One time I talked to an acquaintance about why she hadn’t tried the best taco truck that I love that is literally next to her house.
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One time I talked to an acquaintance about why she hadn’t tried the best taco truck that I love that is literally next to her house. She was like ‘I’m from the Midwest, flavor is just not for me, I know I won’t appreciate it’ and I laughed so much and I appreciated her self-awareness.
I then interviewed her about her fear of flavor and grease in an ethnographic exercise. I told everyone back home about it, and it was like telling them about aliens.
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She then told me about how her favorite taco restaurant is this place I would totally never go to, and I finally understood why those places exist. Something for everyone I guess.
She said ‘the lack of flavor is just very comforting for me’ and I was so amazed to hear that, because everyone I’d met til then is a flavor maximalist
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Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni)replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte omg, please take me to your favorite taco truck when I make it SF. I don't like things super spicy/hot or eating like a ton of raw garlic, but I do like flavor!
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni) last edited by
@artcollisions my fave taco truck in SF is across the bridge in Oakland. Fruitvale is just the best we’ve got without going to LA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UVMJE6R2ueAhrUe46?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
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@skinnylatte You're not talking about taco bell, right?
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@skinnylatte Nah, I get it. Sometimes you don't want to think about flavors and how they interact and what it'll do to the rest of your day. You want to just not be hungry or consume the sustenance your meat-prison requires.
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@drsbaitso it’s a completely different way of thinking for me. I’d never met anyone who thought this where I come from. So I am just fascinated. I guess I get it, but I won’t get it get it (coz I’ll never think that myself, not in a million years). If I have one poorly flavored meal, I get really mad
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@skinnylatte Midwestern soul food. Take it from a boy who grew up in Chicago
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@MayInToronto no! Taco Bell has its place. But there is a certain type of taqueria that is for people who think Taco Bell is inauthentic but everything tastes plain.
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@[email protected] this is my confusion when I had a chat with a colleague and she said she "just want to eat the same things and not have to think about food."
(I get bored after eating the same thing twice) -
@geraineon I tell people I get annoyed if a *single meal* is not AMAZING and they get so confused. I think we have been spoilt by our homes
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@12thRITS just posted this
Adrianna Tan (@[email protected])
Someone just gave me Chex mix that’s been seasoned with soy sauce and furikake and now I like Chex mix. It was so inedible before
Hachyderm.io (hachyderm.io)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
Sometimes my wife and I talk about how it must be weird to others that we sort of expect every single meal we eat (whether it’s food we cook or food we buy) to be incredible.
I know it sounds like an exhausting way to live, but where we are from (Singapore / Malaysia), eating poor quality food is seen as a waste of time, stomach space and soul
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Megan Lynch (she/her)replied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte Did she really say lack of flavor as opposed to lack of spiciness? That would surprise me.
I've met people who can't take spicy food. I've met people who view food as fuel and really don't get into the sensual pleasures of food.
But I've never met someone who's said they're into lack of flavor.
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I think in that part of the world you have to go out of your way to find food that hasn’t been prepared with great care and love, and that tastes ‘bad’
Even the stuff I turn my nose down on when I’m in Singapore / Malaysia / Thailand is like, better than most fancy places ahaha
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One of the things my elders were exceptionally proud of me for: she knows how to select good fish, dried mushrooms, and she has great taste in food
People who don’t care about food are treated with extreme suspicion in my culture, almost like.. they are aliens you can’t communicate with.
I was surprised to learn that in other cultures, people who care too much about food are perceived to be odd
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Megan Lynch (she/her) last edited by
@meganL yeah she said she specifically seeks out places that are bland and flavorless as that’s her comfort food
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@skinnylatte The flip side of that is "flavor maximalist" sounds kind of exhausting. Like only listening to music at max volume.
Sometimes you just want some background music.
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@drsbaitso haha, I’ve never had food with minimal flavor until I left Asia, and I never want food for fuel, only max flavors. I suspect I would have to go to a health food place in Asia to get anything with less flavor. But I also grew up with food and community at almost every meal, so eating alone as fuel is very new to me and I don’t like it
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@skinnylatte (As an Asian, to me) Living without enjoying flavors seems like one's life is about to end. But then there is comfort, so it allows some people to keep going, I guess.
