Summer's unmentionables: "Let us go with the local gastronomy!"

The misunderstanding happened on the way back from a trip to Mexico , Marc recalls. “I was saturated with tacos, tortillas, tamales, raw vegetable toppings, corn in general. I had the misfortune to declare that the cuisine had not necessarily been the highlight of the trip and people were offended ,” laments the fifty-year-old. I almost had the impression that it was racist not to appreciate chicken with “mole” , when you still have the right to hate a sauce that mixes cocoa, tomato and peanuts! ”, indignantly the man who, ironically, worked in catering.

" I was told that Mexican cuisine was classified as an intangible heritage site by UNESCO," Marc continues. "So what? I was tempted to talk about my lack of interest in Spanish cuisine, which, in my opinion, is limited to putting things on toothpicks or frying... But I wanted to keep some friends, so I conceded that the ceviches were okay ."

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Marc is admittedly a bit touchy, and ceviche is considered a Peruvian specialty, but he is far from the only one to have aroused disapproval by dismissing foreign cuisine during a social gathering.

Margot, for example, sensed the disappointment of those around her when she ventured to judge the local cuisine after a trip to Japan. “ I had the misfortune to say that it was often very good, but not always amazing ,” laughs the 33-year-old consultant. “ I added that the ‘street food’ was sometimes greasy and fried: it was as if I had slapped people, they didn’t want to hear that! I think many preferred to say that I hadn’t been to the right places, or even that I had no taste buds, rather than admit the possibility that Japanese gastronomy might not necessarily conform to the idea they have of it… ”

The global gastronomic obsession—a trend that seems destined to never leave us—urges us to understand the world through taste, to dabble in traditional cuisines, seen as the guarantors of an authentic, necessarily unmissable experience. “ This injunction to taste everywhere, all the time, has really ended up colonizing minds ,” laments Héloïse, who, as a polyallergic victim of a partial loss of smell, takes no risks when traveling, especially since her perception of tastes has drastically diminished. “ I have to justify choosing fries or rice from the menu. If I don’t pull out the “illness” card, I’m judged for my lack of audacity and open-mindedness, ” regrets the 40-year-old gallery owner.

A case that cannot be made against Lucie, who makes a point of trying every single specialty during her escapades. " It's a sketch ," despairs Pierre, her companion. " Even in Italy - where everything is delicious - she managed to find a lampredotto , a kind of Florentine tripe sandwich, which she spat out in a trash can a few meters away. And I won't even mention the unseasoned horse tartare in Parma... Impossible to swallow but she refused to leave it for fear of upsetting our hosts. As a result, she hid it in the geranium planter that bordered the restaurant terrace! " laughs the thirty-year-old.

And what about Georges, who felt obliged to eat a sea cucumber salad out of pure politeness at a dinner party in Taiwan ? " I felt like I was swallowing my own tongue," the young man confides. "But my table companion was looking at me with stars in his eyes, delighted by my effort, so I forced myself to swallow... I'll never be caught out again! " assures the journalist. Faced with this kind of dish, should we believe the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who wrote (1) that " the cuisine of a society is a language in which it unconsciously translates its structure, unless it resigns itself, always unconsciously, to revealing its contradictions "?

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If so, should we be worried about what Taiwanese society's sea cucumber salad tells us? Finally, when we know that even the very gourmand Alexandre Dumas refused to taste the macaroni made by the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini (also guilty of the famous tournedos) during a trip to Bologna, we can say that, sometimes, the desire is simply not there, and decline with elegance, like the great writer: " Thank you, my dear Rossini, I know everything I wanted to know ."

(1) The Culinary Triangle , Claude Lévi-Strauss, first published in L'Arc, n°26 , 1965.