bad thing? Suspicion of mob behaviour is longstanding. The idea that crowds are only as smart as the dumbest person has been around since at least 1841, when Charles Mackay published Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Mackay observed: “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one subject, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” But I’d argue there is value in being swept up in a crowd – in feeling part of a very quickly-assembled community, however self-interested. Economic bubbles are one thing (Mackay’s book explains those); finance works best when it is rational. Food doesn’t have to be so smart. It doesn’t have to be exciting, either – but it may as well be. Long waits and line-ups are prices worth paying for the sense of being clumped. Think of sausage sizzles on election days, or in the car park at Bunnings. A cronut looks more specious because it’s also new and cool; the same goes for wider trends that have swept Australia this decade. Prime culprits: diner food, or Mexican. When I spoke to chefs while researching my short book, Salad Days, they suggested that what we’ll see next is Brazilian cuisine. Hyped food is inconvenient. It’s often overpriced. But it’s a shared experience on a massive scale – and how often can you say that about a gustatory process? It’s the opposite of food as fuel, food as function, food-as-peanut-butter-sandwich-between-two-brain-melting-meetings-or-not-even-a-sandwich-more-like-a-museli-bar. Trends mean food as thrill ride, food as block party. Food as check-out-that-guy’s-haircut-who-would-do-that-to-their-hair? It’s food as spectacle, in other words, and it’s all too rare. The cronut I ate was probably not worth $100, but it was worth two hours and five bucks in cash. It was also a minor work of genius, if genius is defined as the ability to find hidden links between discrete ideas and thereby effect meaningful change. Croissants and donuts are each known for their distinctive textures; the cronut works by coordinating those textures into a structure that feels new, but makes enough visual and oral sense not to freak us out. It’s fun for a trend to feel so much like a treat, like a novelty, in part because it’s pocket-sized and sugary. In other words, it really was excellent – but that was beside the point. The point was being with my people, who were not my people, of course, except that we were all united by this one, dumb cause. Trends like cronuts come and go; other people are what we’re stuck with. If food can help us live together, the queues can’t be long enough. • Ronnie Scott’s Salad Days is published by Penguin Specials |